Wasting Time
Do you have tinnitus? It causes a constant ringing in the ears. Mine is pretty strong. I hear it most the time unless I’m listening to loud music or being distracted by a good conversation.
That’s sort of how my leukemia is. No matter what I do, it is always there. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, but never really gone.
I’ve been letting Leuk get too loud lately.
Focusing too much on leuk
What’s with that? The sun is shining, the sky is blue with white puffy clouds, we have wild rabbits in our back yard and deer pass by in our front yard. Bird’s singing, owls hooting… all we need is a pretty soprano and seven really short men and we’d have a friggin’ Disney movie. Yet, I somehow managed to ignore all that and focus on my life-threatening disease.
So, imagine I walk out of this coffee shop and step in front of a bus. Saint Peter meets me at the preverbal Pearl Gates. “Hey,” he says, “welcome. Pull up a cloud and have a seat.”
“What? How’d I get here?”
“Well, my friend, you got flattened by a Greyhound.”
“A dog?”
“Hmm,” says Peter, “you must be one of those who hid behind the door when the brains were passed out.”
“That’s an old joke.”
“Hey, it’s eternity. Most jokes around here are.”
“So, you’re saying I didn’t die from leukemia?”
“Why, were you planning too?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. I was diagnosed years ago so I pretty much figured that’s what would take me.”
Who said you’d die of leukemia anyway?”
“Oh, so you’re a prophet now. We’ve got too many of those up here already and they’re really annoying—always whining because they no longer have a job. Who said you’d die of leukemia anyway?”
“Um, well, the doctor told me it could be terminal.”
“Yeah, so, you believe everything you’re told?”
‘No, I mean…”
“Look. We gave you a lot down there, more than most actually. A house in the country, enough wild rabbits to keep you in stew for a lifetime. (That’s a joke, by the way, we're not much on eating rabbits up here.) You’ve got a beautiful wife, two great kids, and a pack of grandchildren. All that and you’ve wasted time fretting about leukemia?”
I have to admit, Saint Peter would be right.
By the way, that whole death-by-bus thing is not a cliche for me. I knew a person who, months after I met her, actually was hit by a bus. I didn’t know her well, but she was young with a life full of potentials. Then one fateful day she was gone. It can happen to any of us, healthy or not.
Focusing on what matters
Those days I spent worrying were days Leuk won. But most of the time I win. Most of the time, I focus on what’s really important, what really matters in my life. Today I am alive. I think I’ll do my best to focus on that.
And avoid buses.
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