We are back at UAB tonight, but just for observation. Friday's stent procedure did not work so we came in this morning to try a different route. Steve now looks like he has a gunshot wound right in the middle of his stomach, but the good news is that this stent should work.
We had a nice, quiet weekend with no ER visits and nothing too eventful. Steve and I worked on Easter baskets yesterday. I am going a little over the top, filling them in such a way that they just might usurp christmas stockings in their density and girth. Our priest came in the afternoon, with palms and communion in hand. I treasure the eucharist in church, but there is something added when the priest breaks the bread and says the prayers and passes the cup right over your own bed.
I really do know that these are not things you ask for. That we all live our lives to keep heartbreak and sickness and death at bay. But when it has once put its toe in the door it seems that you might as well let the suffering come all the way in. Because ironically, in our case, deep generosity has stepped in with it. Our priest texts and offers to bring Palm Sunday to us. Friends bring strawberries and ranunculas and prayer benches. Another friend harvested our garden this weekend and we ate greens that Steve planted on a day when Steve didn't even know he had cancer. Steve's boys ( a merry, rowdy group of motorcycle gang friends) came to install smoke detectors and to work on the exterior of our house.
We are so aware of what we don't know about our timeline, and the other uncertainties that go with this kind of sickness.
But there are a few certainties, and one of them is that we live by gifts...
“Gift is the principle on which the Creator has based human existence; it is the most pervasive, even if little noticed, reality of our lives. We have life itself by others’ gift of procreation, pregnancy and childbirth. We are sustained in life by the good things of nature and by the labour, generosity and society of other human beings. We are educated by the self-giving of our teachers. We are sustained constantly by gifts—love, forgiveness, reconciliation, pleasure. Our whole life is a fabrication of gifts received, and we ourselves contribute our gifts to the lives of others.” Esther De Waal