Improving on the Silence

"Before you speak ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, it is true, does it improve upon the silence?" ~ Sai Baba

Journal Entry, 1/21/12

What I looked like 3 years ago
(I had chemo before my mx)

Earlier this week something tapped me on the metaphorical shoulder and said, Pssst.  Hey, pay attention.  Check the calendar.  

I checked my calendar and thought, Oh.  That's right.  How many years has it been?  

Three years ago today I had my double mastectomy.  I thought about a segment from Diane Rehm I heard once about how the body doesn't forget.  Diane was saying that she consistently got sick between the Christmas and New Year holidays.  It took her years to realize that with her body's reaction to grief; her mother had died years before during that week.  All week long I've been wondering how my body will react to this anniversary, an exercise that ended up dipping into the foolish land of How I Should Feel.  

Will I be grateful to be alive?  Probably no more or less than you are.  I never seriously considered the alternative during my treatment, although I know people like Ashley didn't either.  Three years ago she hadn't even met the unconquerable disease ravaging her body.  

But I just can't make my dominant motivation fear, constant worry that in an instant it might all be gone.  I know it might and I know how radically everything can change, but I can't live clinging to gratitude as a reaction to fear.

What I looked like last month after
 my son's basketball game

Will I be grieving the mutilation of my body all over again?  Probably no more than any other day.  Some days I feel that grief like it's a tidal wave, but most days it's tempered with the acceptance that this is just how it is for me, this trip around the sun.  

And isn't that how we all cope with the big and small losses in our lives?  

This morning I woke up to the aftermath of an ice storm.  Instead of comparing 2012 to 2009, I put on my boots and salted my hilly driveway.  My in laws are visiting, they needed to be somewhere this morning.  I was going to go to yoga at 8 am, but decided I didn't want to go out on the icy roads.  

I'm sitting here, waiting for the waves of joy or grief to overtake me, but I've got nothing.  I'm much more lost in thinking about the quote on the top of this post and wondering if what I have done here over the last couple of years meet that criteria.  I am also juxtaposing that with Audre Lorde's quote that our silence will not save us (paraphrased).  

When I step back, I watch myself move forward, from both the shock of cancer and from my well-worn shoot-first-ask-questions-later way of being in the world.  

That has my mind captivated on this cold, gray, icy day more than any SHOULDS; so I write what is true to try to improve on the silence.