I took Pedro for a walk alone a few weekends ago. Usually Maja and I go together, but she needed a little break from the monotony of Pedro’s schedule, so I loaded him in the car and took him alone. It’s a short drive to a number of small parks, but I chose the nearest, which also happens to be the wildest and the one most likely to find yourself walking alone and undisturbed by others. It was a good choice for a quiet early Saturday morning. When we parked, we found the world around us frozen and still. Pedro-perfect weather, Maja and I say. He likes a crisp morning.
Pedro, I should point out, is an overgrown Weimaraner, now aged four, with a penchant for cold weather and rabbit poo. He luxuriates in brisk weather. You can see his hide ripple with excitement the moment he feels a chill in the air. A frozen morning is grist for his mill; the cold compels him to run, and his pleasure is legible on his face.
The morning was clear as we climbed from the parking area up a shallow slope through the grass toward a line of trees. We followed a well-worn path and one Pedro was familiar with. He coursed on either side of me, head down, following his nose and propelled, I could imagine, as much by the particular scent as by the cold. It was the kind of morning where the silent beauty penetrates your early morning stupor and wakes you to the world around you. I found myself unexpectedly appreciative of the morning, of the stillness, and of Pedro. I hadn’t thought about it, but once I did, I realised this had been an involuntary experience. I hadn’t forced myself to stop dwelling on the current aggravation at work or the obligatory problem du jour to take a look around myself and appreciate this fleeting moment; it had happened of its own accord.
Despite the fact that I began to consider the fleeting moment as it occurred, I was pleased to find that the moment wasn’t so fleeting. Instead of evaporating the moment I began to consider it, the pleasure of the morning as I walked into the trees and the pleasure at the sight of my thoroughly content dog continued.
Before, I thought only of the future. The present passed unnoticed while I dwelled in the life I would lead in the distant future. The present was filled with planning and preparing for a future that was certain to come. I knew it was wrong at the time, but I had no power over myself. Many years of my life passed in planning and pursuing a future that never quite seemed to materialise.
Once I was diagnosed with cancer, planning for the future, even talking about the future stopped cold. Without any real warning, I found myself looking no further ahead than the day. I had basic, primitive needs to meet – nourishment to force down an uncooperative, diseased throat and pain to manage. I thought of beating the disease and being well again, but I didn’t imagine myself well in the future; each day was too much effort to allow for that.
Now I was in remission. And that was the startling thought on that morning walk on that particular Saturday. How could I be in remission? I wasn’t like most any other person who might be walking their dog in a park on a Saturday morning and enjoying the primordial pleasure in the unity of the day and the dog, no. I had to have been diagnosed with cancer, had to face my own mortality squarely, and fight a brutal and ugly fight to beat the disease into remission before I could appreciate the world around me. How could that have happened to me? How can I be in remission?
Now I can enjoy fleeting moments; I can appreciate the day. I can stop and smell the flowers. But I am in remission, and that seems to be the price I had to pay for the pleasure of appreciating life. That’s what it took for me to realise how lucky I am.
Now I live every day hoping to remain in remission, desiring the state of remission, because the alternative is simple and unthinkable. There is no returning to good health. You lose your health to cancer as irrevocably as you lose your virginity; it’s impossible to ever get it back. There is only the hope of remission, and with remission, enough remission, the time may come again perhaps to plan, to prepare….
