Cancer and kids don’t mix; never should. In fact, cancer and people, no matter how old the KID, never mix.
She just turned nine. She has cancer. I got to meet her and her sister and mother today, the first and most likely for the last time.
It was a Supervisory I made with a colleague, who was superb. We read a story about the different colors we often feel and are. We put different colored sand in bottles, carefully layered. We drew pictures, laughed, talked and laughed some more and then left.
I felt Compassion. It was a light-baby-blue color that lapped over me like warm Caribbean waves.
Cancer and kids don’t mix; never should.
I left there and drove 45 minutes to a nursing home and visited a 79 year old kid. She has cancer, too. She was eating her lunch and watching her TV with the volume almost up to the max. We didn’t read stories, make sand art or draw…but we did laugh. She told me of how some hospice volunteers and staff took her to a Cleveland Indians game and how she didn’t have A hotdog or A beer, but TWO hotdogs and TWO beers. With a huge, mostly toothless smile, she gushed about how a ball boy reached over the railing and gave her a ball–which she had secretively hidden so that it ‘wouldn’t roll away into someone else’s keeping.’
I felt Compassion. It was a soft-warm-yellow that beamed over me like single reading light late at night that kept the night at bay.
Cancer and Kids of any age don’t mix; never should.
But, but they DO!
Two totally different visits to two totally different people who were LIVING while DYING.
Both reminded me that so am I. So are you.
Living while Dying.
Neither of us will ever be able to get back the precious seconds that have just passed us by, even since the time we’ve been reading this post.
Often times, it’s what evokes our deepest Compassion–which is most sad, isn’t it?
Should our warmest tears, our sincerest Compassion come out JUST WHEN WE HEAR OF SUCH STORIES?
Join me, won’t you?
I AM NOT GOING TO BE ABOUT GETTING MY COMPASSION ON, ANYMORE.
I AM GOING TO WORK, DEDICATE MYSELF, MY ACTIONS, WORDS, FEELINGS in making sure my Compassion is NEVER OFF!
I AM COMPASSION. It’s every color of the Rainbow and a few that have never been seen, but waiting to be shown to The Kid in all of us. It’s a bottomless Pot of Gold waiting to be shared and enjoyed.
Join me, won’t you?
Chuck, thank you for “killing me with delight.” Your post today reminded me of one of my faves from that wonderfulwise poet (from Maple Heights) Mary Oliver .Dorothy
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Why I Wake Early)
I absolutely adore all of Mary’s Poetry…and yes, this is one of my favorite’s of her’s…thanks for sharing for me and others to see and better, experience her Wonderfulness. Thanks always for your kind remarks and your warm support. I so much appreciate you, Dorothy.