No ransom note from cancer
I came to work this morning decidedly negative. It was one of those days, you know? You chug a cup of coffee, smoke a few cigarettes, hope that some jolt to your cerebral cortex will make things better, but it doesn’t. Maybe what I really need is a vicodin.
On these days, I wonder to myself what I’m doing here. It is clear to me where my priorities lie. I want to be with Rusty. But here I am, coming in to this office, every day, filing stories I am sure matter little in the cosmic scale of things. Love is what matters. If something untoward happens to him now, who will tend to him? How will I get over the guilt of being absent?
Rusty thinks differently. For him, this cancer has robbed him of almost every aspect of normal life. Once a marathon runner, his limbs can no longer be as impulsive, or dedicated. His daily schedule answers to doctors and nursing staff. Our lives are punctuated by scans and chemo protocols. I panic when he’s missed my calls more than twice.
So to him, my quotidian ritual is our way of standing up to the disease. He will not allow it to disrupt my life, too, and hold me hostage as it has him.