What Are The Chances?

Late for the first day of class, I took the only seat available next to a mysterious young man wearing a dark trench coat and classic fedora hat. He glanced up to acknowledge my presence as the instructor introduced us to the schedule for writing our memoirs. It was then I realized my seat partner was probably very ill. Cancer perhaps. He was not just slender or thin. His appearance was emaciated  His skin more than pale. It was almost see-through. What little hair he had was sticking out beneath the hat was like peach fuzz. Like me, he had come to class to write his life story.

That first day we had a writing exercise and read to each other. My guess about Greg was correct. He was recovering from Leukemia. His story had begun several years before when he was still in high school. He'd been through his treatments, and was in remission when we met. I told him about my having had a rare bone cancer forty years before when I was about his age. There was an easy acceptance between us that I can only describe as a knowing sigh or shared exhalation that no one else in the room could discern. We were both survivors!

Twice a week for that first three weeks we shared our writings with each other, and sometimes with other members of the class. That fourth week I went to class with a heavy heart. My doctor had sent me to an oncologist. I had been diagnosed with Leukemia. It's a fairly rare cancer. According to government statistics for that year, in the US there were approximately 271,880 people alive who had a history of leukemia. In the county where I live there were only 32 Leukemia patients. It seemed so odd to realize that the two of us attended the same college, the same class and sat beside each other. What are the chances of that happening?

Though mine was a different type of Leukemia than Greg's, we had one thing in common called the Philadelphia Chromosome. I had no idea what that was, but Greg explained. A couple times after class we would stop and chat. He was always willing to help me understand. What was incomprehensibly new to me was old stuff to him. He asked me questions, good questions that made me think, that made me take to my doctor to get answered. We shared symptoms and how we handled them. We shared the emotional impact. He told me funny stories too, told me about Jacob's Heart, and Team in Training and Robin Williams coming to visit him in the hospital who had him laughing. His eyes lighted up when he spoke of these things. A fire burned there shining from his soul.

One day on campus, I saw him climbing a steep flight of stairs. That was something I couldn't do, and it surprised me. He seemed so frail beneath that trench coat, but there was a superman inside. He had been fighting his Leukemia for a number of years. He had suffered the ravages of chemotherapy. He'd had a bone marrow transplant. He'd been bedridden and close to death. He had recovered, recuperated and healed. Why would climbing stairs be a daunting thing for him when he already had the strength to beat cancer? I was encouraged for my own future. I was uplifted by his spirit of not giving into weakness. I was inspired to let my leukemia journey to just become another of life's challenges and not let it become something to destroy who I really am.

Today, another student from that class asked me if I remembered Greg. Of course I did. I was numb when she told me he had died just a few weeks ago. She had seen his obituary in the local paper.

I went on the internet tonight looking for his obituary. I found one for a Gregory Melendy. But, I couldn't make myself believe it was him. Some other young man with the same name had passed away. I studied the picture. Long hair, healthy sensitive face. Nope. Not my Greg. My friend must be mistaken. I looked harder at the picture. Read the obituary again.

There... a link.... saying to make donations to a music scholarship. I clicked on that page. Another young man, no hair this time. But full of face, smiling. I stared at it. The eyes. Maybe the eyes are familiar, I thought. No... it must be someone else with the same name. Just a coincidence that he attended the same college where I had met my Greg. Just a coincidence.

I stuck to my denial as I searched and read all the pages Google took me to see. I studied each picture. Finally it sank in. It was my Greg Melendy.

I am very sad.

Old Feelings Never Die

While attending my autobiography- memoirs writing class, I became a bit emotional. We sit in groups of four and read to each other from our latest work. This week I wrote about when I had Chondrosarcoma and long term hospitalization related to my internal hemipelvectomy. 

This is the basics of the story: I had been flat on my back for many weeks, when my younger sister came to visit. She massaged me and I began to feel considerably better. She helped me to sit up, something the nurses didn't do and the doctor had not ordered. She helped me to sit at the edge of the bed, and with progression, she helped me to stand up by the bed. Then, she helped me to walk, first four steps, then a few more, before I asked the doctor for permission to get out of bed. He gently reminded me that he had told me I would never walk again. I proceeded to get out of bed and show him that I could. The man had tears in his eyes as I walked toward him. 

It was that point in my reading to my classmates that I broke down. I held the paper over my face while I regained my composure and completed my story. 

We continued with the critiquing and questions. This being a very unusual foursome, it was pretty intense. The woman who sat to my left is permanently in an electric wheel chair. She has Multiple Sclerosis and cannot walk at all. In fact she has to be lifted from her bed with a hoist in order to be placed into her wheel chair. I couldn't look at her, for fear of seeing tears or sympathy, or even maybe impatience toward me. I thought I could feel intense emotion from her. I just had to breathe through her critique of my writing style. The lack of clarity for time period.

The young man sitting to my right is an avid skateboarder. Though, as far as I know, he has no medical conditions, he wrote about considerable violence and injury he has experienced because of his passion for skateboarding. Mostly he was confused and continued to ask deeper and deeper questions about my experience. It was clear I had left out a lot that I could add to my revision. It was challenging to answer his questions as my nose ran. Dammit!

The young man across from me was diagnosed with Leukemia seven years ago. Though in remission he continues to take the same chemo type drug I may soon be taking.  He knows what it is like to be isolated in a hospital bed. We've spoken about our experiences before this shared reading. He made it clear he understood. He never questioned or critiqued, but explained a few things to the others about having cancer, things I just didn't know how to say. 

Having cancer changes your viewpoint of the world and makes you wise in ways you never thought possible, and he is a good example of this.

It is odd how the body remembers the emotions that arose for me reading about something that happened over forty years ago.