Roger’s Reality: Dancing with the Devil

By Roger Owens

In just the next few days, life, for my wife and me, will be turned on its head. The Devil has invited us to dance. It’s not the kind of invite you can turn down. You see, there’s this lump. Yeah, that kind of lump. It’s been x-rayed and ultra-sounded and mammogramed – the medical equivalent of an RSVP for the invitation, if you will – our grudging, involuntary response that, yes, we will be attending the ball. We really have no choice, do we? They, and the biopsy tomorrow, may be the first salvoes in what could be a long, hard war. Or what could be, heaven forbid, a short, deadly skirmish. It’s like this: by itself, the lump isn’t too terribly scary; lots of women have them. They could be fibroids, which run in Cindy’s family, while breast tumors do not. Even if it’s a tumor, they can do so much these days, right? Right? But then there’s this cough. The cough has been around for a few weeks, a bit longer than we have known about the lump. Just a holdover from that bout of bronchitis last year, you understand. Or so we have been telling ourselves; but then, the lump. Yeah. So now the cough has grown claws and teeth and turned into something entirely different than a “lingering viral infection.” Quick: name another situation in which a “lingering viral infection” would be a thing to celebrate!

People are so nice. They so want to say or do something, anything, to help. “How’s Cindy?” they ask. “Are you OK?” My impulse is to say, “Define OK.” But I don’t. How can I think of my own feelings at all? Cindy’s the one with the cancer. When we really love someone, their well-being surpasses our own in importance. I truly wish it was me, I would be able to handle that much better; but no, she says, because she couldn’t handle that. She truly would prefer to die than to lose me, has said so many times. It’s ok if she steals a little bit of your heart vicariously here; she took mine many years ago and never gave it back. All of it. She’s just that kind of lady. Everybody loves Cindy. Me, not so much; they all just agree with me that I’m lucky to have her.
    So am I OK? I don’t know. If you had a dark apparition following you around, ready to put a cold hand on your shoulder if you forget for one minute that the life you have known is likely to go in the toilet sooner rather than later, and you still forget sometimes, would that qualify? I don’t know. I walk around. I talk to people. It must make sense, they seem to be satisfied with what I tell them. I forget things, but no worse than usual. I’d never experienced what people describe as “watching yourself” do things, but I have now. Literally like it was someone else. I can forget what was said because it’s like I wasn’t there, I just heard about the conversation second-hand, on Facebook or something. When I try to get anything done, there’s always something in the way. It’s like you can’t see what you’re doing, can’t reach it, get ahold of it, get a wrench on it, get to it. That’s what a man does, he gets the job done, by God. Yet now the simplest tasks elude me and I don’t really care. How could I have wasted my life worrying about all that crap?


I had to ask permission to write this, any of it. From Cindy, of course, but from myself as well. I fancy myself a writer, and like most of us I write for approval. I want folks to read what I offer and like it. I am gratified if they do and mortified if they don’t, simple as that. But I guess I must pass for an artist as well, for so many artists have said they do what they do to relieve pain as much as to create. Because in this piece of writing, which may be a series, depending on how things go, I am not seeking approval. I need this.
    Many have fought this war before us, we’re not special. But I guess we’re on the front lines now, so I reckon I’ll be reporting from the trenches for a while.

Copyright © 2018 by Roger Owens