I woke up with beauty in my face.
The sunshine outside the window. The thin, gentle layer of mist among the trees, before the sun breaks through it all, and makes it evaporate.
My own heart blooming in my chest, glowing through my face. The play of light and shadow on the windowsill.
Yesterday I was in the hospital, having the third dose of chemotherapy treatment.
I didn’t expect to feel good today, to sleep well and to wake up rested and glowing after the treatment.
Life is a Mystery.
In a morning like this, I know I am not my body. I know that this beauty blooming in the heart does not depend on the physical. It does not belong that what was born and what will die – nor to that which gets disturbed by chemotherapy treatment.
When I first got to know that the cancer was back and had spread, less than one month ago, I had some nights with bad sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, tense. It was not dreams waking me up, it was reality – shaking me, telling me; “it is real, it is happening”. I was crying my eyes out. Processing this new reality of my life.
Now lately, I have been sleeping well. I wake up rested. Almost every morning, the first thought that comes to me is about death.
“I am dying”
Some times tears. But the tears are never anything more than a layer. Like the mist among the trees this morning. Until the sun breaks through, and makes it all evaporate. .
Then peace.
I see that the only way I can have peace in this moment, is by fully embrace the possibility that I might soon die. That I might soon get sicker.
Without that acceptance, I live in tension and in fight with what is.
I have to embrace death, even embrace the cancer in my own body – to be able to fully embrace myself now.
I will receive treatments, and do what I can do to stay as healthy as I can, as long as the treatments themselves are not taking away the quality of life in the time I have left in this body.
But I will not spend the last weeks, months or years of my life in a fight with what is happening, or in clinging to hopes or avoiding fears.
I want to live – and die – open as the sky.
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