Your Dying Spouse 626 - Why, God? Why? {FMF}

First, the wonderful news...Alex Trebek's Stage IV pancreatic cancer is responding to treatment, with tumours now reduced to half their previous size! You can read about it here, and note his (and his doctors') nod to the power of prayer.

As for things in this part of the world, well, not so great. Pain's relentless, it's hard to keep food down, the tumours that I can see in the mirror are growing, and the one in my neck really hurts...I suppose that last one's poetic justice, for all the times I've been called a pain in the neck. And other places.

But I still hold on to hope, even though scant hope remains. 'Holding onto tomorrow' seems a bit shaky now, so I'll say I'm holding onto the next hour or so.

This does beg the question, though...why hold on at all? Having no medical help (even if insurance were affordable, the deductible isn't, and I won't saddle Barb with medical bills for palliative care), what's the point in fighting what I know is a losing battle, at a level of pain and fatigue that I am not ashamed to say are horrendous? (As in, movement frequently has me crying out, and that does not come easily from me.)

It's not like some extreme sports game show, where you get attantion and a ton of money for enduring weird challenges. The only prize here is doing it all again tomorrow, and knowing that tomorrow will be worse.

To what purpose?

Precisely. I believe that there is a purpose to this, that it is part of God's plan. I can't see it, and I don't know what part I may be playing, but I choose to believe that there IS a reason for the ordeal.

And I'll play my part. God will remember my name. (Name is the Five Minute Friday prompt this week.)

I don't know why it's happening, Lord,

could you tell me what I've done?

Why did You feel I could afford

this fate of dying young?

Was my sin so wholly egregious

that pain, unrelieved, is remedy?

Is my presence perhaps so tedious

that the world is best rid of me?

Or is it maybe something else,

Your Heart in hope enshrined

in the peal of Heaven's golden bells

to which I am deaf and blind?

Though it's behind a veil I can't see through,

I'll believe Your purpose, for I believe in You.

Here's Mr. Mister, with Kyrie Eleison

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 625 - Songbirds

Today's post was going to be something rather different, but...well, circumstances prevailed, and after a truly miserable 24 hours it seems more appropriate to talk about why it's worth staying around.

And you now what, it's really the small and delicatethings in life, that give the most strength.

It's not hooking my wagon to the star of authorship, or the glory of 'beating cancer' that gives me the avantage.

It's the yawn of a sleepy puppy, the bright desert flowers bravely raising their heads to the spring, the butterflies a multicoloured cloud that wings aloft at my footfall.

And especially, it's the finches in the time before the dawn.

These are things truly worth living for, and which give the pull, and the might, to survive another day.

I have a cause for living,

and it's darn well that I should,

'cause while cancer is the devil's inning

I'll witness to the good.

The small and homely graces

like birdsong in the dawn

overtakes and outpaces

death's malignant spawn.

How odd that small and fragile

can give life joy, and reason

to keep soul and spirit agile

in this doomed killing season.

Listen well, friend, to the sunrise song;

it comes from Heaven, where we'll belong.

Here's Vanity Fare, with their charming hit Early In The Morning.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 624 - Memorial Day

If you are able,

save them a place

inside of you

and save one backward glance

when you are leaving

for the places they can

no longer go. 

Be not ashamed to say

you loved them,

though you may

or may not have always.

Take what they have left

and what they have taught you

with their dying

and keep it with your own. 

And in that time

when men decide and feel safe

to call the war insane,

take one moment to embrace

those gentle heroes

you left behind. 

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell

1 January 1970

Dak To, Vietnam

MIA March 24, 1970

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 623 - Despair Is The Bridge {FMF}

OK, I'm embarrassed.

I started off writing this journey with a lot of chest-beating defiance, and while it was necessary at the time (and undoubtedly helped me to outlive the prognposis by many years), it kinda makes me cringe now.

One can call up and animate all sorts of 'fighting' metaphors, but they blind one to an esential truth.

You've got to hit bottom before you can start going up.

You've got to fall, and not rise.

You've got to admit to a despair too deep for words, and too wide to cross.

Unless, of course, Someone takes your broken heart, and builds from it a bridge.

There's only one catch.

You have to let Him.

In this long hard fatal fall

I've covered lots of ground.

From defiance, when I knew it all

to a void without a sound.

In all of this I held me close

with arms clenched firm and tight,

until, at last, I finally chose

to open them to the Light.

It seemed unmanly, this despair,

this abject hurting wail,

but God smiled, and cleared the air,

and told me a holy tale.

"With all you've gone through,

you've lost hope, so may I hope for you?"

For music, Abba's Waterloo seems somehow weirdly appropriate, both for the song and for the name of the band.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.