The Fog

I’ve done it again. I’ve sailed directly into The Fog. I don’t know if it’s that it’s been raining all day or all the napping or the chemo or all of it tied together, but I am just dazed. Time is passing strangely, in snippets. I wake to the bumps on I-44 at 29th st. on the way home from chemo at Mercy. Sleep. I wake briefly to hear Nora stomping up the stairs. Sleep. I wake to listen to the rain drip off my roof for a few minutes. Sleep. I wake and it’s no longer light outside, and yet here I am still, doing little more than breathing in my bed as time and the world slide by around me.

I was plunged into The Fog with the last round of chemo, too, but I wasn’t yet wise enough to yield to the fatigue and just go to sleep. After all, how can I possibly need 16 hours of sleep in a day? I’m just barely awake long enough to take all of my pills and drink all of my water. Forget doing anything productive, because you, my friend, are in The Fog. When people come to visit during my chemo appointments, I can’t remember who I’ve told what. I can hardly keep track of the day of the week! It’s like I’m aboard the HMS Surprise in the scene in Master and Commander where they sail into a thick fog bank to escape the Acheron pursuing them.

And I’m struck in a not-so-lucid sort of way how we all sail into The Fog from time to time in life. It’s probably not chemo-induced for most of us, but everybody knows what it’s like. You look up and suddenly it’s five years later and you wonder what you’ve been doing with your life, chasing somebody else’s dream as a default because you don’t know what else you should be doing with yourself. You wake up and realize there’s a lot you want out of life that you haven’t been pursuing because you, too, have been in The Fog.

Cancer doesn’t let you stay in that fog, and I really appreciate that about it. It’s jarring. It’s somebody standing in front of you, grabbing you by the shoulders, and shaking you good and hard. I shaved my head yesterday, and now I don’t like looking in mirrors. That’s jarring. I was jarred this morning when I participated in a room full of people slowly poisoning themselves at chemo. It felt like we were a bunch of adrenaline junkies pushing life right to the very edge just to feel alive, gritting our teeth and then yelling, “yeah, come on! Is that all you’ve got?!” We were skydivers waiting until the very last second to pull the ripcord or bungee jumpers who want that cord to stretch to within inches of the ground. I and the people in that room weren’t taking ourselves to the ragged edge by choice, but it still felt radical, like we were slurping up life in a rich way that only those who really believe they might lose it soon are capable of doing. We’ve left the fog and are gazing out at the wondrous world with eyes wide open; seeing, really seeing, for what may be the first time. Cancer gives us that, and I’m thankful for it.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
– Dylan Thomas