long may you run

endurance.
living with the life you have.
not asking always 'why?'.
accepting why not.
accepting because.

there are some things about certain groups of people that amaze me- vietnam era veterans are one of those groups.  several of my patients have showed up to their appointments with a woman at their side, and when i ask who she is- they say "my ex."  i've seen it many times- these guys will get sick and out of the woodwork will come their ex-wives.  these women will then stop what there doing and care for their ex-husband who now has stage 4 cancer.  after years and years of no contact.  after years of time together that was often affected by alcohol and drugs and cigarettes and infidelity.  these women come back and care for their man.  a few of them have even remarried.  and there is an attitude of 'why not', or 'it's the right thing to do'.  it always gives me pause. i've often wondered why?  what's going on?  what's the real story?  is it a story of redemption? has there been a righting of wrongs?  apologies and forgiveness? or  is it a story of true love?

on friday i saw one of my patients who i knew was living with his ex.  last friday she came to the appointment too and i got the scoop- i heard the story- finally a window of possible insight.

"30 years! we hadn't seen each other in 30 years! we had a son during the three years we were married and he told me dave was sick- he had cancer and was living in a hotel." she said. "so i says i need to help out.  i had a boyfriend, a marine, i told him that my ex-husband needed help and i was going to take him to his appointments and his treatments at the VA hospital."

i'm thinking- you were only married for 3 years and you haven't seen the guy in 30 years and your stopping your life to take him to and from his chemo and radiation?  and you have a boyfriend who is OK with this?

"you know what my marine said?  he said, no we're going to take him to his appointments together- you don't need to do that alone."

what?

then the amazing thing- dave (name changed) was in the hospital and 'her marine' found out that he would be discharged to a nursing home - he said "no fellow veteran is going to a nursing home when we have an extra bedroom- we can take care of him."

so the three of them live together.  my patient, his ex-wife and her fiance who take care of him.

my patient spoke up- he said- "when you've lived to this age in life- and you've seen what we've seen- you just begin to let go of the things - you see what really is important- you learn to laugh at things that used to drive you crazy and you forgive each other- you move on."

such good wisdom.  i envy that perspective.

if zoe was a race, she'd be a marathon.  if zoe was a piece of candy, she'd be the everlasting gobstopper.  if zoe was a sentence, she'd be written by charles dickens.  if she was a sports event she'd be baseball.  if she were music she'd be beethoven.  if she were weather she'd be sunny, but if she were a natural disaster- she'd be an earthquake- not the warning winds and rain of a hurricane, not the visibility of the tornado on the plains, not calculations of the volcano- just a few tremors then the big one.


she needs to be surrounded with endurance- stamina- patience- like a long run, and wordy paragraph, and extra innings. but she's complexly beautiful like  moonlight sonata - intense and traveling like the notes- moving you- drawing you in- pushing you back, slow and creeping then vibrant and passionate.  she's cheery and sunny and warm like good weather- but she can have the unpredictability of an earthquake- shaking herself to the bones- with little warning.


i'm a sprinter- our 4x110 relay team won the state championships.  if i were candy (and couldn't be chocolate) i'd be poprocks.  if i were a sentence- i would be a fragmented poem line.  if i were a sport i'd probably be ping-pong.  if i were music- i'd be played on the harmonica- not fancy but soulful.  i hope i'm sunny.  if i were a natural disaster, i'd be a hurricane- at least you could get out of the way.


so i don't like the pain of mile 20, i don't like the unpredictability- but i do live it.


today at the zoo- she had a little earthquake moment.  we were with one of our favorite families.  she got overwhelmed in the gorilla house. a lot of people and a lot of noise- and she freaked out a little.  ran out- ears covered.  it took a while for her to calm down- and there were after shocks- she was angry at me in all of it, which i guess is good, i guess it means i'm safe.

but there were two positives in this.  one is that i'm learning to pace myself- i don't burn out after 50 yards- i might be up to 7 emotional miles- and this is good.  and i'm not avoiding the long words in the long sentence- i'm not skimming it- i'm trying to understand it fully.

the other thing i saw was, again the beauty of my friend erin.  that girl gets it.  we were reflecting on the day and she said- 'wow! the kids did really well!"  "except for zoe's meltdown" i said.  "no- every time we're at the zoo, one of my kids is crying about something."  she normalizes it.  no big deal.  no ones injured.  no ones gone missing.  no ones dying.  you accept your life, your path.  and you move on.  she brings me back to where i want to be.

sometimes mike and i forget this.  sometimes we get overwhelmed with her overwhelm. sometimes we fear we've landed our lives on a fault line.  we can blow moments, into forever.  we can turn 'once in a while' into 'always'.  we can worry about what those zoe quakes will look like in a few years, or how the girl who doesn't like change will handle moving to uganda. 


but i want to let it go- to laugh at the things that drive me crazy- to forgive each other and move on.
and it is beginning- slowly-i'm trading speed for endurance.

long may we run.