This morning I received an invite from Substack to check out Time and Temperature, a blog written by Rhett Miller, from the Old 97’s. Rhett relates his feelings about writing the song Where The Road Goes, and how he was overcome with emotion one day after listening to his own song. He recalls the feeling of brokenness that artists often feel, which in his case came from the social rejection he experienced at an early age.
I listened to his song and got weepy myself, not from my experiences of rejection, although I have experienced those, but from the health challenges I have lived with in the past three years. It was not myself that I was weeping for, but a friend whom I met this past summer. He faced his own cancer diagnosis of prostate cancer. Little did I know at the time that his wife was informed of her own cancer shortly thereafter.
While his cancer of the prostate was very slow, and hopefully treatable, her diagnosis was mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer. She immediately began intensive chemotherapy. Recently he started a gofundme to help raise money for possible immunotherapy treatments, which are very expensive and not covered by our public medical. This treatment was their last hope.
On Saturday, he sadly announced that she was too weak to undergo any more treatments, and her doctors had advised her that there was nothing more they could do.
There is nothing that anyone can say at that moment that fully comprehends what this couple were going through. I felt after listening to Rhett Miller’s song a feeling, not if rejection, but of gratefulness, and of not knowing where this life will lead us.
In my case, my cancer was very treatable. The treatments were very hard, and I still feel the effects, but I am one of the lucky ones. I get to be the guy that survives this challenge. My friend Brent was not as fortunate. My friend’s wife is also not as fortunate.
A friend on Facebook noted yesterday that “we all know where the road goes”, and he may be right in the respect that there is only one conclusion for all of us. But we do not know all the challenges along our journey that we may experience. We do not know that we could be given a cancer diagnosis, then find out soon after that our partner also has cancer, but that her cancer is not survivable.
Later that day, I was having a coffee at Renzullo, an Italian market on Nanaimo. A couple joined me at the table. We began talking. They were living in Richmond, and I said that I lived there too -about 49 years ago. I said we had lived in West Vancouver for a year before moving to Richmond. The man said they too had first moved from Quebec to West Vancouver in 1975- a year after us, then moved a year later to Richmond, as we had done.
Our conversation remarked on how people do not speak with strangers in our part of the world. But here we were - having a great conversation. One thing led to another, and I relayed this story of my experience with cancer, and the story above about my friend and his wife.
The woman leaned in and told me about their daughter, who was born with a rare blood disorder. Upon learning this information, as a family, they decided to live each day as if it were their last. Her daughter’s life was cut off at the age of 15. But by adopting the view to live each day as if it was the last, as a family, they had many great experiences in her daughter’s short life.
For the second time in that short day, I was reminded of how precious life is. Of how fortunate I was for having my life. Of how fortunate and grateful I was to be here, now and for hopefully much longer. That is my hope. But no one knows where the road will take us. Who we will meet. The angels, like this couple, that we encounter.
As a young man in school, we read the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. The teacher said it was John F. Kennedy’s favourite poem, by his favourite poet.
Your story about getting into a conversation with a couple of "strangers" put me in mind of this quote from Walt Whitman: "STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"
Many newcomers to the Lower Mainland speak of how unlikely people are around here to interact with those they don't know, mostly based on fear of being conned or attacked, or who knows. I always notice whenever I'm stateside how much easier it is to get into conversations with those you don't already know.
Another thing for me, all those years (18.5 between Calgary and Vancouver) in the taxi makes it much easier for me to get into conversations with people I don't yet know.
Sad to say, I suspect it's the case for many millennials, raised by their parents to believe that all strangers mean danger, that it's difficult to break out of that mindset, certainly exacerbated by the way everyone cocoons with their phones now...
No problem. It happens a bit. I hear we are big in Houston. https://thejudys.bandcamp.com/album/more