Wednesday, January 29, 2014 marks the thousandth day since my diagnosis of brain cancer on Thursday, May 5, 2011. ([10. Depending on the time of day and your location, the Survival Index may or may not be accurate. I believe the date calculation (performed as a database query) employs Greenwich Mean Time, which is five hours ahead of our Eastern time. My European friends have already celebrated and moved on, apparently.])
We have some catching up to do, I suppose. I haven’t posted since May. No surprise, then, that people are googling for my obituary ([1. A few weeks ago, I googled myself. That is, I searched for “Bogart Salzberg.” I hadn’t done this for years, I swear! In a list of “Searches related to Bogart Salzberg” near the bottom of the page, I noticed a link to a search for “bogart salzberg obituary.” (Others in the list: “bogart salzberg blog,” “brain tumor diary,” and the delightful “a friend is living in my brain.”) In fact, it also shows up in a list of suggested Google searches after typing “bogart sal” in the Safari address bar, along with plain old “bogart salzberg” and “bogart salon washington dc”. And so, I’m encouraged to ask “who is shaking this venerable grapevine for news of my demise?” I don’t suppose I could blame him/her/them. My last post was in May, more than eight months ago. As I’ve noted before, I sense (project?) discomfort in some people as they struggle with wether, and how, to communicate with me over some non-trivial scope of time and space. I hear them thinking, “What if I reach out and he’s not there any more? Would that empty echo of my words come back to haunt me?” Or maybe it’s just idle curiosity. Hopefully this doesn’t contribute to the common misuse of internet search engines for the purpose of demonstrating the relative importance of anything.]). That’s quite a stretch of radio silence for a “terminally ill” person, particularly one as sunny, gregarious and socially active as moi. Ba dum bum.
The big news is that my wife and I separated last January and divorced in August. I now have heart disease. However, I’m in no position to suggest, with due fairness, that she “broke my heart” in a physical sense. Cheeseburgers broke my heart, God love ‘em. ([2. Over the summer I was having some occasional chest pain and numbness in my left arm during periods of extreme physical exertion, and figured I should have it checked out. That’s how I discovered I have an 80 percent blockage in my main coronary artery. I’m not even a candidate for a stent due to the location of the blockage, near an arterial junction. I’ve had to radically change my diet to reduce fat intake, and I also take statin medication. Fortunately, I feel healthy, continue to exercise six or seven days a week, and believe my cardiovascular fitness is improving.])
Spring brought me back to the water. I nearly drowned in 2012 on a solo kayak-trip-slash-vision-quest, then concluded “this is the life for me!” by becoming a Maine Guide and leading kayak tours all summer.
Now I’m writing a book. I was tempted to write a fantasy novel, but no, of course, the book is about me and my own life. Because no one else can witness this for me. Some part of me considers it my mission. Another part fears dimly that when I finish it, I’ll die! Another part, the part that wants to live a normal life, says “spit it out and move on.”
Has a day gone by, of those thousand, in which I did not consider my prognosis? That this cancer is supposed to kill me? That it was supposed to have killed me already?
No. But close. Many days, surely, include an idle pondering of fates: those avoided and those endured, those to reach for and those that reach for me. Most days touch the subject second-hand, in the way that uncertainty blurs my vision of the future. And yet, therein the gift: wondrous, miraculous uncertainty.
They are reminders to live today today. Touch it, taste it, let it free. Sometimes I want to go back and capture the novelty and innocence of the old days, surely to savor with hard-won wisdom. But ain’t there a boy there lookin’ at me funny, frightened by the stain of urgency on my face?
Ain’t I the boy again today, son of tomorrow? Yes. Isn’t it time to pardon all your yesterdays? Yes. Isn’t it time to forgive yourself for living? Yes. You’ve got to love your life, your one and only life. Love even the failures, the trauma, the embarrassments. Cherish these, your own and only days.
Wouldn’t you, in your final moments, for the prize of being new again, at the price of being naive, want to live it all over again? Is there any difference between that reckoning and the life each one of us lives today? Is this, in fact, that memory, that second chance, that thousandth chance to love your life?
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