Today is my birthday.  But it is also just another death-day.

All my days have been turned into death-days,

Transformed by the evil of cancer, that has advanced inside me,

Locking my life with a death-grip, dragging me toward strange eternity.

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I never needed work more than now.

Work, which would occupy the frightening time, reducing and easing my fear.

Work, which would show me the certainty that I still had value and worth.

Work, which would provide me with an income, to pay for all the things I need.

And some things, I desperately need.

But now my place of employment, which I have grown to love so well,

Has chosen to add greater grief to my sorrow and fear, here in my cancer hell;

And has cut me off from work, with termination—

For no reason, other than the defect in the contract that said they could.

The country and the city are low in the second Great Depression.

I needed to hang on to hope, and so I waited for business to increase.

The hope that I would be back to work was, in my own personal depression,

My best hope, my greatest source of strength, a priceless spring of inner peace.

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It is strange to know that I have cancer inside me;

Cancer, advanced, and “probably incurable”—in the last doctor’s words.

It is strange and terrible; incredible; almost impossible, actually, to believe.

For I feel strong and healthy; I am able to move and accomplish goals.

My mind is clear and capable.  There is no pain in my body—not yet.

I am able to work, and I will be able to work for at least a few more years.

How can I be expected to believe that there is cancer inside of me?

How can I believe there is a devouring monster hiding in me,

Feeding on me, poised to spread—with every day, inexorably growing?

But I have no choice but to believe it.  I have X-rays and CT scans and MRIs,

Lab reports, biopsy results, and physician summaries.

I cannot forget, not the least detail; I have always had an excellent memory.

My mind must be self-honest about what it sees, and what it does not see.

So I have to know: Death will soon take away my lifetime’s precious memories.

So I shiver with chill fear, in the cold reality of inescapable knowing.

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So, too, I have a typed paper from work, that tells me I have been terminated.

So I also have to know: My hope of going back to work, is gone.

The economic crisis is going to last for at least several more years;

My cancer won’t let me live long enough to see the end of these bad times.

At my age, and with this economy, and with my lifetime now abbreviated,

There is a large likelihood I will never find the joy of worth-giving work again.

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Now, my strength is sapped, my peace is shattered.

Now I have lost almost everything that to me and in my life truly mattered.

Despite all the darkness that has flooded into my world, I still could wake,

With at least the hope that, “Today might be the day”:

The day that I would get that long-awaited call, to come to work.

It broke my heart to learn I had cancer, and finally face it: terminal cancer.

But that was not going to be the last heart-break.

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Cancer has not yet crippled me; but I know what it will do to me,

Eventually.

My bones will likely go first, the medical papers say—

Not just the marrow, but the outer part of my bones.

Tendrils of tumor will thread through them, making them brittle, breakable.

Sheaths of nerves will then catch fire, and I will suffer unbearable pain­­—

Unbearable, except that it is something that I have got to bear.

But that horror won’t happen for some years yet;

If I can keep my medical care,

I shall still have a few good years left.  I shall still be able to work.

And so I hoped, and even believed, that I would be called back to work.

Instead, I have a letter, neat and certified,

To tell me that my work—my life-line—my source of satisfaction and pride—

Is now cut off from me; another pre-death dream that now has died.

Terminated, before being terminated:

This is the fate that has fallen on me.

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My source of self-support, dignity, and self-worth, my link to life,

Now has terminated me.

And it won’t be long before my cancer, too, terminates me.

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Everything has suddenly changed into something else.

My entire personal universe has suddenly turned upside down and inside out.

Just like that, my world has cracked open, and most of what was mine

Poured quickly out into early oblivion, leaving my heart to ache with loss.

No slow going, no gradual growing old;

No inch by inch stepping toward the last threshold.

No time to replace lost things with new things;

No time to replace tarnished things with new bright gold.

Just a split-second wrenching from having almost everything,

To having nearly nothing,

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With the great yawning of the absolute nothing opening up all around me—

Fissures of horror, deep pitfalls, long dark drops into the unknowable abyss—

I am surrounded by permanent exits, standing on shrinking ground.

My heart, once filled with what seemed to be an immortal joy of life,

Now faces the end of the world, and bleeds beside fate’s bloody knife.



Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Wednesday, April 15, 2009  10:25 am
Copyright (C) 2010 by Michael L.P.