When The Time Came

When I decided to get the surgery, there was no clear way to know if that was the correct decision. Human psychology is such that we usually end up decided that was happened was what was supposed to happen. I'm a hopeless romantic and so I like the sentiment but I know that's simply just not true, it's just how we make ourselves feel better. While being in Boston has been great, a friend wondered since I mentioned others being disappointed in the last entry, if I was. Of course, I'm disappointed in the weather and that I couldn't leave it all out there but being the cheesy tourist and wearing my Boston Marathon shirt around town yesterday, I've yet to meet one person who left it all out there and had a good time on either the clock or mentally. Everyone of them who did that had been here before and who knows if I ever will get to be back. I met a few others who had taken a similar approach to me (though they were smarter and decided it before starting) and one girl said, I think we've proven we're fast by qualifying, let's just enjoy the experience. It probably says something that the winners, professional athletes, came in 9 minutes slower than last year, 4400 people defferred to next year and 2200 people received medical attention.

One of those touristy things I did was to go see Walden Pond, where Thoreau wrote something I've loved since I was 18: "I went to the woods to live deliberately, to suck the marrow out of life, so that when it came time for me to die, I would not learn that I had not lived." I'm a big fan of Thoreau, or at least his ideas but living deliberately for me is never going to be in the cabin (though the pond now has people in bikins in this weather, not sure if Thoreau would consider that an upside or a downside and I can't believe no one has marketed the idea of selling something made out of bone marrow). I want to live with people, to keep the connections that life has handed me and that it continues to hand me. After the Marathon, I went out to dinner with some friends from the running group, then the next day I had meals with an old high school teacher who would take a few of us running at 5 am for a whole 2 miles! My mom, my little brother and I went and took in some of the local museums and that pond. And then I was more touristy and started an evening with some local ultimate friends at Cheers including one who had been the one who had driven back and forth 8 hours in one day for that tourney that seems so long ago that helped so much with my medical bills. When the diagnosis came, there was no way not to think that was the beginning of the end and who the hell knows when or if I'll die of this but honestly, I am glad to be in Boston because it feels like the end of the beginning. Life Part II was conceived by a seizure and the delivery has come. Not every part has or will go well; I put a lot of work into a marriage that I couldn't stop from collapsing. I put a lot of work into a marathon that I decided to jog in because the weather was too unreasonable. But while I was here, Lumosity.com, my primary brain rehab tool has decided to sponsor the Brain Power 5k. The director of Hawktober decided to nominate me for Austin Monthly's 10 most eligible bachelors issue (oddly enough my facebook Status on April fools was that I'd won the lottery and that I'd been nominated for Austin's most eligible bachelor) the day after I threw away the jersey about my valentine's day marathon, they've asked if I'm interested in an interview(I sent them the Livestrong video as a warning before answering them that I come with some serious baggage and I'm not sure anyone in the world should, could or would sign up to help unpack that). I start the training for that Livestrong 100 mile ride soon... I have a doctor's appointment when I return to see how the marathon and my body are reacting to each other. And above all in importance, a week from Saturday, Kiana and I are going to our first daddy-daughter ball, sponsored by the child cancer counseling classes provided by Wonders and Worries. As great and scary as this all is, I still assume it will all eventually fade...but who knows?

My life isn't all new, perhaps not even mostly so. I never thought I'd be this involved but like the picture in the previous blog you stay connected to what gave you life and you try to pay it forward as well. But I'm still directing and playing in an ulti tourney I started on Sunday. If my flight gets in on time, I'm going to my running group's hill workout tomorrow. Marrow sounds gross so I'll probably never suck on it but when the time comes for me to die, I may not remember life or have language functions if it's from this. And that's scary but at least today I get to take Kiana to Harvard and to Boston Museum of Science. But I am pleased and comforted by the fact I can't imaging learning that I have not lived.