This article appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune recently. It’s written by Robert Kirby, a regular columnist for the paper. I haven’t been able to quit thinking about it and I’ve been sharing it with everyone I can think of…now including this board. It’s really beautiful.
"My wife goes back to the hospital today. She faces another bizarre medical scavenger hunt to monitor the stage of her cancer discovered more than a year ago.
Things change when Death considers the person you love the most. Before my wife’s cancer that person was me. I had a subconscious rule that so long as I was not the one who got killed, everything would be fine.
Until April 2002, it was a view that served me well. During car crashes and explosions, horrible moments when I was flying through the air, I always thought, ‘I hope I land somewhere soft.’
Once, I fell off a cliff. I still maintain that I was pushed, but the point is that I had plenty of time to ponder the purpose of my existence during the 100-foot drop into Lake Powell. And all I thought was, ‘When I get better, I’m gonna find and kill Bammer.’
This is an idiot’s view of life but there it is. Either because of an innate survival instinct or just your basic human selfishness, most people think about themselves first (and sometimes only) when things go bad.
If you’re lucky, you have time to change your self-centered ways.
The past 18 months have been some of the worst/best of my life. I wouldn’t want to go through them again, but I’m not altogether sure what I would do without them now.
Chemo and radiation are like a long, slow-motion fall. On your way to an indeterminate fate, you have plenty of time to think. I watched my wife change from ‘what’s going to happen to me’ to ‘what’s going to happen to my family?’
Even when it was terrible, when she was hairless and ruddled with chemical sores, she would crawl out of bed to do things for us. She washed my clothes and made stuff for our granddaughter.
I thought she was nuts but have since realized that it is possible to reach a point in life where it no longer matters what happens when the fall comes to its abrupt end. What matters is how we fall.
I fell, too, during our 18-month eternity. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that my life is not all about me. I’m not there yet, but I may have a better idea of who it is about.
All the stuff that mattered to me before my wife’s cancer, the stuff I thought was the point, has become less important. It has stopped being essential that I see the world, write a best-seller, and find a way to cure Larry Erdmannism.
Heck, I even forgot some things I wanted to do. That’s OK because most of life is a series of cheap shows and cheaper toys. It’s easy to become distracted by them until someone pushes you off a cliff.
See, we’re all falling. We started the drop when we were born and we’re all headed for a rough landing. Some will fall longer than others, but along the way we are all given opportunities to understand what’s important.
We just have to stop screaming and start paying attention."