Fighting Darkness



                 I am telling him about my first blog entry.  The one I wrote about Brian Doyle and how storytellers are given the job of “fighting darkness” in the world.  Stories are beacons I say; they shed light in dark places.  They illuminate, they’re important.  Storytellers have a big and uneasy job to do.  I am telling Blaine about this.  He is visiting us from Seattle where he is currently undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma.  He wants to get out of the city and visit us on Whidbey Island before he starts his stem cell transplant next week.  It is starting to remind him of cancer, and he doesn't want Seattle to be all about cancer for him.  He likes everything else about the city too much for it to be just that.   Please come up and visit I tell him.  We’d love to have you. 

                So here we are in my minivan and I am showing him around Anacortes.  We hit my favorite coffee place and chat for over an hour before heading over to Washington Park to do the loop and get some views that can basically be seen from the vehicle since he is currently using a cane and isn’t able to walk up or down many stairs or go long distances.  The car is a compromise, but both of us will take it.   It is what we can do today.  We went to Mt. Erie earlier, but couldn’t manage the steps leading down to the lookout, so we decided for plan B and head to Washington Park.  As we are driving I get serious for a moment.  We have been telling jokes and carrying on just like old times the entire weekend.  We were roommates in Alaska for a summer and most of the time he had me in stitches.  Then and now.  He’s an actor with a wicked sense of humor, and I love it.  Potty jokes have been on the menu all weekend, even at the dinner table, which is usually a no-no at our house, but because he is Blaine and there’s really no stopping him, we let it slide and laugh our heads off.  But here in the car I get serious.  I am thinking about my previous blog post, about Brian Doyle, and how there is something about the cancer epidemic affecting all of us that is dark and scary.  I wonder if Blaine will let me write about it.  I get serious for a moment and ask him.  “Blaine, what story from your life would you tell to fight fartness?”  He looks at me and we both start to crack up.  Apparently the potty humor is becoming ingrained and I really did ask him how he would “fight fartness”.  I can’t even be serious around him when I’m trying to be. 

I correct myself immediately and say “darkness, what story from your life would you tell to fight darkness?”  And he tells me this one.  This one right now.  The one that I’m in the middle of; the cancer one.  I ask him if he has a desire to write about it, or to blog about it and he says not really.  I think that even though he’s a good writer, maybe he’s not feeling well enough most of the time to write about it.  I see him grimace when he moves; when he goes to stand up it takes all of his effort and will.  The pain, even with a handful of painkillers every day must be really difficult to bear.  They inserted a slew of hardware into his back last spring when tumors were found on his spine, and he claims his body is still adjusting.  Then he had chemo, and stem cell harvesting, and now the stem cell transplant looms on the horizon.  I wonder how much a body can handle.  He’s been given advice just to do it.  To listen to his doctors and follow the protocol.  He will get through it.  But it certainly isn’t easy to witness, even with his humor and the gift of laughter and love he has brought to our home this weekend.  I wish I could put my hands on him and make it go away. 

We drive into the park.  There is a driving trail that takes us to the uppermost part where there are sweeping views of the islands and ocean surrounding Anacortes.  I back in and out and in and out again.  I want his view to be perfect from the car in case he doesn’t feel like walking.   After about five minutes he gets frustrated with my doodling around.  “Just park here.” He says.  “I can walk.”  And he can and he does.  And the first thing he sees is this tree.  It is a cool looking tree and we walk over and practically hug it and he is taking a picture of me by the tree, and then we are going to do a selfie, more like a twofie, with the tree, and this lady says she will take a picture of us by the tree together.  She tells us that she only takes pictures of herself from the waist up and then she looks at them and the longer her vacation goes on the higher up she requests photos of her be taken.  We laugh and Blaine says she can probably tell how long the vacation lasted by how high up the pictures went on her body.  He thinks by the end of a long vacation all she has is pictures of her nose up.  We all laugh because it’s true.  We want to look our best.  That is our reality.  Blaine wants his hair back.  He lost it after his last round of chemotherapy.  I want to be 20 pounds thinner and not have stretch marks from carrying two babies.  We all have our vanities and physical desires.  But just as we are, we stand by the beautiful dead tree, so pretty there on the bluff overlooking the blue water of the inlets below.  Inside I am happy to just to be here with him.  Outside I wonder if I will look 20 lbs too fat in the picture. 

                Our weekend goes on and we laugh and talk and watch Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, and Kevin Hart’s lip sync contest.  We like Will Ferrell better than Jimmy, and Kevin Hart better than both of them.  We watch episode after episode of “An Idiot Abroad” and feel sorry for Carl.  Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais are so awful to Carl we think.  But Carl is making his living off of being tortured by Steven and Ricky, so in the end we don’t feel that sorry for him.   We watch a bunch of TV. 
Our favorite part of our Saturday viewing marathon is Will Ferrell dressed up as Little Debbie on The Tonight Show, but I digress. 

                The day I have to take him back to Seattle I show him the picture of us by the tree and the one of the tree by itself.  I notice that the branch on the far left is full of green needles.  I tell Blaine that one branch of the tree is very much alive.  He tells me no way and I tell him yes way and show him the picture on my phone.  He is kind of amazed too.  We didn’t notice it at all while we were standing next to it.  It is almost like that one branch of the tree is alive and well to make sure the rest of the tree survives there on the bluff.  Strange.  He says it is still a cool looking tree and I agree.  We’ll appreciate it just the way it is even if it is different than we first thought it was.  What else is there to do?

Today I am nursing an emotional hangover.  I dropped Blaine off at his condo in Kent, south of Seattle, yesterday and I miss him.  In his absence I decide to write in my journal.  I see the package of Para-grams sitting there on the couch where he left them.   While he was here he found them on my bookshelf.  He brought them into the kitchen and said, “I used to have some just like these!”  I know I said.  You gave those to me.  He gave them to me 20 years ago when we were roommates.  Every time he wrote in his journal he would randomly pull out one of his Para-grams, which are little cards with a topic printed along the top and underneath a bit of corresponding wisdom written by spiritual guru Paramahansa Yogananda.  He would copy the quote off the card, then write his own journal reflection on the topic under the quote.  I liked the idea so much that I started following him to the coffee shop and started journaling too.  He eventually gifted me with my own set of cards.

  I decided to pull a card and write in my journal by myself today.  It felt a little lonely, but I decided I would quote it and reflect on it for old time’s sake and because I couldn’t shake the intense emotions that were surfacing for me after spending time with Blaine this weekend.  I reached in and pulled one entitled “Banish Fear of Death”.  I know that sounds almost too perfect for this post, like maybe I grabbed a few cards and sifted through for one that fit the situation.  I didn’t.  I pulled this one.  I will quote it here for old time’s sake, for myself and everyone else out there “fighting fartness”. 

Banish Fear of Death

A “Para-Gram” By Paramahansa Yogananda

“You can begin your march toward freedom from the fear of death by ceasing to be attached to the duties of the body: eating, sleeping, exercising, and so on.  Perform your duty to the body with joy but with nonattachment.  More and more you will realize this truth, that man is a soul, but has a body; you will no longer dread parting with the fleshly garment.  Attachment to the body is a self-inflicted torture brought on by ignorance.  Death gives new roles to actor-souls so that they may play in new dramas on the stage of life.  The sage who has developed his inner spiritual sight knows that the cessation of earthly life gives man a new beginning in another, supernal life. “





Blaine (center) playing "J.D." in Skagway's "Days of '98 Show" - 1991





I pulled another card when I got done reading the first one, this time for Blaine.  We each need our own to reflect on.  His said “Hope”.   



Our cool tree at Washington Park - Anacortes