“Five Years”

So how’s it feel to be five years and clear?
To beat the cancer, doing life to here?
To find horizon’s limits open out?
To have another chance to do this route?

I’m thankful – for the folks who got me here;
The folks who helped me all those hurdles clear;
Without them I’d be dead – just like my dad,
Who had no screening, but this cancer had.

I thank him, for his death let me live on;
I thank him for the life ’fore he was gone;
I thank the medics with their range of skills;
I thank the folks who walked me through those hills –

Like Everett who walked me through the pass;
And Christine’s prayer – turned inner tide at last;
Like countless friends and relatives whose prayers,
Both known and unknown, poured to God their cares.

I thank those folks who walked this road ahead –
For some are with us still, though some are dead;
They made a trail – the one I walked upon,
And helped me face my fears of being gone.

I thank the folks who shared their wisdom’s ways,
Whose knowledge helped me through confusing days;
Who helped me face with courage tougher times;
Who said, “Retain your joy, as I kept mine”.

I’m thankful for friend Neil – two years ahead,
Who’d walked my kind of cancer – wasn’t dead –
Was very much alive and modeled life,
Unlike my relatives who’d lost the fight.

Five years is filled with faces – like my son –
Who hired me on to see an item done
From bucket list – how kind in gracious ways –
Which carried me those early awful days.

Or other son who said, that day at golf,
“I’ll use your books, not leave them on the shelf
If things go south – just let me take that load
And use your energy to walk your road”.

And Carol who, with quiet dignity,
Walked with me as I saw this mystery –
“It’s harder to stand by than walk the road”,
I’ve done them both – they’re tough – but that’s a load –

One cannot carry for another friend;
We walk our journey’s walks right to the end;
A helplessness is part of friendship’s weight;
To walk beside another to the gate –

Is tough – though in my case I had reprieve,
Let me that time of ending take my leave;
I saw horizon shrink to months before
Reprieve arrived, and life returned once more.

The legacy? Two lines from others’ yarns –
“Don’t let the cancer do excessive harm,
But wring from it more than it wrings from you,
So in the end you’ll be far less the fool”.

And, “What have you the courage for today,
You lacked before that diagnosis day?”
So much – for I don’t care about some stuff,
Which up ’till then had blocked me with its guff.

I got my task-in-life done recently;
Not everyone can such completion see;
Now, “Doing one of those” – it’s such a treat!
To walk a path I thought I’d never see.

The people I have named are just a few
Of all the other people – just like you,
Who walked my journey through this cancer-land –
I thank you all with this poetic hand.

Dear Lord, I thank You for this life You’ve made;
For kith and kin, and those whose skill was laid
At my disposal through so many days,
Who’ve opened up this future’s many ways.

I thank You for Your presence through the years;
Your patience with my recklessness and tears;
Not giving up on our society,
Who’ve messed Your world so we such cancer see.

Help us grow up and face with dignity,
And courage all the challenges we see;
Not by ourselves, alone, but as a team
Of people rising o’er the mean and mean.

Thanks!

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