Life is a Cone

The calendar said fall, yet summer remained. Life along Prairie Creek is much like that. There’s no yes or no, black or white, beginning or ending. Things just flow together, one starting before the previous ends. Or that’s the way it was until last spring, when Doctor Ross diagnosed my lung cancer. Months later, it’s still difficult to fathom, because things like that never happen along Prairie Creek, especially to me.
Coffee in hand, I sauntered through the open French doors, onto our deck. A floral umbrella in the center of the burgundy patio table was already raised, and a paperweight rested on top of the Mountaineer to prevent it from blowing away. I flipped through the large, unruly pages until Recognize the Warning signs of Lung Cancer rose from the print like a rattler ready to strike.
“Thanks for nothing!” I slapped the pages shut and hurried down the steps to the lawn below, my emotions flapping like a flag in a windstorm. On the ground, I gazed into the peaceful autumn sky. “Why God, did it happen to me?”
No answer came. I meandered into the bush surrounding our farmyard and followed the narrow, winding sheep trail until it disappeared into a meadow. Feeling tired, I wilted onto a weathered, gray stump and looked around. Decaying leaves and brown, brittle grass covered the earth. Poplar and birch skeletons hid among the evergreens to conceal their nudity. A noisy “V” crossed overhead, and beside me, a chipmunk with bulging cheeks scurried up a gnarly gray poplar trunk. The sweet aroma from a harvested grain field, saturated the amiable July breeze still existing in mid October. Hot sun beams beat against my shoulders, but lacked the power to tan. In a strange sort of way, their incompetence comforted me.
My thoughts returned to the decaying leaves, and sadness dropped in like a faithful friend. Welcoming its intimacy, I encouraged it to embrace me tighter by reliving my doctor’s appointment yesterday.
“I’m sorry Lorne,” Dr. Ross said in his matter-of-fact way. “We’re going to have to extend Chemo. The cancer cells aren’t shrinking as I expected.”
I clutched the edge of his desk, my fingers turning white. “What are you saying?”
He smiled the smile of a doctor bearing unwelcome news. “Your cancer’s stubborn. It needs to be treated more aggressively.”
“But the treatment’s already bad enough. I don’t want any more.”
His eyebrows rose. “It’s your only hope.”
“But you sound like I have no hope.”
Dr. Ross reached across his desk, covering my cold shaking hand with his warm comforting one. “I wish there was an easier way.”
“That makes two of us.” I rose from my stump. The sheep stopped eating, eyeing me suspiciously. I called them by name, petting one’s head and scratching another’s chin as I made my way across the meadow. On the far side, my trail continued, and like a robot with no ability to make my own decisions, I followed it down the steep embankment of the big gully encasing Prairie Creek. At the bottom, I walked into the sharp wind that coexists with mountain streams, willing it to sweep the cancer from my lungs. I approached the creek bank where Tree grew, and looked up to greet my faithful friend, but no evergreen crown waved back, just blue sky, covered with wispy horsetails. “Oh God. Not Tree, too!” Dropping to my knees, I hugged the jagged edges of his broken trunk and sobbed as if I’d lost my last friend. In front of me, his handsome crown lay partly submerged in the restless water, impatient waves crashing into it, destroying it one needle at a time.
I glared at the waves, desiring them to feel my anger. Instead, their raw tenacity to remove such a huge obstacle sparked my own determination, and an elusive longing to survive brushed against my spirit. I leaned against Tree’s rough, damp stump and wonderful memories surfaced. I was a child again. Above me, Tree’s branches swayed in the breeze, cooling me and keeping the blazing sun off my delicate skin as I constructed make-believe castles from his brittle, cast-off needles. As we grew, each in our own worlds, and yet together, I leaned against his trunk, as I was doing now, and shared my hopes and dreams with him and our restless river. “It’s not fair. “We don’t deserve this!”
My husband lowered his lanky frame to the ground beside me and draped his arm across my shoulders. “The storm last night.”
I moved into his embrace, my tattered emotions finding refuge in the strength of his presence.
“You’re not Tree,” he whispered as if reading my thoughts. “Your life isn’t part of the balance of nature.”
“It might as well be.”
He shook his head. “There’s medicine. Will power. And God still heals.”
“Don’t even go there. We’ve been down that road too many times.”
His jaw set. “No, we haven’t. I have.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Maybe not, but it’s true.”
“It is not,” I lashed back. “And who made you an authority on my problems?”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Nobody. But I’m bit tired of you getting all defensive, and acting as if your cancer doesn’t exist.”
My jaw dropped. A breath stopped, half inhaled. “How dare you make yourself my judge?” Distress swept across his face, but I needed him to hurt as I did, so I kept ranting. “Do you think this is fun for me? That the parasite in my lungs isn’t painful as it feeds on them one cell at a time?” I started to cough. “Then there’s this,” I said between gasps of air when the cough subsided. I threw him a disdainful look. “Isn’t life beautiful?”
Jeff stared at me, an expression of not knowing how to respond imprinted on his handsome face. “Is that it? You’re giving up.”
“Just thinking of more treatments makes me sick.” I stared at Tree’s crown. “When I know I’ll end up like Tree.”
“That’s absurd! It was a bad storm! Get it? A bad storm!”
“The how doesn’t matter. It’s about the message it brings.”
Jeff disappointment filled the air, and a need to comfort him seeped into me. To gather my thoughts, I watched the waves battering against Tree’s crown. Please God, take away my fear, and replace it with those waves’s tenacity to go on. I looked around, expecting the world to be different, but nothing changed. No hope burned in my spirit, no desire to go on shot through my veins. I bit my lip until a coppery taste filled my mouth.
Jeff smoothed his sandy hair against his head. “Nothing’s over until it’s over. Winter does come, but life returns with spring. Just look around.”
“Exactly. It’s fall. Everything, including me, is dying.”
“Take a closer look.”
I stared at Tree’s majestic crown. The waves still tore at his needles, and the urge to hate resurfaced. “He’s almost dead, yet the angry creek won’t let him die in peace.”
Jeff cupped his chin between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing the bristly whiskers poking through his skin. “You’re right, but they’re also breaking off cones and washing them ashore.”
I glanced along the bank, and cones lay everywhere. Kicking my shoes off, I strolled onto the damp, wave-washed sand and retrieved a cone. Beside Tree’s stump, I dug a hole and dropped it in. “Part of him will grow again.”
“And you’ll still be around to see it,” Jeff promised, poking a stick into the ground beside the cone. He took me in his arms and pressed my head to his chest. “I love you.”
It felt good. My anger subsided, and I melted into him. Maybe he was right. Maybe, just maybe, spring would come for me.