Don't Tell Me I'm Going to Die: Reflections on My Terminal Cancer

By Feroze Moos

These reflections on my terminal cancer have only one purpose in mind: to bring together those who would heal. and those who would be healed.
And to preserve protect and prolong life, hold it sacred against all impediments and anyone who would have it otherwise.
They mirror the human predicament reflected in a single heart, are written with no intent to harm, and hold everybody harmless in an effort to save lives.
Some of the names have been altered to protect the innocent, while others have been used with their permission. Everything written and implied explicitly. or implicitly, is solely the perception of the author.
The story of my life struggling with the cancer in me and the cancer out there as I call it, that would have had me dead before my time, is an odyssey that allows one to look into oneself. The fragility and insouciance of human nature is terrifying, disheartening and inconceivable at times, but nonetheless allows one to transcend it if one has the courage and tenacity to survive against all odds.
Thats what this story is all about.
I dedicate this book to all those who would unstintingly heal, knowing what cannot be known. hold life sacred and seek this truth so as to transcend themselves and act with compassion. humility and unerring faith, to help others survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465325198

Book preview

Don’t Tell Me

I’m Going To Die

Reflections On My

Terminal Cancer

Feroze Moos

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Copyright © 2009 by Feroze Moos.

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Contents

THE AUTHOR: FEROZE MOOS

PROLOGUE

PART I: DON’T TELL ME I’M GOING TO DIE

PART II: AGAINST ALL ODDS

PART III: THE BREAKING OF THE SEVEN SEALS

PART IV: THE FRAGILE MIND AND ITS OBSESSIONS

PART V: UNCHARTED WATERS

PART VI: I ASK FOR GRACE

ADDENDUM

I

II

III

IV

EPILOGUE

Afterword

THE AUTHOR: FEROZE MOOS

Married with a son and two daughters, the author emigrated with his family to Canada in 1970.

Born in India, 1932, he studied Natural Sciences at King’s College, Cambridge, and took to reading religion, anthropology and mythology. As Honorary Director of the National Association of the Blind in India for many years, he trained blind villagers to be farmers, and wrote a story and poems about those branded by the stigma of fate. Facing life with metastasized liver cancer, he has written a journal entitled: Miles to go before I sleep, Poems and whimsies celebrating Love, Life and Death, published in a limited edition for his friends. The poems came to life in December 2003, from scraps. He has now finished another journal, Don’t tell me I’m going to die, reflections on my terminal cancer, describing the cancer in him and the cancer out there such as the governments and institutions driven by commerce and expediency that hold a defenseless population hostage, destroying lives. It is a spiritual odyssey of human insouciance transformed by life-giving poetry.

Like many others, he made a living wandering through the labyrinths of the corporate world, appalled and disillusioned by the brutal way human beings plundered the earth and exploited each other. The novel Cephalo which he published for his friends spins a bizarre dystopian fantasy of corporate callousness and self-betrayal, unraveling the demons that eat into our hearts.

The author had forty tumors in his liver, others in his sacrum, pelvis and spine. The experts do not know how or why he lived so long with this malign disease that appeared in 1998, and recurred after resection in early 2001. On several occasions he was told nothing can be done, and he responded I shall not die, till I have conquered death. So to share the anguish of his grace with others, help them stay alive and cherish their loved ones, he worked to finish a book of poems entitled Qwali.

The works of the author can be obtained by contacting

www.fraavashibooks.com or www.Xlibris.com

TO A PERSON I HAVE NEVER MET OR SPOKEN TO

I have found angels among strangers

wingless, hands of flesh and bone

soaring, sleepless, nameless

with long arms and incessant hearts,

found them to atone

for the estranged love in others.

Who is she, what is she, I wonder.

May she heal, may she never be hurt,

feel anything other, cradled in the seamless

warmth and beauty of a likeness

breathing light, severed from harm.

These reflections on my terminal cancer have only one purpose in mind: to bring together those who would heal, and those who would be healed.

And to preserve protect and prolong life, hold it sacred against all impediments and anyone who would have it otherwise.

They mirror the human predicament reflected in a single heart, are written with no intent to harm, and hold everybody harmless in an effort to save lives.

Names have been altered to protect the innocent, while others have been used with their permission. Everything written and implied explicitly, or implicitly, is solely the perception of the author.

