Cracks of Light

 52 unexpected things that came into my life when cancer came

2. Discovering a Poet’s Soul

Some people have a hurting heart to console on Valentine’s day, last year on this day I had a hurting head to soothe. Although I didn’t get jewels or chocolates, I did receive an expensive state of the art port drilled into my brain (take that MAC book pro). My brain port was designed to place chemo straight into my spine, as a precautionary measure for cancer that might have spread beyond my bone marrow.

The day of my surgery I hadn’t eaten all day and I was still is a state of shock about all that had occurred in the last two weeks. And all through those harrowing two weeks of tests, needles and rounds of doctors, my husband Jose was there holding my hand so tightly- almost as if to say, “this is going to be a hell of a ride, but I’m taking it with you”.  As we waited for the operating room to be ready for my brain surgery, seconds became minutes and became hours. I felt so guilty that Jose was hanging around for so long, just waiting with me-what a drag I must be. Talk about wanting a do over-who would blame him? Jose wouldn’t hear any of it, just held my hand and said that he didn’t want to be anywhere else but next to me.

When I awoke after surgery, I had an awful headache and to help sooth it was the most beautiful Valentine’s day gift ever, a piece of paper with the following hand-written words:

With You, There is No Waiting

We were in the waiting room

You lying there

Weary, yet in hopeful stillness

Your gaze-right through me-an x-ray to my soul

Lying on that thin hospital bed, you asked

“Lots of waiting huh?”

Yet for me, there is no waiting

No anxious knee knocking

No long stares into deep empty wonderment

Instead my attention was corralled

Encircled by the cul de sac of your caress

Our moment together, naked

A present moment outstretched into the eternal

For with you love, there is no “next thing”

In that room with the sound of “blip” behind us

“A lot of waiting”, you said to me

But with you babe, there is no waiting

Only living

Only presence

Only Being, with.

My husband the poet…who knew?