Our home, now, is most importantly a place to rest. For Angela, fatigue is becoming more prominent, but she is at the same time very restless due to steroids, hunger, and pain. She is awake every hour at night. She continues to accept the side-effects of her treatments as necessary evils. She wears her stif-neck collar happily. Still we look at the consent form that she signed in the hospital with a curious mix of fear and amusement, such modest goals, "to improve the chances of local control," and such devastating "potential" consequences such as paralysis and secondary cancers.
We will not, of course, leave the outcomes to these matters to chance alone. It is in part because of occasional esophageal pain which Angela now refers to as an arrow, now as an axe in her chest, that we removed the images of St. Sebastien from our walls. We prefer St. George whose spear points in a more favourable direction. We have a beautiful print of Kandinsky's St George Vanquishing the Dragon above our fireplace. From this Saint we will draw inspiration this weekend, and to him we will place our prayers. We pray to make ourselves worthy of our good fortunes so we can live this misfortune well...and better it! So far so good. We will keep in touch.
It is snowing here and Stela is off to her dance class after dropping off a $20 Macy's coupon to Oana. This is not an unusual Saturday...all is well. We have some thirty bags of leaves gathered up and waiting for the beech tree leaves to complete the task for the year. Last weekend the beech leaves were all on the tree and green..on Thursday we had a cold snap followed by a storm, now the leaves are on the ground, deck, driveway and etc..frozen and covered with snow.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like that wonderful beech tree is just going run it's own show without regard to my plan...so, when the universe tells me to continue the raking and bagging I will snap off a brisk salute and follow orders. The universe is as it should be and I'm the leaf bagger.
Buster and Rocky relax near the heat and gaze at the occasional drifting leaf and just dig it! Think I'll join them. You both are in our thoughts and best wishes....bless you. Stela and Jerry
to picture you by the fireplace, and this print of St. George, it feels like all is quiet and "normal". I'm often thinking of you. thank you, Colin, for writing.
ReplyDeletehope and hugs with the light
adina
Colin e mailed me with the terrible news at the beginning of this week; before that I had not known, though since then Calin has told me about the past few weeks since I saw angela in London. It is paradoxical that the last time we met, we talked about facebooks and blogs and their unwelcome place in the politics of my life as an administrator, but here I am, having received instruction from John Vanderheide, and making my first attempt to use it. Angela, if you read the blog, if I were not leaving on my dreaded trip to India and my mother in a few days, I would come to Kingston to see you. But I'm afraid that will have to be later if you want any visitors. The day after I got this news I woke up in the morning remembering the Holbein painting of a woman with a squirrel that you gave me, which hangs in my office. You have a unique capacity not only to know what is important on an individual level, but also to know what IS important. You are in my thoughts a great deal, and so is Colin. -- Tilottama
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