I want to start off by recognizing the extraordinary efforts of all the people who came out to PeeWee’s restaurant last weekend and walked for the benefit of St. Elizabeth Hospice Center. FYI, approximately $3,100.00 was raised over the weekend. I am at the same time, stunned, impressed, and so so grateful.
Back on treatments since getting home. This past Tuesday was the second in the series of three. I have three weeks on, and then get a week off. They seem to get a little tougher every week, until the off week, but what are you gonna do? Yesterday I was having one of those days that aren’t “terrible”, but aren’t high energy either. I was poking around inside, when I decided to go out to the garage and get my chair out. I have an old green chair, that I will sit either right inside the garage or just outside the garage door depending on the weather. One of the side effects of this treatment is a sensitivity to cold, so I had that bad boy right in the sun. As I sat there, feeling a bit like a bag of broken glass, the school bus pulled up and some elementary school kids got out. They headed into the cul-de-sac to their house. They were out of sight but I could hear them laughing, screaming, and carrying on. Overhead some geese were doing a flyby complete with honking, and there were the various neighborhood noises. As I sat listening to all of this without focusing on any one particular thing, I began to realize that the more I focused outside of myself, the less I was aware of how “poopy” I felt. Then I thought back to earlier in the day (Thursday) and thought “you know, I didn’t feel bad while I was at hospice”. Made me realize/remember two things I already knew. One, whenever you feel weighed down by the circumstances of your life, raise your head up and look around. Find someone else to help, because there is always someone worse off than you. Two, make sure you have an old beat up chair you can use to sit in the garage and watch the rain and lightning storms.
A lot of people have encouraged me to keep writing. I am all for it, but not sure that people actually want to hear about an ordinary life fighting to remain. A friend of mine said recently, “some people write books to make money, and some people write a book because it needs to be written”. He and I are in the process of writing a book that needs to be written. Yes, I am afraid. Yes, I took it out and mailed it to the rocks in Finisterre. Comments, questions, and scathing remarks can be sent to me at ericmiller723@gmail.com. To the best of my ability, I will answer anyone who writes. Here is a photo from the morning of PeeWee’s walk. Our sunrises are just as pretty as anybody else’s.
Thanks for listening.