I dedicate this book to all those who would unstintingly heal, knowing what cannot be known, hold life sacred, and seek this truth to transcend themselves and act with compassion, humility and unerring faith.

PROLOGUE

How does one write a prologue?

The future determines present and past. This moment contains both past and future. Hence this prologue, ahead of these reflections.

My adventures into the unknown are interspersed with poems drawn from two books of poetry I have written. I’d begin by sharing a poem written to my wife, Yaömé, from QWALI, a book of letters, and poetry exchanged between those I love, and those who know of me. It sets the tone for this book.

Today is December 1, 2005. I went for a walk in the woods this morning. The cancer in my liver had spread to the pelvis, sacrum, spine and ribs. I knew what that meant. I had to love more fiercely, create more intensely. An ancient blood pulsed through me.

PHOENIX IN A RAINBOW

I swear I heard a phoenix cry

in the leafless wood

beneath my roofless scry.

A voice echoing off a precipice

thunder muffling thunder in itself

fire heaped on raging fire.

I could not see it. A mist

gathered blindness in my eyes

expectations of ceaseless ire.

Maker of dross, shaper of souls

you have fed me a potion

that turns my flesh to mould.

Stirred my leafless dust, rotted my bones

poisoned my bowl with a love so intense

it heaps fire on raging fire.

I swear I heard that phoenix cry

blight the stars, let me die

shatter its echoes off the precipice.

Extinguish every roofless scry

a rainbowed mist in my eyes

sunrise muffling thunder in itself.

I hope you are not giving up hope, wanting to die, said Yaömé, with a sad smile.

No, forgive me, I did not mean to say that. To scry, is to look into the future, as in a crystal ball. Once blood and flesh dissolve in the soul, one dies, just like one is born, to love. A Phoenix isn’t flesh and bone, but love’s alchemy that overcomes death. And it needs the poison of its pain to dissolve flesh. Of course, poetry cannot talk prose, and the drama of juxtaposition that transforms pain into beauty cannot be left to daily worries of whether I am going to live or die. I love you, Yaömé, that’s all I can say.

What is a rainbow after all?

An ephemeral grace

a dwelling place.

A sacrificial receiving

a singular faith.

An altar, rising in descent

falling in steep ascent.

Gathering darkness

scattering light.

Dazzling dark.

A rainbow at midnight.

PART I: DON’T TELL ME I’M GOING TO DIE

Don’t tell me I am going to die.

On pain of death, I say

to those who would have it any other way.

1   DAY OF BIRTH

Sunset and sunrise.

In my end is my beginning.

Yesterday was the 14th of November 2004. Seventy-two years have gone by. A beautiful autumn day, leaves in flames, a sunset lighting up the sky in blue and orange streaks.

I have begun to write this story with forty tumors growing in my liver, one in my pelvis, one in my spine. Before I vanish, I’d like to touch others in a world sadly out of touch. To keep touching those in need of love and courage, and give them the tenacity to survive all odds.

Till the sun goes down and the darkness transforms itself into a radiant sunrise again.

*

Mine is not the story of a heroic struggle, or a constant indomitable will in the face of the inevitable. It is a trembling and a revelation, how utterly tragic, frail and indifferent human beings can be, how often callous and selfish, and how ignorance and lack of compassion can deny hope, the will to survive. Yes, one can weep, reflect, get angry, even joke at the predicament people find themselves in. I’d however, bring a light into these dark places.

The darkness in us cannot be fathomed; neither can the light. As the darkness grows more intense, however, so does the light—though I often shudder at the dark, cannot bear the thought of it.

2   THE CHILD

Does a toddler when it tries to climb the stairs and falls over, give up? It might mope, but does it lose hope? Can it know what hope, or God, or any such thing is? Does it have the concept I do this, or I do that? Of course not. But doesn’t it try over and over again, and overcome?

As we grow older, we become more careful, fearful, self-conscious, self-centered and selfish. Brain cells atrophy, intellect and reasoning take over. We succumb to tyranny to survive, make the best of complicity. This makes some things easier, like putting butter on bread, others far more difficult. We begin to reason, pray events go our way, insist we are responsible for our own acts. But reason is a flimsy veneer that shuts out the inner voice of the vast hidden universe that is the child—the uncluttered body and mind. It is the inner voice that keeps the child going without reason or prayer. To persist, listening to this voice, often keeps one from dying.

