Hello Darkness Redux

I started to write this post and thought, this seems familiar. I better Google myself and confirm whether or not I have already written this.

Lo and behold, I was about to plagiarize myself. Then I thought, much has changed in the past 14 months. Maybe I can update, you know reuse and recycle? It would be the Green thing to do.

From Sept 2022:

“The corners yellow. The temples gray. The children are adults now. It’s another day.

The past is always gone. The future may not come.

You’re older but you’re wiser,

Heart still beating like a drum.

What do you want?

A Hero Cookie?

What do you want?

A pat on the back?

What do you want?

A Hero Biscuit?

Are you waiting to see your name

Engraved upon a plaque?”

No. I’m avoiding all plaques, except that which I brush off my teeth. For that, I have gone electric. There was not as much furor as when Dylan went electric. When Dennis went electric, no one missed his old toothbrush. Not even Dennis.

Was it a week ago that I got the all clear on cancer message? There was celebration and the opposite of furor, which is hubbub that ensued. Yet I was strangely not connected. No feeling of elation or relief or any kind of excitement.Celebration seemed hollow.

I seemed hollow, still filling out the line drawing that was left after the treatments. The other night I stopped and broke down and cried for a few minutes before my British upbringing took over the reins.

It’s been a lot in the past few years. First, the lightness of head and lack of breath as I stumbled up hills, huffing and puffing, getting an angiogram, finding out my heart was clogged with plaque, so clogged that stents were useless-no full metal jacket for this soldier- I was on target for triple O bypass.

Which begat months of tense discussions with my wife, as we came to terms with the possibility of loss and abandonment and noncomprehending darkness. We wrestled with the darkness until October 2021, when I finally had the operation.

I was levelled and I had to regain my strength, but I had purpose. I felt I had a new lease on life, with terms so good and interest so low, I bought into a full recovery, every day feeling stronger than the next. I returned to work, wrote more, played lots of music and life was good. So there I was in September of 2022 writing about depression. Hello Darkness my old friend.

Depression can get better, but it never really goes away. It hides. It follows like a shadow. There are no shadows without the sun shining, I remind yourself. But there are shadows in the darkness. They may be hard to see, but I don’t even need to see them to know they are following me. I can feel their presence.

A few months later, I started to notice a lump on my neck. By Christmas it was getting noticeable.

In January, I went to see my Doctor, and the rest of the story has been told in detail in previous posts.

So now I’ve had cancer, and they say they cannot see anything, ergo I am clear, not free, but clear, subject to scheduled confirmations, I can see a glimmer of sun behind the clouds.

A few months after treatment, new changes continue to come to light. Most are neither positive or negative, but simply different. Not different in a diagnosed way, but subtle changes where my mind struggles to remember some detail, or find my vision is dimmer, and I hear I have cataracts, which explains the dimming. When I am in a room or a restaurant full of people, how I can’t hear anything but the din, and roar of my tinnitus.

I am still making playlists of sad songs. It’s incredible how many of those that there are. No shortage. And since the car accident I had in August, just after I was getting back to work, leaving me too exhausted to work five days, three is possible, but every day finishes with pain, as the effects of the whiplash continue to sap my energy. My brain fog seems to be settling in, and while I could swear I did that task, yet there is no record of me completing it. Check your drafts? Maybe I didn’t hit send. It’s like I can taste it, except I know that is impossible, as my sense of taste changed after the radiation. It seems to be getting better- even sweet things, now have ghost of sweet, give an aroma that just is not the same as actually tasting it. Still, I try.

There is a metallic flavour that keeps evolving and changing, and this alum tartness that even water has. I don’t really have an appetite anymore, but I continue to consume with the hope that either I am getting stronger, in spite of my lack of enthusiasm, or one day, my taste returns.

My voice is still very scratchy, but is starting to sound familiar, if not better. If I could only start making music again….yet no songs come to me.

I try to check in on my friends who are having health issues. Sometimes we have good days, sometimes not. I start to worry when I don’t hear from them.

I remember my friend Brent, who I hadn’t heard from for a couple weeks. Next time I heard, he had died. That news came from a public announcement by his daughter.

I was unaware he had made plans for assisted dying. He died from natural causes the day before his scheduled death.

So I listen to beautifully sad young women, whose songs capture my melancholy.

My hand falls asleep.

I try to clench my fist, but those cold arthritic algorithms continue to send frozen signals to my brain.

One day at a time.

Things will get better.

Things will get better.

Playlist: https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/hello-darkness-redux/pl.u-2aoqeBYcNRM1zb