Today, Daniel came home from college. I was both looking forward to having him home and dreading it. There was such poignancy about the whole situation when we picked him from the airport - how bubbly happy he was talking about the Mediterranean and Northern Africa cruise trip that was supposed to start in a few days (of course, we had already canceled the whole thing a day or two earlier).
Tonight we went out for dinner to celebrate Jon’s full ride ROTC scholarship to Bucknell and also ED acceptance. We were all having a wonderful time, both boys talking about what they were going to do during the cruise. All throughout dinner though I was painfully aware of what would follow the dinner once we came home that evening. This dinner was going to be the last carefree family celebration dinner for some time to come. I experienced it as an intensely bitter sweet two hours with an aching sense of apprehension. I felt like a grinch who is about to come and destroy the sand castle little kids are building on the beach. I felt like a brute trampling all over a delicate flower bed. I felt vulnerable: was there anything ever in life that was rock solid? In a few hours, I will open my mouth and the reality of carefree routines of my kids' life will be irrevocably altered, at least for quite some time. I did not want this power. I did not asked for it. If there is a cosmic overseer, is it how this being would feel, looking beyond the boundaries of past, present, and future, and knowing what is in store of all of us, the cosmic ignoramus who are like little bugs on petri dish. Would this being feel empathy? Sympathy?
Mild boredom, perhaps? After all, as much as it was a major crisis for us, in the big picture of life, this is so mundane and trite - a genuine cliche if there ever was one. And, oh, how bourgeoisie it is for me to indulge in this! Simply because I can articulate it better, using quasi psychological terms and seemingly more sophisticated vocabularies does not make it any more special than what ails countless souls somewhere half way around the globe where they are facing a real danger of imminent death on a daily basis.
My cancer certainly made me a cheap philosopher, specializing in making much ado about nothing. Now that I think of it, I don't know how all the writers and artists ever manage to produce their master pieces without the wonderfully inspiring catalyst that is cancer. Maybe they all had it, and did not know about it.
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