There is only one way to survive when told to go home and die, like I was. Act as would a child, defiant, even insolent. Not give up, not accept what is being said, but fight on. To be told such a thing with cold, scientific precision, is to kill the immune system and hasten death. Many doctors don’t give a thought to hope—the spirit, I call the ‘life force’ in me. Neither do those who are left to die. Many seem totally unaware of the immune system, or the miracle of body and mind. Often professionals abandon the dying, label them ‘incurable,’ because their specialized reasoning assumes nothing can be done. Ignorant of the spirit that lets the body and mind fight cancer, they also ignore the placebo effect. Such fixed ideas can also be inhumane, I’d say, when budgets, cost-benefits, and bottom lines come into play.

It is not only the cancer in me, but the cancer out there, that I’ve had to fight. The governments, institutions and big business driven by spin, commerce and expediency, that hold a defenseless population, (and physicians who want to help too) hostage, destroying lives. It’s in such circumstances the insouciance, arrogance and frailty of the human mind is most visibly manifest. And we go along like sheep, accepting, praying, groveling, believing the institutions, their professionals and administrators as gods.

If the devil hadn’t been my alter-ego, such gods would have had me dead a long time ago. But, I’d also say, if it hadn’t been for certain exceptional physicians connected to revered institutions in Boston, an outstanding Canadian interventional radiologist, two physician practitioners who did their best to help me within the constraints of their straight-jacketed notions and limits, and several loving people who have helped selflessly, I’d have had a hard time surviving.

So here are my reflections, fearful and often frustrated with the struggle I’ve had with death, telling how this struggle intuitively infused me with the spirit of life—to be, just to be—one with the soul that abides in all created things, and let go of my self.

3   THEY CALL IT A MALIGN DISEASE

Fifty percent of people with ‘curable’ cancer, if caught at stage one or two, and eliminated by chemo, surgery or radiation, survive. The ‘incurables’ and ‘the rest’ usually succumb.

My hepatocellular cancer is a refractory disease. According to the ‘experts’ there’s only one known cure: surgery. If it can be cut out, as mine was, and doesn’t recur, one could have a lease on life. But if it does recur, like mine did, with multiple tumors throughout the liver, pelvis and spine, it’s said nothing can be done. They call it a malign disease. It spreads like wildfire, and chokes the liver off. One is usually dead within eight weeks. Chemotherapy might work, extending life four to six weeks, and is often given. Irradiating the liver rapidly hastens death.

All this is true, but truth can never be known until it is lived out. I have survived close to eight years, since early 1998, carrying a rabid cancer in me. It was cut out of the liver in 1999, and reappeared in early 2001. Nobody has ever survived this long with progressive recurrent multifocal metastasized cancer, I’m told, or has done what I’ve done to combat it. But the medical profession doesn’t seem to want to inquire why, and apply what can be learnt. Instead they call me an atypical, an anomaly, an anecdote or oddity. I am none of these. I am a principle. My family physician said, once early on, I don’t know how or why you are still alive.

I replied "Why? Because, I’ve come to see if you’re still alive."

How many of us, after all, know why we are alive? I’ve made efforts to alter his perceptions, by example, and get him to see things in a different light. He began by being a ‘know-all—do as I tell you’ sort of guy, and has grown more subdued and helpful seeing me survive. I wish all physicians behaved as though people were going to live, not die.

Physicians cannot be expected to know everything, cannot always be expected to get things right, cannot be held responsible for genuine efforts that have gone amiss. When I speak of the things that went amiss with me, the mistaken notions and diagnoses I had to contend with, and the vague lackadaisical reports I had to query, I do so with no intent to harm, but to alter perceptions and get people to change.

Unemotional ‘professionalism,’ disables the drive to search for alternative ways of keeping a person alive. The ‘physician’ becomes a ‘practitioner.’ Emotions serve an adaptive role that speeds up the decision process. There are circumstances, undoubtedly, like a surgeon cutting though a liver, where emotions have to be curtailed. To refuse to act to save a life under the guise of professional conduct, however, or protocol, or institutional policy, is unconscionable.

