well, I'm officially Cancer-free after a year.
On the one hand, this is pretty astonishing, and I really like not having Cancer. I still have some memory issues, but in the main, I'm my same old fucked-up self.
But I'm a little more scared than usual. 13 months is about what folks with astrocytoma get. I've had 12. That gives me pause and makes me want to spend a little more time thinking about how I want this to go down.
From what I've read, the end of this is pretty ugly. Not sure I want to wade through it, and I'm damned sure I don't want Erin dragged through it.
I can likely get home hospice (if I hang on another year I'm eligible for Medicare, and they do hospice). But still. It means diapers and IVs for nutrition, and just generally not being me.
I don't want that. When I'm no longer me--when I can't converse, when I can't make morbid jokes about death--I'm not sure I'd rather not just go to sleep and discover if there's something on the other side of this life.
I'll be horribly sad to leave Erin. I'll be horribly sad to leave my family, friends and colleagues -- as much a shit as I am, there are people out there who will be sad when I die.
But. I'm going to die. Maybe not too soon, but sooner than I'd like.
I want to go paris again. I want to go on long bike rides on lonely gravel roads amid cornfields and cows. ("Hello, ladies!" I always say to them.)
I want to teach another class or two. If my life has had any enduring meaning, it is through my students. They amaze me, frustrate me, but mostly they humble me with their hard work, their concern and affection, and their trust in me.
I mean that and feel it profoundly: I am humbled by my students. They have been the most amazing groups of young adults, ever. So they will be what remains of me when I go.
I couldn't ask for a better legacy. Some hate me, but lots of them are glad I had a chance to teach them some stuff.
What I hope I taught them, more than anything, is a respect and love of learning.
That's something you can carry all your life: curiosity. I hope they do. And I hope that they also have the tools to know how to answer the questions that they will encounter.
Teaching is the coolest job there is. Grading papers gets old, especially when it dawns on you that you've be correcting the same errors for 25 years. But you get to leave something enduring.
And I tell you: the reaction of my students to my illness has been nothing short of flabbergasting. (is that a word?) I have been completely blown away by their concern, their generosity, their care.
I always had a sense that i got close to my students, that they knew I cared about them beyond what happened in the classroom. But this has -- far beyond my wildest imagination -- showed me how much I have mattered in their lives.
I'm sad I only got to work with them for a few years. I wish it could have been a decade or more. They are amazing. You ask them to try, they try. You give them something that will stretch them, and they reach for it and get it.
I'm amazed.
So, I can die knowing there will be a little piece of me living on -- if my students have students, I trust they will know what my students knew. I have some former students who are now "Dr." I couldn't be more proud.
Wow. This is ramble and unfocused. But then, so am I!
