Robbers—Bees and Otherwise
This is a cross-post from my Caring Bridge blog, the place where I (and family and friends) have tracked the cancer saga for the past year, as well as organized meals and work parties. Now that things are relatively stable (if ongoing), the blogs may eventually merge. We'll see what proves most suitable for content and readership. Thanks for reading!
Last month, one of my beekeeping staff accidentally dropped a queen in her cage onto the soft earth next to the hives in my yard. The beekeeper had also stepped on the cage, made of wood and about the size of a large tube of lipstick, with screen on one side. In the morning I discovered the crushed cage, the queen half in and half out, clinging to the screen, still alive, but barely.
spring morning—
queen bee on the ground
moves slightly
I'd been out of the hospital for just over a week and could relate. Unable to leave the house because I needed to stay close to the bathroom, and unable to lift more than 10 lbs, I remained traumatized by my last hospital stay, the tube they'd stuck down my throat, and the helplessness I'd felt internally and externally.
And yet, and yet... not least because of the love and support of family and friends, and the inner force of life, I felt some determination. Springtime is a good season in which to be sick; nature's example abounds everywhere. Chained to the house, I had only to look around...
row of tulips
each reaching towards the sun,
open wide
the whole sunny day
just doing nothing
the daffodils
That near-dead queen revived. I had placed her in the "queen bank" where i had 10 or 12 other queens awaiting hives; now she's somewhere in the north end, in a backyard hive. I myself managed to make it to the grocery store for a whole hour, a big victory, and walk a little farther each day around my neighborhood for daily exercise. Amy and Japhy and I went to the little library a few blocks away. I had to rush back to use the bathroom, but ventured out again and got to finish the circuit with them.
the scent of
laurel blossoms everywhere—
spring dusk
warm spring night
hanging out on the porch
even the bees
paper-thin
dogwood blossoms—
my slow walk
On April 29 we had a work party here; THANK YOU! big time to my sisters Anne and Judy who traveled across country to help; to Kamal for helping organize, to Diane, Chris, Marjorie, Nancy, Sarah, Randy, Lisa, Gary and Perseus… we pulled out what seemed like an acre of blackberry, weeded the path, mowed the front yard. Looking great! Also, Jeri continues to be a food savior, thanks for the delicious meals! Michelle, that salsa is fantastic (and now I can even eat it!). And more people than I can name have also pitched in with childcare; Grace was here last week while Amy was on a business trip too… we are all feeling the love, thanks!
Almost exactly one year ago I was diagnosed with this illness. Now, my current health is arguably the best I've felt in 18 months, including the pre-diagnosis time when I was sick but didn't know it.
the chestnut tree
blooms again;
i'm still here too
The past couple weeks my body continued to adjust positively; I was able to stay out of the house for hours at a time. Japhy and I got haircuts; afterward we went to the park with Amy and played freeze tag. I found myself running around—literally running—with them, being "it" and getting frozen too. Japhy collapsed in paroxsyms of joy. Then we walked over to Alki Beach and drew with sticks in the sand, felt the summery breeze in early May.
doing nothing—
a billion years of beach sand
through my fingers
The freeze tag exercise encouraged me so much so that for my walk the following day, I figured, why not just go down to the track at the middle school and walk a two-mile circuit? It felt so good, so liberating, that after three laps I ran the next mile, before a one lap-warm down. Such freedom, such simple joy of breathing and moving, it was even better than my mid-chemo running trials last fall. This one was like we used to do in grade school, just run over the gentle hills and past the lakes of rural Ohio for the sheer fun of it.
floating through
my runner's shadow—
dandelion parasols
long light at sunset—
my son's smile
popsicle blue
My body responded well to the exercise; the very next day I had my first bowel movement with no pain. Always two steps forward and one back, my condition is still far from painless or normal, and I still need to fast before heading out for longer engagements, but things feel definitely headed in the right direction.
