A DIFFICULT YEAR...

I SEE that it almost a year since I last posted.

PRETTY AMAZING, when you consider what a talker I am!

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE:  Here in NYS, seniors are encouraged to audit courses at University and Community Colleges, the cost of tuition being forgiven.  Last semester, my friend (Daniel) and I enrolled in two courses at the local College,  Introduction to Philosophy and also Cell Biology.  The former was a good refresher and the lecturer was brilliant (I did four years of philosophy in my first undergraduate degree but that was many years ago!).  The latter, a second year course, was quite a stretch but totally rewarding for the work I had to put into it.  Biology has greatly changed since when I did it (many years ago), especially in the last decade, and is now very molecular.  All very good for the brain.  Quite wonderful to discover the inner workings of living cells, down to the molecular level.

THEN THERE WERE THE ELECTIONS.  Six months after my last note, in which I discussed the interesting differences between election time in Oz and here in the US, we were at the Polls, having to choose between the two most unpopular candidates for a long time.  Now we have 'The Donald', whose 'First Hundred Days' may be proving a prelude to most likely 'interesting times'.  It is difficult to take politicians seriously after the wars of abuse and so little to hear about just what the candidates really intended to do.  The winner, real estate mogul and star of so called 'reality TV', seems to be coming up against a strong dose of Washington DC reality and there is even talk of how we might get to say 'You're fired!'.

AS IF THIS WAS NOT BAD ENOUGH, Thanksgiving Week began with a weekend of a blast of cold air.  Caught in a swirl of frigid air and leaf dustings as I crossed my back alley to talk with my neighbor, I experienced a brief bronco-spasm.  Then, on Monday morning, I had a similar experience walking to coffee with my regular mates.  Going home from the coffee shop, I felt a slight ache in my left shoulder that became a tingling in my left palm.  Arriving a home, these sensations had departed but I did feel somewhat lightheaded.  Of course I 'googled' these signs, only to discover that they might well be signalling a heart attack.  A call to to the doctors' office resulted in an instruction to go to the ER...which I obeyed forthwith!  Once there, only 15 minutes away, everything seemed relatively normal with no confirmation of an earlier angina.  However, two hours later the second blood take revealed those dreaded enzymes indicating that I was in fact suffering a heart attack right there in the ER.  What better place could there be for that to happen!

The next morning, after all the usual workups, I had a stent placed well down in a branch of my right coronary artery.  Luckily, my heart incurred only slight damage.  I have been busy in the cardiac rehabilitation program since, making good progress.  And very glad I am that I had the good sense to pay attention to only the slightest of signs of impending trouble.  Frankly, it does have a salutary effect of one's appreciation of life.  At church the next Sunday, I was especially appreciative of the blessing of health, as you might easily imagine.  A wonderful thing about that week is that a quirk of circumstances made it possible for my daughter Bronwyn, and granddaughter, Stephanie, to visit with me on Thanksgiving and a further day or so.  As they say, it is an ill wind that blows no good.

SPEAKING OF ILL WINDS, the one that had been blowing all this last year was that my beloved friend, my belle amie, Uma, who was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, received the news that the cancer had returned as metastases in her hip.  Thus began a long year of various treatments and surgeries, all of which resulting in her becoming progressively debilitated.  I am sad indeed that she succumbed to the cancer just four weeks ago.  She had been a very wonderful part of my life for a decade (the Decade of Uma).  I will have some things to say about cancer in a later post.  I will miss her undoubtedly.  However, we talked a good deal about her inevitable death (metastatic triple negative breast cancer has no effective treatment as yet), yet she was as much concerned about me as I for her.  Her question to me, over our last coffee on the last fine day of last year, 'Robert, what are you going to do when I am gone?', is a driving force for me.  On her account, I am, in more ways than one, in good heart and pressing on.

Here is a picture of Uma in better times, before cancer possessed her.  She will always be very dear to me:

Two weeks back, we put on The Party at 74 Sterling Street, to celebrate the Decade of Uma.  It was quite 'a bash', the house bursting with friends.  How blessed indeed it is to love and be loved!
  on
This is my first experience of someone very dear to me, in the sense of an intense relationship.  I tended my father in his dying, which extended over several months, most of which time he was in a coma. He was 70 when he passed away. My mother died at a good old age, almost 103, in Australia.  I was fortunate to be with her a month before her passing.  My best friend, Barry, whom I had know since my theological college days, died at age 55, soon after I had arrived in the US, his heart transplant having failed.  I have had numerous experiences of the dying of others as a pastor for some eleven years, some very good friends.  However, this three year so called 'cancer journey' was full of heartbreak, accompanying a dearly loved one along the road to death. Eventually, their suffering brings on the wish for their dying.  This seems a hard thing to admit, unless one has been along that road. Against all odds, one keeps alive here and there a shred or two of hope but the approaching end is eventually powerfully persuasive.

All of which has me treasure the life that I have had,  which continues, and which brings to focus that one can make the most of what is fleeting indeed.  As I have remarked, it is an ill wind...