It's been so long since I've written, or posted, that I am not getting out of this chair until I write something down. I just got off the phone with my younger sister who got to listen to me cry for a while. I was crying partly because Ewan's never home and partly because I know I'm so lucky. The lucky part comes from reading a blog called brainhell (I just discovered it this morning through a link from Liz) written by a man who has ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, and it's absolutely heartbreaking to experience his degeneration over the four or so years since he began his blog. So don't click over if you don't want your heart broken. I actually had to stop reading it because I was about to be annhilated by the whole Thinking About How Death Finds Everyone Eventually thing combined with my admiration for this man and generally for the human spirit that keeps fighting and fighting to live, and to live on in words. All of this was going to make me spontaneously combust or dissolve into a small puddle of tears and all they would find would be a pile of soggy clothes, and I'm not wearing the good underwear. So I had to stop reading.
So I'm lucky that I'm healthy and have a great life and am able to go to the bathroom by myself and hold my own head up, and I know it, and yet sometimes I feel sorry for myself because my husband is never home and when he is he works all the time. Mostly all of the time. Last night he was supposed to fly back from Dallas but, after being delayed at the airport because of weather, all the flights out were canceled. What did I do? I got mad. Like it's his fault all the flights were canceled. Grace will elude me until the end of my days. Luckily Ewan has plenty for both of us, because he just forgives and forgives. He immediately forgave me for hanging up on him when he told me his flight was canceled. It's funny that some people claim to find grace through their faith, and I find mine through a man who is an atheist.
So I'm lucky, but I've had a cold for the past couple of days that is bringing me down. It's sapping my energy so I don't get my exercise, and I feel all lumpy and slothful and like I'm getting a triple chin and other fun face fat. And last Sunday I hit my head on a piece of cast-iron playground equipment so hard my contact lens came out of my eye, and I'm sporting a green bruise on my forehead and two (minor) black eyes. The lucky thing here is that I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time, and now my glasses do a pretty good job of covering the bruises so it's not immediately apparent that I've been beaten. By playground equipment.
And since the whole mass/non-mass-in-the-left-breast incident, I generally feel lucky, like I dodged something. Like I've been given a friendly little warning. Like I'll never be glib about cancer again, or think smugly, nothing bad ever happens to me.