You Will Remember

When your time is up you will forget.

You'll forget the TV, the car and the brands.

The bills, the job and the junk will fade away to nothingness.

And yet.

You will remember.

You will remember the times that you loved.

The times that you felt the rain, or lay beneath the tree exhausted and alive.

The time the sun dried cold, wet skin.

You will remember the times that you really, really lived.

And the times you're awake enough to enjoy a single, simple, calming, exhalation.

Maybe that memory is made,

now.

---

Have You Ever Noticed?

Have you ever noticed the way that whitewash fizzes and bounces, as it falls over itself, to get to your feet?

Or the way that bark feels, as a tree leans through gusts of wind, swaying under hand?

Maybe you've also noticed, the wonderful warmth, and potential for life of soil under your feet.

But.

Have you ever noticed, that when you truly notice those things, that your mind is gloriously, and wonderfully,

Quiet.

---

“Breathe Out” - Limited Edition Print

Just This Moment

It's all you have.

Can I have your attention for just a moment?

Nothing much, and just for a moment.

It's nothing.

But.

It's everything.

It's all you have.

Your attention.

And.

Just this moment.

---

Close Enough.

Have you been close enough?

Have you felt the soil in your hands, and the movements of tiny creatures that keep us alive?

Have you truly noticed the trees dancing with fungus and dirt and air?

Have you been close enough to really see those things?

And then.

Closer.

Close enough to see the merging.

The merging of dirt and flowers, of slime, spiders, ants and life.

And then.

Even closer.

---

Simple, yet....

While I never thought too much about it, if I was honest, in the past I would have thought that having a brain injury would “look” a particular way.

As someone whose brain is damaged, I now know that most of those ideas were either vast generalisations, completely wrong, or very shallow.

Perhaps the hardest part for me of having had the tumour, brain surgery and cancer treatments, wasn’t actually the recovery from the surgery, the radiation and the treatments (but maybe I’m forgetting the crappy bits).

It seems to me that the hardest bit to navigate has been relatively recently. Being given the “no evidence of disease” call was liberating in many ways, but then….

Life comes back, although I should be more specific and say “my life comes back” and then life itself seems to diminish a touch because of that.

At the time of being sick, I was off the hook. I didn’t have to worry about the mundane, in fact, the mundane was exquisite. It was the first time I’d experienced the incredible miraculousness of everyday experiences. I didn’t have to worry about the chores, obligations and expectations I’d built into my life. Trees were shinier and birds more beautiful,… (even people were 😀).

And then my life came back,….. but, with a surprise.

The life I’d built over years, came back, but to a different person. This Mark was not the same one.

I’m not saying the new “me” was bad. In many ways it’s a better version of the old me.

It’s just that my brain won’t do stuff it used to.

I have a brain injury.

We all have (if we dig deeply enough) issues of being “less than” in some way. We collaborate with family, society and peers, and make that little stone in our shoe as children.

It’s there, annoying, distracting, and deflecting us until it hurts enough to actually really notice it, and how much it has impacted our dance with life.

My “stone” was about being stupid.

Being easily bored, a dreamer and fundamentally cheeky, gave people the opportunity to reinforce that narrative. For those reasons (and others) it meant I always felt not quite smart enough, and so, never quite felt completely comfortable.

I can see now how that drove my interactions with others, and the strategies I developed all my life to try hide it, and to try to fit in.

The results weren’t always great, but I muddled through, and then….the brain thing happened.

After the dust settled, I tried to fit back into “my” life, but now, with a brain that won’t do some of the things it used to.

It’s a very strange experience, to not be able to manage something I once did without thinking about.

I came face to face with something that’s “simple”, and that I shouldn’t struggle with, and yet…

The look of confusion on others faces when this “simple” thing stops or slows me, is mostly managed (my friends and people close to me understand).

Mostly I just say, “soz, got a brain injury”, laugh and move on. No problems.

Sometimes though, tact is forgotten, and peoples’ inability to understand is very, very, clear.

That the task is simple, isn’t lost on me. I’m in a micro-machination in my head, trying to get my brain up this seemingly tiny hill. Peoples’ responses can look like many things superficially, and at the same time, that “stone” in the depths of that shoe finds the tender spot at the base of the big toe, and there it is…. “you’re stupid”.

My brain injury isn’t obvious.

Most would never know, and even when it rears its head, I move past it with a joke (or claim it with a joke like “take no notice, I’m a high functioning idiot”, or “I’ve only got half a brain).

Laugh, done. Move on.

But sometimes.…it really hurts.

There’s sometimes grieving for the loss of the old functionality, (before the good changes are seen) and other times there’s a profound sense of vulnerability.

Helplessness.

