Ever since I learned the art of clowning, today has served as an important celebration for me—April Fool’s Day, a day long steeped in tradition, folderol, merriment and upending the status quo. What’s not to like about this? We can all use a little levity.
And for me, where I am now in this journey through life, levity is especially welcome. Why then this mix of sadness?
Well, there is the obvious, I suppose.
“Surgery is not an option for you,” the region’s top surgeon in pancreatic surgery told me on Christmas Eve Day. Pressed, he forecast a life expectancy of three months if I chose not to pursue chemotherapy.
After one go-‘round with chemotherapy I decided to pursue it no further. That was three months ago. By rights, perhaps I should be dead by now. Instead, I sit here at my kitchen table and watch myself make question marks of blueberries. Questions swirl in my head.
How much time do I have left? Given the current Covid-19/Coronavirus pandemic, how much time does any of us have left? Does it matter? How much?
Says Emily Dickinson,
A Toad can die of Light
Death is the Common Right
of Toads and Men—
of Earl and Midge
The privilege—Why swagger then?
The Gnat's supremacy's the same as Thine.
In the big picture, it matters a hill of beans; makes as much difference for landed gentry as it does to the gnat.
