Monday, October 08, 2007

Lost in the Music

I had completely forgotten what yesterday was. Utterly and completely. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Should I be cognisant of the fact that 3 years ago yesterday I was diagnosed with cancer and started a long climb uphill to being healthy again? Or should I just let it fade into the past, as far as it'll go?

I was checking my email before dashing out to the Sunday matinee just in case there were any last minute directives from the music director. But there was an email from my dad. It was a journal entry had made 2 Februarys ago about a nice dinner we had shared and how it gave us some normalcy from the then hard routine of radiation treatments (I had driven 50 miles from work to radiation and then another 30 or so home - 5 days a week for 3 1/2 weeks). And under that was a new entry about how far everything has come and how I have this new miraculous event going on and where we all were 3 years ago. And WHAM! It was like a wet towel hit me in the face. How could I have forgotten? I mean, fall always reminds me of that hellacious time, where we didn't know what was going on with me, what was wrong, what would fix it. And I just lost it. Cried and cried and cried. Luckily, it's a long-ish, quiet drive to the theatre because I cried the whole way there. It was as if something had been bottled up for a long time and had to be let out.

By the time I got to the theatre, I was a little more composed. Crying had stopped and I was ready to just go it and play. I decided to just throw myself into the score in front of me and get lost in it. And it worked. I played really well (or so I thought!), and enjoyed the music. It's really a good score and we're at the point where we know our parts and are really just cooking together. The tempos are familiar and we just click along with it. I'm not even feeling pukey when those 2 honkin' cello solos come up now, I'm more comfortable with those.

So even though I was dragging my feet to get up and ready yesterday, it was the best thing in the world for me to have played. Cleared my head, got me going and made me feel good. While I was playing I kept saying to myself, "F&ck you cancer, you haven't taken ANYTHING away from me." A little cliched, yes, but true.

6 comments:

Maureen said...

Wow, you are stronger than I would have been. It really amazes me how people have the courage and fortitude in the face of cancer. I am so glad to hear you are well now and can find yourself in your art. Amazing.

Curly Glamour Girlie said...

You never know how you'll react until you're in the situation. Really. My music helped me greatly through it. The irony is, is that Jekyll and Hyde was the first show I did after starting chemo. It's nice to have a better connotation with it now!

Maddie said...

Wow. That sounds like a lot to handle. I can only imagine the amount of strength it would take to get through that. Thank you for sharing.

On a less sensitive (though appropriate?) note, have you seen this?

Curly Glamour Girlie said...

PANTS!!! That's awesome!!! I love it!! I just may have to purchase it!!! I have thought about having a tee-shirt made with that sentiment.

Jill said...

Yes - Wow! on ***all*** of it! Three years ago doesn't seem like very long at all!

Curly Glamour Girlie said...

Jill - To my husband and I it feels like a million years ago and it feels like yesterday.