Walking down the stair-well to the my car, I remark on the familiar smell or damp cement and dry wall mud. I wonder when the cavern of steps will loose its fresh construction sent. After all, the rest of the place has. It smells of plastic and hospital hand soap. A little hint of bleach and urine odor lingers just under the perfume of of bathroom cleaning products. And, on special days, like the last day of someones chemo or when the really old guy comes in the make a visit after years in remission, there is the sweet scent of chocolate cake and flowers for the nurses.
I got up from my recliner and high tailed it out of the cancer center infusion room as quickly as the Easter bunny today. On the way out, a Black Cloud tried to ring me into his world of doom and gloom with his remark, "Boy, that was fast."
Yep, Mr. Black Cloud, I couldn't hear one more world from your mouth about how your days are numbered. Seriously, get an emotional filter and keep your doom and gloom to yourself.
Yes, it is true, I have had my days. I have cried so hard they had to bring me my own Kleenex box. I called out, "I can't do this anymore. I can't do this for the rest of my life." Oh, yes, I have had my days. And I sincerely apologize to all the patience that had to hear me fall apart wondering if I will get to rock my grandchildren to sleep for their mother and father twenty some odd years from now. And yes, please, let me know if I am being too loud and damping your spirit.
But, Mr. Black Clouds, and it does tend to be the males in the room, please do not actively spread your storm over the entire joint. Today, my friend, I wasn't in the mood. Today, I had treatment. Just treatment. No need for cancer talk. No new turn events for the worse. No, just a two hour sit in a chair with a plastic tube sticking out of my chest getting some might fine drugs. Yes, I am in a pleasant mood. These drugs, though sad in that I have to have them, are giving me life. They are my soldiers. You, those drugs marching down your plastic tubes, yes, those ones that make you feeling like you have been sucking on a dirty nickle your kid found in the parking lot, yes those, they are doing what they can to keep you alive too. So do what you can to keep yourself going for a really long time and turn that frown into an upside down rainbow smile. Fake it if you have to. I do. Stop being a storm chaser and run. Run fast. Run before the storm drowns you.
Oh, please, Mr. Black Cloud, when you walk down the stair well to your car, notice the smell of cement and wall board. Notice it because it is beautiful in its simplicity. Run towards those moments between your thoughts. Notice the details. It is the details, the cracks, the pauses that will chase your storm away.
PS: What will you smell today? What will you smell that will turn your gloom into rainbows? Oh yes, that hospital hand soap, well it reminds me of my babies. In all the hospital stays I have had to endure over the past two years, it is the birth of my two children that the smell contains. It embodies the love in their beaded eyes as they looked up through their tiny eyelashes and cried to tell me they were hungry; a hunger only I could fill. Yes, I love hospital hand soap. It is happiness.
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