What Did The Pathology Report Say?

I can confirm your family won’t appreciate you kidding around about dropping dead and nurses don’t enjoy you pretending to pass out in a wheelchair.

Some of you might be wondering what this is in reference to and why I suggest you read What If Tomorrow Never Comes and It’s Hard To Run With An IV In Your Arm Part 2.

As they prepared to punch a hole in me I asked how long it would take for the drugs to work and thought about my dear friend David.

Actually I thought quite a bit about David and how this August will mark 27 years since we said our final goodbye.

I thought about how naive I was back then and how my son is just a little bit younger than David was when that first brain tumor hit.

I thought about how David knew there was a good chance he might not reach 30 and it was unlikely he would grow old.

I thought about how he never mentioned it to me and I got angry again that he didn’t share that burden because I would have gladly helped to carry it.

And I felt some sadness because I wondered if he didn’t share it because I didn’t make it clear that he could.

Maybe he didn’t because he figured he would beat it, because in your twenties the idea of dying from a terminal illness seems unreal.

And then I considered what I would say if the pathology report came back with answers I’d prefer not to hear.

Considered who I would tell and who wouldn’t be included in that inner circle.

Don’t Buy Trouble

When my son told me he preferred not to be put in a position to fill my shoes I smiled and told him I didn’t plan to die yet.

“You can blame my attitude on your grandfather and great grandfather. I really don’t expect the results to be bad. I won’t worry about it unless I need to. You can plan on me being around for a long time, I have things to do.

But I have to tell you that Grandpa Wilner said if there is another side it can’t be that bad because no one comes back to complain.”

****

Sometimes I think about that August afternoon we buried David. I remember how we took off our jackets and manned the shovels because doing the actual work was one of the last gifts we could give.

We wanted his parents and siblings to know that people who knew and loved him were there to offer that.

And it was a way to try and release some of the grief we felt, a way to unload some of the weight of the unexpected death of someone who was far too young.

I welcomed the sweat on my brow and the feeling of driving that shovel into the mound of dirt. For a moment it made sense of the senseless.

****

While they wheeled me back towards radiology I thought about how I am almost twice as old as I was then.

I thought about how I manned a shovel at my father’s funeral and how the rabbi suggested I rest. I don’t think he would have said it to 29 year-old me, but 49 year-old me was a different story.

I remember smiling at the rabbi and telling him I would be fine knowing I had to keep going.

It was much harder on me physically burying my father than it was burying David.

I keep reading and rereading that last sentence. Emotionally it was hard with both of them, but for different reasons.

Both of them would have told me not to worry and to put down the shovel. I would have told them both in no uncertain terms what they could do with that.

We buried Dad twenty years after we buried David. Even if I had been a professional athlete and focused solely on staying in peak form it would have been harder.

****

When I thought about what I would do and who I would tell if I got bad news I thought about how I probably wouldn’t want people fussing over me. I wondered if that was part of why David didn’t say anything.

I thought about who really needed to know and who I’d want to know. I thought about whether some people would be angry if I chose not to include them.

And then I decided it didn’t matter because I might not have bad news and that if I did I might feel differently.

Closed my eyes and silently said, “Don’t buy trouble Josh.”

Life Is Short

They told me to wait a full week before hitting the weights again. I almost ignored that advice because lifting is a big part of my daily routine. It is how I maintain my sanity.

I don’t lift like I used to. I don’t spend hours working on a particular routine and I don’t lift heavy like I once did.

The goal is to focus on the difference between vanity and sanity. Vanity wants to lift like I am still 25, especially when I know I can still put up some serious iron.

Sanity says my joints don’t like me to do it too often and to accept that I can do it if I want to but that I ought not to do it often.

Vanity says if I work harder on my diet I can more effectively carve out more parts of my body and see the definition of the hard work.

Sanity says increasing focus on my diet is smart in general but it also says that it is ok to eat.

It says I got a gift of more years than many people get and that while it is important to take care of ourselves it shouldn’t be done at the expense of enjoying life.

So we now we wait for the doc’s words regarding the pathology report and see how that plays into all this.

I look forward to him saying things look pretty good and that if I do XYZ things will be looking even better.

Time will tell.