About Going On and Not Going On in Everyday Ramblings

Have I mentioned that it is raining?

We did have a couple of days that were mostly dry and we even had a little partial clearing but like a depressive fog that comes upon the body this cold damp feels like it will linger forever.

It won’t of course, spring is there underneath, crocus and daffodils are beginning to make unexpected appearances in unlikely places.

I could have walked in the rain after work or gone to the gym but instead I decided to stay at home and eat way too much and listen to the end of Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air on audiobook.

The editor of the New York Times Book Review said she cried when she read it and I was talking to Kes about it this last weekend wondering if I could deal with a book written by a brilliant young neurosurgeon about his experience with lung cancer and his reflections on death.

And then his death, just this last year, less than a year ago.

She was curious enough to get an electronic copy and said it was beautifully written and very hard to put down so I thought what the heck, I have an Audible credit…

On an Audible account I started for Mr. Finch when it became too difficult for him to hold a book and concentrate on it. It is not a long book. He didn’t have time for that.

It is in so many ways an exemplar of a memoir. He talks mostly about himself and what he has been experiencing and everyone else is mentioned in a loving and somewhat distant way. It is a kind book. Any very moving.

I have had my fair share of experience with neurosurgeons. It is an amazing thing to do and the book is all about meaning, finding the meaning in one’s existence.

After our experience with my sister’s crisis last year with chemo and intubation and coma and our family’s collective decision to take her off life support I was hugely relieved that this young man chose comfort care and not intubation (being on a machine that breathes for you) but was sad he couldn’t have been at home those last few days. He was in the hospital he practically lived in anyway so I suppose that makes a kind of sense…

The story also took me back to the Bay Area where I lived for so many years, so many memories, so much water under a whole city of bridges.

When Mr. POA had his brain surgery to remove the non-malignant tumor in his pituitary gland they let him sleep at home the night before and we got up together at 3:30 in the morning and walked in the starlit dawn to the hospital.

He talks in the book about how so many of the critical memorable moments in our lives take place these days in hospitals. When he talks about his relationship with his oncologist and the meetings they had I was reminded of every meeting with Mr. Finch’s oncologist and all the difficult decisions we made in that room with her easygoing way of communicating with us.

It is so interesting to juxtapose these reflections with the success of my ability to communicate my enthusiasm for the yogic practices I have been privileged to learn.

I had a full room in class on Monday. We had 20 people, at least seven of them new, including, much to my absolute astonishment, both women who stopped me for information on the street as I was walking home last week!

Wow. I am so excited. It doesn’t get much better than having something to share that you know will make people feel better and to have them actually want to hear what you have to say…

Now all I have to do is figure out a way to take this gift and turn it into a way to make a living so I can get the heck out of my difficult, restrictive, undercompensated, seriously bizarre job.

It would be manna from heaven to be able to leave sooner rather than later but it is only four years. As the young doctor says in the book… I can’t go on…I’ll go on.

Last updated February 04, 2016