A Statement on Living Life and Loving Life


           In the years 1965 through 1968, there was a TV series called *Run for Your Life* starring Ben Gazarro.  This show is now available on DVD.  It is about a successful lawyer who is told by his doctor, in the first episode, that he is going to die in two years or so.  The rest of the series showcases his many adventures, as he travels all over the country and all over the world, meeting new people, and getting involved deeply in life.  He was running for his life.

          I'm living like that old show, *Run For Your Life*.   I'm doing things, a lot of things, I wasn't doing before, or as much before.  I'm running for my life, although not on Ben Gazarro's grand scale.  But I am having adventures, and I'm doing many bold things, and I do a lot of things for fun.

     I don't have anything like the excitement of the old show.  But I have my life.

     I go out and karaoke. I used to be a singer in a band group, and before that, I was in madrigals and choir. I can sing just about anything, from soft songs, like Frankie Avalon's "Venus" and Simon and Garfunkle's "Scarborough Fair"; to hard-hitting songs, like Led Zepplin's "Black Dog" and the Beatles's "Twist and Shout."

     I sing Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," the latter being a song not many can sing all the way through. I sing Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" and "Born to Be Wild"; and when I reach those life-loving lyrics, "I never want to die," I hammer them out with my whole heart, and I make the words soar.

     Despite having been a singer back in my far past, I never did karaoke before my diagnosis. But now I'm doing many things that I want to do, for fun.

     For years, I've wanted to go to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Somehow, I never did. Well, I went this year, for the first time. Setting my fears aside, I'm planning on going next year, too.

     Just because I come to this Internet doesn't mean I'm not living my life as fully as I possibly can in the so-called real world (this world is real, too). I just don't want most of my friends to know about my cancer, so while I am known to be a poet, in the physical world my poems are mostly different. Mainly on the Internet, mostly under this name, I place my poems about cancer and my feelings about my cancer and my mortality.

     The only thing that sometimes holds me back from singing, dancing, riding motor cycles, and doing death-defying deeds of derring-do, is my medical treatments, which sometimes swat me like a fly. And also, yes, sometimes I do succumb to depression, and sometimes I am disabled by anxiety attacks. But, much of the time, I feel good enough and well enough to do what I want to do. Then I do what I want to do.  And I'm having fun.

     I often go out to karaoke when all I feel like doing is sleeping. I recall one such occasion. My energy felt so low, so drained. But I got up on the stage and I performed--not just sang--"When the Music's Over" by The Doors.

     When I went back to my seat, several people high-fived me, and some came to my table to compliment my performance. One guy told me: "I feel like I just saw Jim Morrison live on stage." But what really got me was a comment made by a young woman: "You have so much energy, it's amazing."

     That got me because I knew the truth. I had such little energy I had to force myself with will power to go out that night. I went up on that stage feeling weak and tired. But then I plugged into something, and I drew energy from it. I plugged into my love of life. My desire to pack as much life as I can into the time I have left.

     That brings to mind a sentence in my poem "Song of Life."  I wrote: "I have little hope for a long tomorrow." A few peoplethought that meant I feel hopeless.  Yes, okay, that line is sad--but not hopeless; little hope is not the same as no hope.

     In addition to the conventional doctors I see--one of whom has already talked to me about planning for hospice "for when you need it"--I am seeing a holistic physician who is the only one who says I might be cured. I'm doing everything his program says. My oncologist doesn't have much faith in it, but concedes that it can't hurt, and just might do me some good.

     So I do hope, fervently hope, to be cured and to live a good long life. But I have to be honest with myself that the odds are not in my favor on that. One doctor, writing about me in a letter to my oncologist, said this: "He is unlikely to be cured of his cancer with any modality."

     No, doctors can't always say certainly, in a particular case. But around forty thousand people a year die from the kind and stage of cancer that has invaded my body. While not giving up hope that I will beat this cancer, it is better for me to recognize that beating it is a long shot. Just as it was for Farrah Faucett. Just as it was for Patrick Swayze.  Their fame and money could not save them from cancer.

     It is because I know that "I have little hope for a long tomorrow" that I am waking up at night to see the stars and moon, to appreciate and love their beauty and majesty. It is the reason why I'm joyfully singing and dancing and feeling my living body with all my moves. It is why I taste the air I breathe.

     I touch things, I feel things. Tables. Window glass. A fork in my hand at dinner: I make myself focus on how it feels in my hand. I draw deep breaths and I focus on smelling every fragrance and scent I find in the air. I'm living my life and loving my life.

     I cry sometimes.  Sometimes I get struck with sudden deep fear, with the impact of realizing that I really am trapped in the nightmare of incurable cancer.  I vent many of my fears and much of my grief into poetry.  But havng written such a poem, I set down my pen and get up and go live my life.  I live, laugh, and love, like there is only today--every day. Even on the days when I feel weak or ill; and even, to some extent, on the days when I am overwhelmed with fear, depression, or anxiety.

     As I put it in my poem "Song of Life":

               "Time is my life; time is what I have, for too long, too often missed.

                But now, I want to hold and feel and taste it all."

     I am not standardly religious; but I do see intelligence in the designs of life and living things. I also believe in the power of thought and prayer; and I know that there are many things outside the scope and ken of science--science, my first love, which I still so dearly love and respect.

     I hope that God hears me, and I pray for myself; and I also pray for many others. I just don't know what God is up to, to tell you the truth. But I hope he hears and will help.

     I love this world.  I'm not anxious to go to another world.  But I hope, then when I have to leave this world, God's grace will be great enough to forgive my little faith and my faults and flaws and sins, and that I will be granted life to live again, either in another world, or perhaps in a resurrection or otherwise a return to this world.  I hope. 

     But I'm living in this world now as if there is no tomorrow, because it is extremely likely that soon--much sooner than I would like--for me, there won't be.

     Bye now.

                              --Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
                             aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
                             Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights Reserved