extended

My friend Mike is in the hospital recovering from surgery, so I went to visit him tonight. The top of his head is all stitched up along an incision that resembles a mohawk, but he looked calm and lucid sitting up in bed. We talked for about an hour; mostly he talked. He was quite animated; his girlfriend Marcia sat in the other chair. She was not so animated but was keeping her chin up.

It's all kind of surrealistic. Jim, a mutual friend, told me last week that Mike was in the hospital for the surgery. While driving home from work, I saw that the lights were on at the Taoist Tai Chi Society in uptown Methodistville, so I pulled in the alley and checked their sign. They were still open, so I went in and asked the two people there if they had any information on how Mike was doing.

They didn't know me, but they were kind enough to tell me what they knew of his prognosis, which was not very optimistic. Apparently this kind of cancer is treatable but not curable. I said I'd like to go see him, so they gave me a phone number and his room number at Dodd Hall, where he was doing some rehab. It's supposed to storm tomorrow, they said, so tonight might be a good time.

Although I never know how to act in such situations, I'm glad I went. Mike had a lot of positive things to say about the medical staff, both in the emergency room at St. Ann's and at the James cancer hospital at OSU. He said melanoma is a really aggressive cancer. He apparently had one on his back more than 20 years ago, then a recurrence on his neck about five years ago, but it's only speculation whether this new malignancy in the top part of his brain is a migration from the old cells or something entirely new.

Mike talked about his study of Buddhism over the last several years and the support he's getting from the KTC (Karma Thegsum Choling, i.e., Tibetan Buddhist) community downtown. It was clear that studying the dharma has given him a way to understand and cope with what he's going through. I got the impression that he is working really hard to process what he knows about his condition, what to expect, and what that means in the larger context. They showed me pictures of his daughter and grandson, and they asked about my kids and whether I'm still teaching.

Then I went home and did the things I normally do at home: eat supper, drink a vodka and OJ, read a couple of chapters of a novel I'm halfway through, work out a little, wind down, go to bed. But my dreams were very disturbing, and I only slept fitfully, with a Bob Dylan song running continuously, which I excerpt here:

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.
. . .
Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb.
They all fall there so perfectly,
It all seems so well timed.
An' here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

It's kind of funny how these circles overlap. Jim knows Mike from KTC, and Jim is in my Wednesday night men's group at the big UU church in Clintonville. He recently gave a guest sermon at the small UU church in Delaware County. I got to know Mike when he worked in the art department at the publisher where I work in editorial, and later we practiced together for a while in a taiji class in German Village. He and Marcia have studied with the Taoist Tai Chi group for quite a few years.

I'm not sure where this story is going. I just wanted to write something down because that's how I process stuff. Down.

May all beings be happy and have the causes of happiness;
May they be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow;
May they have that great happiness which is sorrowlessness.
May they leave attachment to dear ones and aversion to others and live
Believing in the equality of all that lives.

- The Four Immeasurable Meditations