Horse Kick in the Chest

I don’t know how other people handle things like this.  I don’t suppose it really matters, because other people aren’t me.  Other people aren’t Joe, or my daughters.  Other people don’t feel like I do, or have my heart, or experiences, or mind, or perspective on things.  So what other people feel about the same situations in life don’t really matter.  Each occurrence in life is specific to each individual person.  Each person’s perspective makes it particular to that person, so I don’t suppose I even really care what anyone else’s feelings are, or how other people handle things like this.  

For me it was like being kicked in the chest by a young horse unexpectedly.  You know how it is when you have a young horse that you just know is gonna get you one day.  You are totally aware that the potential to be kicked to the moon is always there, but you sort of push it to the back of your mind because there’s life, and there’s every day, and there’s things that need doing, and you just get on with it without ever really considering how hard that kick is going to be when it finally comes along.  Especially since it’s been winding up for a long time, and gaining tension and torque, and leverage behind the hoof.  Then too, you never think about the size of the hoof either.  I mean, at the very beginning, the hoof is small.  It’s the foot of a little foal, about the size of a teacup, how much damage could that do, right?  But after twenty five or twenty six years that damn hoof is the size of a truck tire!  When it comes screaming through the air and smacks into your chest it’s as though the entire world just landed on you.  

Your breath comes flying out in a burning whoosh that never seems to end, until that last choking cry that seems so full of tears that your face seems like someone took a blow torch to it.  It’s an amazing thing, really.  I was truly surprised how much air there is in a pair of lungs.  I’m a long time smoker, pretty soon to be a quit smoker, but I don’t usually consider my lungs particularly filled with air.  But on this morning there was an awful lot of air in there.  When it came rushing out I could actually see the mist like a fine rainfall come down over that hoof.  Something you might see in movie taking place in a jungle set.  Would’ve been pretty if there were plants around.  But there weren’t, just that hoof; that huge truck tire sized hoof planting itself firmly into my chest.  

Then that cry started coming up from somewhere.  At first I wasn’t sure where it was coming from.  I looked around, I thought it was maybe someone else.  But, it wasn’t.  I looked down at my feet and it seemed as if, all of a sudden, the floor was getting awfully far away, awfully wee and small, as the saying goes.  hmm, I think I might’ve laughed at that point except i was too close to weeping.  The cry finally made it out of my mouth but I realized it was going to be too loud, so I put my hand over my mouth to stifle it.  The cry became a groan, or a moan, or a growl maybe.  I don’t really know, some sort of sound that didn’t even sound like me.  I don’t make those sounds, never in my life had I made those sounds.  Not even in the throes of the agonies of childbirth, or toothache, or migraine, or seizure, or for any reason that I can think of.  But this, this horse hoof, this truck tire....



this voice....this disembodied voice over a phone...

this....Doctor T....the oncologist....at the hospital, where we’d been waiting for news for three whole days about my most loved and adored and very nearly worshiped husband....

this truck tire sized horse hoof.... whose name is....

Lung Cancer.....

this....this...this..........



mec~
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