Watchman on the wall
People sometimes ask me if I feel your stomach all the time, or your lymph nodes, searching for a mass, for anything swollen, for a sign, for the writing on the wall.
I don’t.
I don’t want you to feel examined.
Start with what’s in front of you
My job: to help Phoenix make it through chemo.
My worst days were the days I googled things.
Ashes on my forehead
I belong to a society of sufferers, a subculture called cancer moms.
I wear ashes on my face because I know the truth in my brittle burnable bones: we are dust and to dust we will return, and most of what we do in between is also dust.
These ashes are the visible marker.
These ashes are the “live like you could die tomorrow” bumper sticker stuck to my forehead.
Do not reduce me to survivor
I feel the ground trying to insert itself back under my feet and I’m angry about it.
I crave this undefined in-between.
I’m jealous for my own company, the quiet, and the possibility.
The veil torn, life and death sleeping together in the same room all along.
I want to talk about sobriety
Tomorrow morning at 8:45 am Phoenix gets his biopsy.
I feel very edgy today, very not ok. I’m trying to be ok with not being ok.
I do this by practicing doing what I’ve been doing intensely for two years now: feel my feelings.
The Nana Tree
I start crying and choke on the words.
Of course, that’s what I’m doing.
Of course, I’m hoping the ashes scattered will become Phoenix rising.
Of course, this is why I’ve held on to this little three-inch urn for almost nine years.
How to be a Phoenix
This is the lesson of the Phoenix.
This is what it does best.
It submits to the burning because it knows there is no other way through but THROUGH.
You have to burn if you want to evolve.
You HAVE to surrender to the unknown if you want to change. You don’t get to control the narrative. You don’t get to choose your particular brand of “doable flames.”
If you want to rise, you have to lay it all down.
Smoke em while you got em
I want to secure my hope. Tether it to facts and action-whatever works for the day to stave off the panic. Research the shit out of it and do every single thing I can to help him live.
But the truth is, me pushing every last supplement down Phoenix's throat does not guarantee any bit of saving from pain.
It keeps him aware he is sick, and the hovering high-pitched spirit I do it in communicates that I am NOT OK and because I am NOT OK, I cannot let him be OK.