And I’d plead with those physicians and surgeons who’d want to save or prolong life. Don’t let others make up their minds for you. Do what a clean conscience tells you that you must do. Work to loosen the rot in the corporate institutions that make you nerds and cogs in a bureaucratic labyrinth. I can do this because I’m not a physician, and nobody can destroy my career. Neither can anybody hurt me for trying to heal myself, and help others heal themselves.

I’ve had to pull the wraps off. I have had to say what I feel and observe, from my perspective as a dying man. As knowledge is no longer anyone’s prerogative, and most physicians are in uncharted waters with my kind of disease, I’ve had to acquaint myself with its surgery, drugs and diagnostics. It’s by doing this I’ve convinced others to help me along. Those who have had the moral strength, have done so; those that haven’t, have not. It’s been tough seeing eye to eye with many, or making any human sense of the secretive, protective, insular regime they are subjected to. It is a labyrinth; believe me it is, and often a dark ugly one at that. So I’d caution anyone struck down by an incurable disease Choose your physician with care. Listen to what they say, but make your decisions for yourself.

To put it simply and harshly Nobody can eat your breakfast for you. If you let them, it’s you who will go hungry, not them. We are much too indulgent, domesticated, let others do things for us. But necessity is not a convenience. Resistance to change is endemic in hierarchies and the individuals in them. Unless one has the guts to express one’s views, ask a hundred questions, caution and constructively critique or refuse what they are doing, nobody is going to change or take any notice of one.

4   PERCEPTIONS

There’s an abyss between the way I see things and others do. I face death, am affected by soul and spirit, a fight to the finish—they are not. I could be a case file to medics, a disease, a bundle of symptoms, a transaction, a research object or, most absurd of all, a statistic. I, with a genetic disease, bio-chemically and genetically different to other human beings, a statistic?

My perceptions are also at variance with most of those who would commiserate. Cancer’s become a daily affair, the wards are stacked with children, folks in their prime, and oldies. Sorry to hear about it, is usual response of the preoccupied mind that would prefer not to think about such things. When speaking of institutions the response is usually Why spend money extending the life of a perishable commodity? What is the cost-benefit ratio? The rational mind tosses out emotional content, detaches itself with bottom-line, economics and pastoral services. It treats lives as throughputs, triage cases as ‘go’ or ‘no-go,’ (like culling chickens), and talks about ‘society’s needs.’ Societal systems that cull human beings using atrophied hearts are far deadlier, I’d say, than my disease.

Can’t expect others to see things my way, unless they themselves suffer, or face death. Not even then, as most would avoid reflecting on it. It depresses them. There are those, for example, who shut their ears to ‘cancer.’ They’ve fought through battles in Vietnam and elsewhere, have seen thousands die, and cannot think of death anymore. There are others who’d like to be happy, not worry, let others cater to their needs, treat them to treats. (If so, it were best they skipped this journal and entertained themselves to a funny movie to boost their spirits, and die peaceably doing so.) I, however, hold life sacred, live on the edge of a solitary world exposed to intuitive essences. I’ve chosen to enter the soul of things, reflect on what has happened to me, and the tragic predicament every human being faces. I’ve chosen to forgo the treats and treatments. That’s me, that’s the way I am, that’s the way I have survived death:

Like an acrobat soaring

on an invisible trapeze

I shall demolish all earthly forms

unbalance and ease,

overreach all boundaries

defy gravity, stretch my arms

till they grow wings

to celebrate life, and risk the fall.

The risks I have taken have kept me alive; a great physician taught me that. The ultimate risk would have been to not do, or say what I have: There would have been no healing, no poetry, no beauty, no life.

Oh yes, my existence could be thought of as a puny drop in a vast ocean of inevitable events. That, certainly, it is, but so what? Am I not to risk my life, challenge the system, fight the inevitable? Yes, I know millions die like flukes and flies, and I’m lucky, must be lucky to be alive. How very surprising! When fallacies are mouthed as truths, truths turn callous and die.

Banal statements let apathy take hold. If I hadn’t put my life on the line, fought the inevitable, yes, I would have died like a fly. The creative nurturing spirit would have been snuffed out. I’d have gone, had an incurable fling, gourmandized, screwed, laughed, made merry. And our institutions would have preferred I did because it would have helped them shroud their ‘treatments’ in palliative care. And so too those patient advocacy and volunteer groups beholden to political and special interests. They too seem to help the incurable prepare for the next life, not this one.