We place so much stake in “knowledge” and “knowing” stuff, but often that knowledge is only used to reinforce our identity, our opinions, and therefore impact on our life experiences, and not always in optimal ways.

I’m learning ways to unlearn, and learning ways to remember .

I’m learning to unlearn the noise, that idea that “I’m stupid”, and learning to keep remembering the lessons the tumours taught me.

When I forget them I suffer.

Cancer teaches that “security” is a delusion.

There can be a wonderful glorious freedom in that realisation.

We blobs of sweat, slime and goo, in a thin skin of air, around a lump of dirt, hurtling through space, right next to a massive nuclear reactor that keeps us alive, forget that everything is in a state of flux.

There’s no such thing as security in the universe.

In that forgetting there is the source of our suffering collectively and personally.

I don’t have to survive cancer.

I just have to keep remembering, over and over again, about the ebb and flow of the universe, and the insignificance of “Mark”.

I may struggle with a few things, but luckily I can still remember to keep doing that.

---

Mark’s book about his experience in 2016 is available now.

Play. For Artists.

In Play, you can find Joy.

In Joy, you can find Generosity.

In Generosity you can find Compassion.

And in Compassion, you can find Kindness.

In Kindness, there is Peace.

And in Peace, you will find Love.

In Love, you will find the Source.

Play with paint, until you weep with Joy.

Just A Moment

After major brain surgery in 2016, I felt strangely and strongly compelled to write, and actually started writing in the high dependence ward, a day or so after the event. I sat in the ward, in the bed, tapping away with one finger (just like I am now) on my phone.

Somehow I knew I had to write a book. I wasn’t sure why, nor was I sure what it would look like, I just knew I had to.

The words that came, underpinned why I had been pulled towards painting and making stuff my whole life. Now though the words gave me much more clarity around what was so compelling about being creative in some way.

It seemed crazy once the book was done, to not release it in conjunction with the showing of some paintings (I seem to spend a large amount of time chucking paint at canvas, so….)

An exhibition I have named “Just a Moment” was born.

For me exhibitions have almost always been primarily about the paintings. This time though, I expanded the scope.

The show is still about the images, obviously, but there is a “louder voice” about the importance of their message, and the power of the philosophy behind them.

My paintings now have a deeper aspect, and they are, in this exhibition and for the first time, accompanied by words that seem to go with them.

I found the process of writing stuff, in the past, to be clumsy and dissatisfying. Now though,…well, you be the judge.

These assemblies of words are pointers to a deeper dimension of my pictures, and I’m hoping they can give people an insight into a way of being in the world, that can even transform the experience of a potentially terminal illness.

The jolting nature of my cancer experience, caused a shift in my view of the world that is still (six years later)

exquisite, and sometimes even rapturous. We are alive, and… alive and possibly even conscious of being alive.

That is is incredible beyond belief, and perhaps worthy of taking “Just a Moment” to both consider, and enjoy.

It may be all we really have.

"Just A Moment” exhibition opens at Lennox Arts Collective gallery, 2/72 Ballina Street, Lennox Head, on Friday 24th June, 6-8pm, and continues until Thursday 7th July. Lennox Arts Collective is open 7 days a week from 10am-3pm.

Gratitude

Grateful.

The colour comes off the brush, and two dimensions become three.

Light, dark, shape and texture fall onto the canvas.

It's a prayer this painting thing.

Each brushtroke a moment laden with gratitude.

Each mark a homage to life.

Bursting from the earth.

A homage to vision and colour, to the magic of taste.

To the smell of salt, air, vegetation and more.

Maybe that's where life truly happens.

In the majesty of gratitude.

And perhaps, in the movement of paint.

View fullsize

Just An Eye

A leaf.

Just a leaf.

A wave.

Just a Wave.

Light bounces from object to object.

Just waves.

Just leaves.

And then you look deeper.

Beyond the apparent solidity.

There are photons dancing with your eyes.

Atoms swirling in a dance with the endless abyss.

Fragments of stars, assembled into

just a wave.

Seen by

just an eye.

13.8 billion years in the making.

View fullsize

Gone.

Gone.

It paints itself.

It's not me.

I'm not here.

"Mark" is nowhere, but "something" is left, just the same.

I am in the sound of brushes over canvas, or a breeze through Casuarina leaves.

I'm in the gold on the edge of a leaf, in the green of a fresh blade of grass.

Now, I am in the sound of paint being mixed. Of matter and atoms being moved.

Here, but,

Everywhere,

and,

every nowhere.

I am here, but Mark has gone.

Lost in the making of marks,

of making magic.

The ultimate disappearing act.

To paint, to vanish in front of my own eyes.

Gone.

But.

I AM, still, here.

Pre-orders are Available from 1st April 2022

shipping May 2022

So I Paint

So I Paint.