I was able to increase my hours managing bees; got to put in some long days spent working the colonies. Even getting stung again felt good. After the hive visits, a trip to the grocery store felt incredibly great. I wanted to skip through the parking lot, instead settled for balancing on the back of a shopping cart as I rolled down the grade. On my evening walk, the flower blossoms overpowering, I felt like a bee myself, floating in the freedom of a body with no ostomy bag, no cyborg encumbrance, guided by nature towards the truly nourishing.
sun and bees
all day
my beating heart
evening walk—
just the colors and scents
of the neighborhood
Nature has no mercy, however, and the natural force of life is always balanced by the natural force of death. To embrace one is to embrace the other.
One of the hives in my back yard illustrates this: a couple days ago I noticed a fresh carpet of dead bees in front on the ground; in fact some of them still moving. If they were merely corpses, yellowjackets might show up to try to eat the carrion, but in this case, the living were still in throes of being attacked by other honey bees. Along the hive entrance, guard bees leapt at intruders. Pairs of bees struggled to the death, biting and stinging each other in a mortal embrace.
Last week I had opened up the entrance to help ventilate the hive and give room to the exploding population (I also already have two honey supers almost full on the hive, this is an early and a very good situation), but the honey inside and some other factors had made this an attractive hive for hungry bees from other hives, some possibly from miles away.
Just last week, too, there were tons of blossoms in the neighborhood: chestnut, madrona, and hawthorn trees, golden chain hanging lusciously, the end of the lilac and tulips, exploding rhody and azaleas, even lavender and iris, some rosemary. But this week, as rain ceased, as nectar evaporated from those blossoms, bees whose colonies are getting bigger needed more—more nectar, more pollen—came, came hungry and fierce.
They find the nectar where they can; they take advantage of the smallest window of opportunity. And they don't just want a little drop; they want it all. They want their hive to be immortal, they prey on anything—even an apparently healthy colony—to make it so.
While all this robbing was underway, I had my re-staging CT scan, and we met with the doctor this past Monday for the report. She confirmed that the lung lesion we'd seen in March had grown and was therefore cancerous. Oh yes, she added, there's a new little spot there too, could be more cancer. One more thing—while we thought we'd gotten everything in the liver, one of the old lesions that had disappeared is growing back, so we'll need to get in there too...
the cancer's back
to rob me
muggy night
When bees are robbers, or guards fighting for a long time, they lose their hair; it's bitten and scraped off from battle. They appear shiny like a wasp but also their color changes; they are black and dark amber. Their wings are ragged. What once—only a month ago!—were new bees, pale yellow, fuzzy, tentatively walking over the delicate combs, now were aged warriors, burned and scarred, trembling from the poison venom, on the precipice of the beehive, looking at the carpet of corpses below.
And even though I was in seeming health some 18 months ago (more truthfully it was after years of pushing the limits), the cancer saw an opening and came and got me. Or looking more broadly, it saw an opening in the environment we've poisoned, it's been coming for 100 years, and certainly exploding after the world wars, from the dearth we've created. Across the stressed planet—boom—here's a way for life to assert itself and its own immortality on a cellular level. It's an aberration but also nature itself, asserting life where it can, balancing the cosmic scales, trilling harmony even in the keening, knowing death song of that bee.
The embrace of life is an embrace of death, but the opposite must also be true: the embrace of death is also a furious embrace of life. At the moment when we should be hearing "no evidence of disease," we hear the opposite, and so right now how will we respond?
As I get more procedures scheduled, as we plan (probably) radiation on the lung and (if tests say we can do it) a hot-needle shot into my liver, as we discuss when chemotherapy might re-start, and what kind… I know that by embracing this disease I also reach like the tulips towards the sun. I embrace the elusive dandelions, the simple joys of being able to walk through the parking lot, and especially embrace more porch-sitting, more freeze tag in the park, more 6-year old meltdowns in the barber shop, more beehive time, and more family walks on the sand, whence we came, whence we all return.
two bees tumble
across a field of dead bees—
cancer, I embrace you