I’ve not let that happen, told my story unequivocally. Puny drop or not, I’d not abort my will to live—I won’t be wiped out!

Though billions are born and die, a single life is all that is needed to unravel the paradox of survival and extinction.

5   TYRANNY

Self-centredness and self-interest spawn tyranny. And denial, complacency and ignorance inexorably establish it. I’d like to share a single thought. There are hundreds of potential cures out there that could save or prolong lives. And yet, hamstrung by bureaucratic deadwood, professional dogma, and institutional bigotry they aren’t allowed to surface. Also, because they cannot deliver a profit. How can a relatively safe low-toxic, drug be shown to work, unless it is tried experimentally on a dying man? Is it morally or ethically right not to try it, just because it has not been approved for a given cancer, or discontinued as not-profitable? Allow people to perish using conventional chemos till it is approved, if ever, after ten years of trials costing tens of millions of dollars? Allow people to die because the drug is pulled, there being no call for it on the bottom line? Allow the drug to be used with chemo that would vitiate its efficacy, because there is not enough money to run a trial otherwise? And, of course, there’s the depravity of blind trials where some are given a drug and others aren’t, to eliminate the placebo effect. That’s not science—that’s heartless protocol. Some could benefit, others not, to prove a point. Are we rats, worse than senseless things? Is there a need for such trials when Phase I and II trials have shown a drug is relatively safe and efficacious? That’s all that’s needed to issue it and try it on compassionate grounds on a person like me. Instead, though critically ill but vitally alive, I’ve been left to die of cancer by most; offered conventional chemo treatments that would kill me, or targeted drugs with chemos that would also kill me. Is it surprising I’d cry, It’s barbaric, don’t kill me like that!?

How am I still alive, having refused such terminal proposals?

I’d again say, I hold life sacred, though others may perceive it otherwise. Yes, when the great pain comes, or when brain dead, why prolong death? I’d also say in such circumstances, there is no life without death, and hold death sacred too. But being alive, I believe I have a right to live, if for no other reason, but to instill a compassion in others and help them survive. I’d touch them, give them a taste of life like never before. Life might then lay its offerings at their feet, wreaths and blessings no human hand can touch or mind comprehend—as it has done with me.

6   THE WOODS

I often instinctively feel the city and human press, bizarre or unreal, even surreal. I also sense the burlesque we wantonly take part in is a tragic farce. I have a backyard and woods that let me lose myself in a world in which we all could survive, no different to the leaves and trees and earth and streams, air and sunlight, that run through our blood. We are what they are, no different to them. To think otherwise is blind conceit. Those who face death when they enter the woods and leave all thoughts behind, as everyone must do some day, are aware of this.

Autumn has come

undisturbed and quiet

the unwritten measure of leaves.

Why ochered oblivion sings

the power of sapless light

and wrinkled goes the fiery seed

threshed in pale alchemy.

Still alive.

Involuntarily congealing dust

to life. Imperceptibly creating

blessed twilight. With lessor strangeness

seeking new life

in the likeness of dark trees.

And yet again to live

and learn to listen in the silent wood

for weightless hands

little understood leaves

falling unstruck

in a wind not seen before.

I express feelings and intuitions as would a child. I have no qualms being a child. There are of course other ways of expressing things. When I get into the hurly-burly of the daily fight to survive, people jostling me about I am driven against my will to behave and feel quite differently. In the macabre reality of the unreal city, I am a different person. The woods, poetry and music vanish. I become a pragmatist, a warrior. I am no such thing, but animal vigor can build a resistance to hopelessness. I have to keep returning to the child in me, however. Because that’s me, when I’m not pushing and being pushed, treading and being trodden on.

Fighting blood and flesh

I’d feel the caress

of the sun on my cheek;

only seek the love of those who seek

a radiant emptiness.

7   WHO AM I?

Could be anybody, but not what others think me to be.

They call me Feroze, a landed immigrant, born in India. My father was a brilliant diagnostician, a heart and tuberculosis specialist, with a string of degrees in tropical medicine behind his name. Much else. He played the piano and violin, and read the classics. He taught me to listen to the Magic Flute, Beethoven’s sonatas and concertos, and close to the end of his life, the last quartets. He’d play Mozart’s concerto in C—the second movement has remained ingrained in my heart ever since.

What can a child know of such things one might ask. Know of such things? What more than a hundred books of learning could have taught me.

