Living the line between realms.

My journey beyond the cancer seas.

I can do it. I really can.

As I sit again on the edge of my bed the feeling pervades me. Not quite anxiety. More akin to a disquiet. The edge of a sensation. The ghost of a feeling. The pull of the dark before dawn. Breathing is ok, check. Stomach is peaceful, check. No weird new pains in my body, check. Not a panic attack, check.

What then?

This has been going on for a while, this alert before I sleep. In truth the thought form often heads into the possibility that maybe I wont wake up tomorrow. I know right, really morbid. And so I go through the check list in my head and hold the hand of my aroused panic. I lay down and put my hands on my flattened chest where once my perfectly formed boob had stood, and I pray. And I breathe. And soon I sleep. And always so far I have woken into the morning to greet another new day. What a blessing that is, that waking.

And yet its a thing this walking with the fact and finality of ones death. Its a thing for those like myself who have stood in the cancer storm and survived. Or any storm that faces you up to your fragility, to your frailty, to your end. And yes there is a sense of aliveness, of deepened presence and of purpose. But its not in the places you may think.

The sense of life for me now lies in the small and close. The spiders web, the seedling and fallen flower. The green of the leaves and falling of the rain. Perhaps it always did reside there. Perhaps I was only momentarily pulled asunder to believe I needed to be bigger, better and more than I already am. Only to find myself ever pulled back into the seemingly ordinary, detailed and clear path that is truly mine.

I sometimes crave a different experience of living. Though more and more I am settling into the one that is with me, of me, is me. Its a thing of beauty this life. Its a thing of precious yearning. Its a thing infused with the very death that will take us.

I walked into fields with my cat on the full moon and when I wept an owl called from the oak behind me. It were as if that white winged traveller of the many realms were confirming my existence. That my tears falling to the earth had been heard and reckoned. The next eve I wandered to the oak, to pay respects to the owl and tree and was gifted a feather from that calling bird. Another blessing then.

I am finding my way into an ordinary life after the storm, my storms. An ordinary life lived in an extraordinary way as Gandhi was once purported to say. May you all find such reverence and beauty in the stitches of your now. Our births, our lives and our deaths are utterly magical.

May we all have the eyes to see that inescapable fact.