Light in the Valley of the Shadow

Out of the Chrysalis - from today's newsletter. Your comments are very welcome and dialogue is encouraged. 

Much has happened in my life since the last “Out of the Chrysalis”. The most pivotal has been a gradual deterioration in my health and the long protracted and often challenging journey to the eventual diagnosis of clear cell kidney cancer. It culminated in an eight hour surgery, partly on by pass, to remove my left kidney and the tumour which had grown all the way along the vena cava and into the lower chamber of my heart. Kidney cancer is one of the rarer cancers and the condition I had occurs in less than one per cent of those diagnosed.  It was a high risk operation but in the hands of three skilled surgeons and their teams, I came through. The wonderful care of medical, nursing and support staff at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank saw me make a remarkable and rapid recovery. It is now a few days away from the six month anniversary of this life restoring surgery.

I live each day as an act of gratitude for my life. I live each day in the awareness that the very aggressive tumour (Fuhrman Grade 4) could make its comeback and I have been forced to face my mortality, to look death in the eye and say, hold back, not yet, there is much still to be done with this life. Each four monthly CT scan is another landmark, another cause for gratitude. I have had my first all clear back in March and I travel forward in the hope that the second all  clear will come at the end of July. This will be the pattern of my life from now on.

I have been forced to face fear, to walk in the shadow of the valley of death, to make the act of surrender to a will other than mine. There have been times of great sorrow, great despair but something has always been there to lift me up and out into the light again. I have raged against God in momentary outbursts of desperate anger and I have sat in silence wrapped around in a peace that passes all understanding. I have knelt on the floor of my sitting room and screamed in helpless pain, shrieking my fear and rage out into the universe, and I have found an inner source of stillness and courage which carried me beyond those moments to something deeper, wiser, beyond.

I have discovered how much I am loved and valued in ways that I never dreamed of. So many people surrounded me with their loving, healing support. I once wrote about how empty I had felt growing up, how unable I was to truly feel the love that I knew was there rather than to simply know it. This last year was so intensely moving and affirming. I had no idea that I meant so much to so many people.  I joked with friends that I was in that rare position of reading my obituaries before I departed the world.

From the very beginning I made the decision to be open about the illness. I realised that I would need everyone with me, willing me well. I really did not know just how powerful that love would be and from so many places in the world. I was prayed for in African Missionary Churches, New England Covens and in places of worship of every faith in many nations. People sat in healing circles for me and Reiki Masters formed a team to send energy to me. I was given all manner of support and each one was born out of the gift of love. That love cushioned me, comforted me and carried me through. They were and are my earth angels, my own miracle team.

So my friends, past, present and yet to come, even in the darkness there is light and that light is love. Out of pain and troubled times comes transformation and new learning. Bear with me as I process the experience and I will share my heart, mind and soul with you. Together, we learn and grow.

It is spring here in Scotland. The trees are clouds of the softest green, the green of new life returning after the long sleep of winter. I too return from my long sleep, my journey deep within, from the shadows into the Light.

Some questions for you to contemplate if you so wish:

What is undone in your life that you would regret if you died before completion?

What steps will you take today towards completion?

What have you done that you wish undone?

What will you do to make amends and be at peace with your conscience?

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

-Winston Churchill

Endings and Beginnings

In the year now leaving the cosmic train station, my own mortality reached out and brushed its cold breath upon my soul.

Like so many others I am waiting. Will my biopsy take me from this limbo back into the world of the living or will it bring that cold breath closer and deeper? I am one of many waiting in that place of unknowing. I have no answer, no prescient glimpse of what the outcome will be. I wait, sometimes with quiet stoicism and sometimes I am swept up in storms of intense emotion.

Death is theoretical until it comes whispering at your door. We all know that it is the one great certainty in life and yet do we truly live our lives in the real knowing of its imminent ending? How would we live it differently if we were truly aware of its transient nature, immersed in the reality and not the theory?

This is our big chance, our day in the sun, our place centre stage. This day. This hour. This moment. Wrap it around you lovingly. Live it fully. Feel the truth of the gift that is life flowing in every cell. Embrace it as a lover. Give it all of you and suck the marrow from the bones of being.

This day, this hour, this moment. This is truth. This is life. Live it.

"Love You"

My mother had a stroke in June of this year. I was sitting in my office preparing for my next client when the phone range. It was my sister-in-law who had been out shopping with Mum.

Her voice was filled with panic as she told me that Mum had suddenly collapsed and was being attended to by the Paramedics who were stabilising her before taking her to Hairmyres Accident and Emergency Department.

We were lucky. Mum survived and made a full recovery. At the age of 80, we get to keep our mother with us. I look around at all my friends and realise that I am one of the fortunate few who has both parents alive as I move towards my own 57th year.

I am also blessed in that I am secure in the knowing that I am loved by my parents and that they know how much I love them. I look around at friends and clients and the contrast in their own parental relationships makes me even more appreciative.

We can take our loved ones for granted. We can blind ourselves to the fact that one day death will separate us because we simply find it too painful to face.

Face it. I have. They are mortal and with aging, ailing parents, the time is drawing in. Don't dwell on the pain, dwell on making each moment count, on making positive memories that will warm your soul when their physical presence is no longer there.

Make your peace with your parents if there is dissension; let go of the past and be fully present with them as they are right now. You will not get the chance later, for there may be no later, only a life time of regret for words unspoken. Our parents are human; they are imperfect. Just like you and I, they grow and evolve. Look at them now and look at them through the eyes of compassion. Look at them through the eyes of love.

Whether I am face to face with my parents or on the telephone, my last words to them are always, "I love you". When they part from this life, I want those words to be their last memory of me and I want them to be my last gift to them.

Think about it and maybe if you still have time with your parents, you could try it too.