Cherubs in Trogir

"For himself, Daniel felt quite calm.  Soon after he had arrived in France, he saw that the way he had lived until that point was no longer possible.  As a child, he had clung emotionally to his own life, acting as though it were highly valuable, sacred -- or at least unique.  ...at Ypres, planning was pointless.  It was worse than pointless, in fact; it was foolish and disrespectful to those who had died.


Instead, he tried to cultivate a kind of serenity, to trust to providence and to place a much lower value on his life, because to have too high a care for it was to suggest that he believed his own existence, his own little breathing hopes, to be more important than those of the millions of the dead; and insufficiently to respect the dead, and the lives and loves they had forsaken, was, so far as he could see, the worst of war crimes."


Daniel Rebiere, a character in Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks


A couple of weeks ago I completed Cycle 22 of the trial, and am preparing myself for my Cycle 23  visit to Houston - just chemo, no scans this time.  22 was good, the cancer slowly but slowly losing its purchase, getting a bit smaller with each passing month.  I've been blue and purposeless the last few weeks, however, and unable to explain it. Although I do have a motto now, "Cancer Free by 2-0-1-3." Go Team.


Its possible that I've been surrounded lately too much by people who view their own lives as "highly valuable and sacred" in a way that strikes me as, if not, intolerable, then plain irritating. Perhaps there is jealousy that I thought I had rid myself of, as I struggle to find purpose with my own altered life.  


The drug has put me in limbo, trapped in stone like the cherubs in Trogir, one foot in this life, one in the former. 


I want my old life back.