He used to be the Superintendent (CEO and chief medical officer) of the largest hospital in India, until he died in 1945. He had a private practice, but never billed. Those who chose to give, gave voluntarily. The poor man’s prayer was more meaningful to him than the rich man’s purse. A loving, brilliant, great hearted man, he fell in love with a girl called Shehra. She was beautiful, but demanding. That’s where I came from.

My dad died of stomach cancer when I was only twelve and half years old.

*

When I landed in Canada in 1970 thirty five years ago, in the depths of an economic depression, there were no jobs. I was 39 years of age. The fat-cats said I was too old, and refused me a janitor’s job, saying I was overqualified. They couldn’t see a highly educated scientist, an executive, sweep the floors. Forget my past, can’t use my education, I pleaded, I must eat—help me. They grouched, showed me the door.

I worked for eighteen years off and on, and then had to retire because our company was swallowed by a U.S. outfit. (Dog eat dog, big fish eat little fish. It’s been that way all my nomadic life.) I couldn’t get any work at that time, because there was another recession, and the fat-cats said I was under-qualified! Society’s not supposed to discriminate against age, so it encourages winos and volunteers.

The last and most significant job of my inconsequential executive career was surprisingly, the one I had asked for when I landed—working as a janitor at a superstore! All the other jobs were not worth the cars I drove, the planes I rode, the fancy meals I ate, and checks I drew. Out of a job, I took the janitor’s job to keep my mind off my heart disease and write a novel. Later, I found I had also been graced with liver and prostate cancer—all, I’d like to think, caused by my former jobs.

*

The government, a hydra headed Goliath with pigeon-holed heads stuck in compartments stacked high in ministries, caters to my health. Canada is a free country, and the socialized health service encumbered by the establishment and the institutions it breeds, attempts to cater to most emergent curable ailments, but often lets several misdiagnosed folk, and those held for months without being treated, die. Mine being a ‘two month’ disease, I’d not be alive if I hadn’t circumvented the mindless hydra and its denizens.

The health plan in this country is a far cry from what Tommy Douglas and the founding fathers intended it to be. The service isn’t free, it isn’t equal for all. Everybody is taxed, but those who can afford it go to the States or elsewhere for treatment not available here in time, or refused; those who cannot, die. Access to a waiting list is not access to care, says the Supreme Court. It often takes many months for a critically ill person to see a specialist. The health plan is also in many ways ineffective, inefficient, and fosters callousness and incompetence. Why? Because those who run it aren’t accountable or responsible to anybody but themselves. It’s said to be one of the three most expensive systems per capita in the developed world. It doesn’t allow critical services and free drugs for a person dying of liver cancer on an experimental basis. It prohibits the use of life-giving drugs easily available and administered (often at a fraction of the cost) in other countries. And it refuses to pay for such treatment elsewhere.

It is ‘free,’ however, in a subtly exploitive way. Free enterprise, spliced with self-interest, avarice and greed seem to permeate every nook and cranny, bleeding it to feed the drug companies, institutions, hungry researchers, sleazy politicians, bureaucrats, and many a medic who acts like a first line salesmen. All these tacitly accepted and promoted, because they make a healthy mix for entrenched privileges and economic progress not even remotely connected to preserving or healing lives like mine. And the tax-payer remains a nonentity. The so called free socialized system has other frills too. It refuses to allow cheaper, equally effective generic drugs from overseas compete, sets prices for prescribed and generic drugs several times higher than elsewhere, and is embellished by shysters and clients who sue for every perceived fault, making life for genuine physicians and surgeons a nightmare. How can caring folk, who want to save or prolong lives, survive in a cesspool of shysters, bureaucrats and politicians?

Our Prime Minister Paul Martin has called it disastrously terrible. As I struggled for my life, I came to realize the lowliest job is the least stressful, though one has to swab crud. As one goes higher, the stress grows unbearable, and so does the crud.

But let me say it another way. The lotus grows in a swamp of weeds, and roses are fed dung. (They grow best in bone meal, the bones of slaughtered animals.) Out of such dark beginnings come the sweetest of aromas, the most mysterious of flowers fed by iniquity, and grace.

I’d only narrate the darkness, the cancer in me and out there, to discover the light.

8   IN THE BEGINNING

What’s next? Ah yes, my heart disease in