It's like a punch in the chest, but bigger than that.

It hits all my senses at once.

The colour - light bounces through my vision - glances across leaves, off sand, the sides of a cloud - the tips of grass.

It sings.

I stop.

In awe, in silence.

Sometimes I stand, tears running down my face in rapture.

A moment, soon gone. Or is it?

It's in my memory.

The essence of it is still there, the glory of it is still there.

I don't want to let it go.

I love that moment of quiet.

The silence.

And the cacophony of shape and colour.

I hold it a bit longer.

I paint.

---

COMING SOON - JOIN OUR PRE-ORDER MAILING LIST HERE

The Stars.

I noticed that somehow there was this deep understanding beneath everything that I was doing and seeing. I had written about it and had expressed it in moments of gratitude to my friend for all they had done. The world was now so incredibly different from how it had appeared before. 

I had always noticed small things, beetles, light on leaves, the magic of looking into the eyes of a bird or dog. This was the same superficially,  but entirely different and even more nuanced, and miraculous. 

There was this continuous understanding that affected everything I did, and every conversation I had. Saying it seems so trite and obvious, but the continuous knowledge that every single moment that this physical body experiences, was born in the stars, filtered into everything.  It was incredible.  Over billions of years gases formed, atoms were created and crushed.  They coalesced into stars which again collapsed, spewing the elements they created into the abyss.  What an indescribably miraculous chain of events.  To be aware that these elements took billions of years to create and that from them, swamps were formed, the primordial soup pushing those elements together, to create the being that is reading this.  Holy crap.  What are the odds?  

What an incredible thing to be able to stand, to talk, to run, to feel; all because stars rebirthed. This process took approximately 13.8 billion years. 13.8 Billion years to be able to breathe. The knowledge changed everything. The smallest experience was miraculous. Kicking my toe became something epically wonderful. We were created over billions of years to what, numb ourselves to life? To fight over dirt? To climb a social status ladder? 

Never before had walking in the rain been so sweet, every drop truly falling from the heavens, landing on my skin, running down my face, my neck.  What a privilege.  What a joy.  What would my life be like now in that knowledge?

So far it has been sublime.  Even with cancer, even with the occasional fear that comes with scan results, there is joy. Fear - what a gift, feeling the body’s response to fear.  The tightness in the chest, that shortness of breath, the processes of adrenalin and other chemicals surging through my system, all created in the stars.  Assembled into fear, now.  What a monumental gift, and and event that was meant to be, why...., because, it, was, here.  This awareness of the immense passage of events that lead to now sat behind every experience. It was difficult to be too upset about a slow driver ( something I had struggled with in the past).

I felt that I was now aware of the construction of everything we could see and feel. There was more though. There was something that could as easily be explained by the stars machinations. 

My Limited Edition Book:

sold out

Musings from a Dance With Cancer

A$60.00

In 2016 artist Mark Waller experienced a profound spiritual awakening, driven by the discovery of cancerous tumours in his brain and lungs.  To his surprise, he discovered that there was the possibility of joy and light in facing death.  Some of these pieces of text were written in hospital and in chemo wards.  But all of them, despite the seriousness of his situation, are in fact profound celebrations of life.

Mark is currently living his best life, cancer free.  And living with the philosophy that has stuck to him since his collapse, “we are here to play and give light”.  

“These words are dedicated to cancer people.  Those who have it; those who care for those who have it, and those who fear it.  I love you all.” 

- Mark Waller 2019

This book is an 8” x 8” hardcover “coffee-table” style book - a collection of images and prose painted and written by Mark Waller. 32 pages.

This limited edition print run of 50 includes a signed copy of the book “Musings from a Dance with Cancer”, and an original, signed A6 painting (starscape or waterscape) on watercolour paper by Mark Waller.

Click here for a digital preview sample of this book.

Add To Cart

Free of Me.

My cancer ride was, in many ways, one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had. I feel as though I have seen the beginning of everything, watched the birth of stars and creation of atoms (I couldn’t have possibly ever imagined saying that before), and yet now I am in the world of the “solid”. 

I am “here”, alive and conscious, and now, have to deal with the real world.

I have to manage all the usual stuff - bills, relationships, kids and mortgage. 

Added to managing those things, there is the residue of the cancer and associated experiences. 

The cancer journey is often long and is a roller coaster of emotions, navigating relationships, and medical processes.  It’s not a sprint, and I would imagine that it generally takes longer to recover from a marathon than a sprint.  (Having never run a marathon, and depending on how long the sprint was!).

Having cancer caused me to have a completely different way of looking at the world and my experience of life, and entirely different ways of dealing with it. 

One of the processes I used to get through was a BIG AF choice I made. 

I chose to play a game with my cancer.

