Finally, I have a date for my liver resection operation. After first being told it wouldn’t be until late November it has now been scheduled for next week on Monday 23rd October at 10am.
I am more than ever now filled with mixed emotions. Sometimes I feel like I am riding a roller-coaster. I am glad I suppose that I now have a definite date and that has at least eased the uncertainty a little. But sometimes I feel so low. I feel like I am alone on a rocky, cold, windswept island surrounded by an angry sea. I want to call out for help but I am afraid that my cries will go unheeded, blown away in a cruel cold wind. I suppose that sometimes I feel I should face this alone, that I am just a bother to the ones I love and care for. I feel this is an inconvenience to all. I feel that I can’t reach out for help. I even feel occasionally that I hope I don’t wake up from the op. Just disappear quietly alone into darkness and oblivion.
Other times I feel like I am on a high. The cancer has been caught early enough and after six weeks or so I will be back to my normal self. I have a loving wife in Kit who does try to help me with my lows and for that I am grateful and so very appreciative. I feel such joy that I am not facing this alone. I feel loved and a gentle peace washes over me at such moments. I feel warm and content.
At the moment? Well really I am between the two, feeling no more than a kind of numbness of heart, a feeling that good or bad, what will be will be, just bring it on.
Finally, as I write this a poem comes to mind. Not mine I am afraid but one of Dylan Thomas’ best known works. This is it.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And so I will try to follow his words. I will not go gentle into that good night.
© 2017 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.
© 1947 Dylan Thomas. Do not go gentle into that good night.
