The fallacy of wrangling Life Horns

Honey, can you tell me I’m not dying? 

 You’re not dying. 

 Ok. *closes eyes*….*opens eyes* But are you even a doctor? Where are your credentials? 

 I can’t write with any authority on topics of dying because I’ve never done it before. Died, that is. I imagine to know that you’re dying requires an unsettling degree of commitment, but I’m not one to find thrills dabbling in such a lacuna. That said, I thought I was dying. 

 There was a power outage at the hospital last week. My infusion pump kept gently churning drips of chemo (3 at a time, to be precise), powered on backup battery. Nurses went through protocols for power outages as the hospital kept trying to sputter itself back to life like an old truck ClickCLUNK *flash*CLUNK*flash* until it gave up all together and stayed off. 

 The infusion floor has walls of windows, so the darkness we were left in was more daylight than dark, more sunshine than LED. It was peaceful. Drip, drip, drip. 

 I could hear everything. With the life of the hospital and all of its noises on pause, instead: a quiet conversation on the other side of the room, bandage tape peeling, a phone clumsily re-received, book pages turning, shoes squeaking on now-self-consciously tip-toed steps. It was peaceful. Drip, drip, drip. 

 It wasn’t long before someone kicked the right bit to get the ol’ girl to start up again. I had no idea how many senses the hospital accosted until I was there in the dampened silence. And that’s the closest I can describe what it feels like dying. 

 Life force isn’t something you take. There is no grabbing life by the horns and telling it, “listen up Life Horns, this how this is going to go. *wrangle wrangle*” Life force is given, taken away, and generally inconvenient in its offerings. When you have a functioning body and the power is always on, that probably won’t make a ton of sense, and also, you’re VERY lucky. But my body? Since about October of last year, she’s gone through every version of power from “yep, on switch means on!” to “100% off-grid in a wildly remote location where no one can find me and maybe the vultures are hanging out a little too long *lights a candle*” 

 When life force is out, there’s absolutely nothing—no gurgles, no hums, so little will that it feels like, well, dying. What seems to have kept me from being nothing-ed to death is Something. You see, amongst the quiet and dull, ANYthing is Something. The feeling of rain on my sheep-shorn head (the noise is also stunning). My long, longer list of words and phrases that I like. Ebullient, magpie, churlish. Catching someone else’s excitement. CATCHING SOMEONE ELSE’S EXCITEMENT! Ice cream. (Leannda made me a heavenly rhubarb ice cream and to that point, vegetables in ice cream—huge potential for success, but choose wisely.) Dreams about running and in the running, I’d feel free and happy and be able to smile and laugh and breathe all at once. Those dreams could be hard to wake up from, but I’d rather have dream zoomies than none at all. 

 Little things in the quiet and dull. 

 Waiting for the power to come back to re-partcipate in life again as if we don’t sit totally still with death as regularly as the moon goes full-bellied. And it does, as if the power coming back on is simply…inevitable.