Loved, Completely

     She lies down beside me in bed and I reach for the telephone and play Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me by Mel Carter, and we sing it together. Then we go on to Saturday Night at the Movies by the Drifters. I play My Girl by The Temptations and when we get to the those words in the song, she bellows out, My Guy. It is a ritual we repeat often.
     Sometimes, she dances for me to the music or we dance together to Mel Carter. That line, "They never stood in the dark with you love, when you take me in your arms and drive me totally out of my mind," and the scent of her hair, with her body pressed against me, is almost more than I can emotionally handle. I want, terribly, to cry.
     Sometimes the singing goes on for half an hour while we hold hands or I turn and put my arm around her. Then I say something that is so arrogant that I dare not allow anyone but her to hear, "We are so lucky to have found each other." I qualify that to make sure that I have not said that she is lucky to have found me. I am not that arrogant.
    Walking around in our yard, holding hands, I stop and turn to her and say, "We did it didn't we  Sarah?" I do not have to further explain myself for she immediately says, "Yes we did." Those visions of a good life, of children of strong character and positive outlook on life, of good friends, of helping build a community so that our children could benefit from the lives of others worthy of teaching them, of grandchildren given a great start in life, and of daughter-in-laws who loved our sons and shared their visions, all of that happened.
     How fortunate I and we have been. It is at this point that many would go into how God did it all and how all the glory goes to Him. The part about the glory going elsewhere, I have no problem with that. But, God gave Sarah and I free will and souls that no one was to enslave. He sat us free to make on this Earth the best that we had to offer. I do not want to disturb my religious friends but God did not do the day to day work that Sarah and I put into this life. He opened the door, but we had to walk through, and it is in not doing that that so many fail.
      But, for a love to grow into what Sarah and I have, there is another element of our mutual lives that had to be nurtured daily. You see, love and good fortune has to be shared with others or it is only a self serving game we are playing. Having both taught school for twelve years, we started out with a desire to share our lives with others, so it was no stretch to let that part of our mutual lives grow and become an integral part of our union.
     And, it is not just working through the Optimist Club or church, it is a total commitment to share with others wherever we are. It often takes the role of making a waiter or waitress know that they are special people. It is about getting someone we meet along the road to talk about their children and grandchildren. It is finding people who need our help and jumping in with all four feet. It all makes the bond between Sarah and I much stronger, and adds a lot of fun to our lives.
     So, when she lies down beside me tonight, there is nothing about her nor nothing about me that the other is not a part. We really are one, and that oneness is a feeling that no one can understand unless they have such a relationship. It is worth spending a life to build. It is as close to Heaven as we get on this Earth.
    

The Big "C"

     I am now in the nineteenth month of a two year hormone(testosterone) block. I have prostate cancer, the kind that get you pretty fast. My Gleason scores are nines and I had twelve of twelve positive biopsies. The treatment had to be radical, but removing the prostate was not an option. I had twenty-five external beam radiation treatments and two high dosage radiation treatments in the summer of 2014.
     The hormone block has reeked havoc on my body. Slowly I lost energy until I reached the point at which I am today. I have almost no energy and my muscles hurt when I tire them, which takes little exercise. Yet, the hardest part for me is knowing that my three sons are going to be very prone to such a cancer. I spent a life trying to pass on every good thing I could to them, and now I have to face that I am also passing on a condition that could kill them before their time.
    I joke about getting to sixty-nine in sixty-nine years and to eighty in the next year, but that is sort of what it is like. I never make judgments on how old I look, but I am constantly told that I look ten years or so younger that my age of seventy-one, later this month. But however I look on the outside, I am an old man on the inside, if old age is loss of energy.
     But, we all live two lives, the ones our bodies live and the ones our minds live, and I am still very young up there. I do not think like most old people I know. Listening to The Drifters singing songs like; "Saturday night at eight o'clock, I know where I'm going to go, I'm going to pick my baby up and take her to the picture show;" I can get all worked up wanting to relive those days. I want everybody to know and enjoy what I enjoyed then. Life was so easy then and the girl at my side was always a princess to me. We did not walk, we floated down the street.
     So now, that passionate person, that eternal optimist in my mind, it is all still there. The big "C" has not robbed my brain of one iota of the love and lust for life that filled my younger days, though it is robbed my body of so much.
     In all of the treatments and tests, only one, MRI, was an intolerable chore. Otherwise I made a lot of new friends and actually enjoyed to process. Well, the catheters were no fun for sure. But the two high dosage treatments where I was asleep for five hours each, were interesting experiences. The twenty-five external beam treatments were fun, really fun. I hated they were over and gave the five people who were there most of the time crystal Christmas tree ornaments with an angel engraved on them.
     I have a great appreciation that however bad some of this has been, there are millions of people who are going through worse physical experiences. And the ones who can do that and still be an inspiration to others humble me. I never asked, "Why me, Lord?" I hope I would never be so small. of mind and spirit.
     And, during all this, my younger brother, Kevin, still in his mid-fifties, has suffered from debilitating dementia. He can no longer take care of himself and needs to be somewhere where he can be cared for. As the old Hank Williams hymn says, "his burdens are greater than mine." I am the lucky one.
     The big "C" will never win for it can not kill my spirit. That is all that really matters.