That game was called, “happy to stay, happy to go”. 

It’s not for the feint hearted,  and it requires some mental resolve.  In that game though, there is less to fear and few expectations to pin hopes onto.  And, a huge amount of peace as a result. 

It allowed me to live almost completely in the present.

For the most part, I thought that I was mentally tough and played the game well, even through the challenges of the radiation “phase” of my treatments. 

There were some places that I faltered though. 

I called those moments the “death wobbles”.  Billycart heroes and skateboarders will know the term. 

The death wobbles were the moments where fear or some sadness kicked in and I had to rely on some mental health strategies. 

Breaking routines seemed to work well most of the time. Stepping out and doing something different and a tad off beat were favourites. Going for a paddle around a local lake in the full moon on a stand up paddle board was one (I tried one at night in the ocean.  Definitely not for those with a shark phobia).  Aerobic exercise was another strategy, and was also helpful in having my lungs recover from inflammation from the radiation. 

Like the death wobbles on a billycart, there is the moment of fear when you lose control, followed by a brief moment of the illusion of control, then fear, then control, fear, control, until you either find yourself relatively intact and pointing in the right direction, or ploughing into the depths of the Lantana thicket (and shredded) at the bottom of the “Dairy Hill”.

For me it was similar; fear, then management, then fear, etc until I found some equilibrium. 

Sometimes that process took seconds and other times, a day or two. 

I was genuinely surprised at how well I managed all that, and then something happened.  I felt I managed really well until I heard the words from my oncologist...”Mark,...It looks as though you have had a complete response”. 

You may want to re-read that. 

I managed well, UNTIL I heard the words that many cancer patients want to hear more than anything.  Apparently my brain was clear, and the tumours in my lungs were “inactive”.  In the past, stage 4 metastatic melanoma in brains and lungs, was pretty much a death sentence. This news was probably very unexpected, and many of my friends have certainly expressed that, but, it signalled a shift in my thinking. 

My life with this better prognosis was harder in some ways to manage.  You would assume that news like that would have me be indescribably grateful, and see me skipping off into the sunset, living happily ever after.  There definitely was some of that, and at the same time, there were some unexpected experiences as well. 

Survival guilt is real. So many wonderful people have died from cancer.  

Why me? Why do I get to stay and others don’t? 

I know there is no satisfactory answer to that, but at the same time I can’t help asking that occasionally.  It just wasn’t my time. That though, doesn’t diminish my compassion and empathy for those who have suffered and those who are left. (I’m left with no more words on this, but instead, a profound feeling of connection to all.  We are all touched in some ways by cancer). 

Cancer is not far away once you have had it. 

Playing happy to go, and happy to stay, is harder to play when the cancer is gone.  I found myself much happier with the idea of staying, and as a result my fears started to return. 

There is a tendency to want to put the whole thing in the past, and move on...... Except, you don’t.  It’s there in the background, and yet, now you are attached to living a long and healthy life (its amazing how quickly this happened for me). 

There are now longer periods between scans and results, and you almost forget.  Then a few days before, when you see how attached you are to the outcome of the scan, it all comes rushing back. 

The is another layer to the challenge of negotiating the good results that is difficult to define, so its’ hard to know where to start. 

Here goes. 

Firstly there is the turmoil of being fairly sure who you are for about 53 years, then having that story smeared by the behaviour and thought altering effects of a brain tumour. 

Then there is the coming to terms with the reality of death, and forming another identity around that, and cancer, in order to deal with those possibilities. 

Then, there is the identity that’s spat out at the end of it all. 

I can only speak for myself but the last part of all of those alterations has been the most challenging psychologically. 

Who the hell am I? I’m really not sure exactly anymore.

I’m now left with a “me” that has been pushed and pulled, corners knocked off, and even a few new facets added.  Many of the bits of the “new me” that I can see, seem to be contradictions .

There is a big part of me now that is smaller and more vulnerable than I have felt for a long time, and yet I know myself now to be so much stronger and greater than I could have imagined. 

Many long held opinions of myself are largely gone, or seen as insubstantial, which is a double edged sword in some ways. 

While it’s disconcerting to be unable to pin down who you are, at the same time it can be incredibly liberating. 

The truth be told, I think I navigated my cancer journey well, because I lost my attachment to my identity.  I became free of “me”.  It was useful to have no real identity and a diminished ego.  There seemed to be no “one” to protect and so there was no one to suffer. 

Before I go any further, psychology is definitely an area in which I’m very clear that I know very little about, so forgive my fumbling to find my way through this (it’s useful to me though, and I’m sure I’m not so unique that others haven’t gone through something similar, particularly now that there have been some major breakthroughs in cancer treatments. Thanks science).

It’s hard to know how much of this new state is down to my brain being interfered with, and how much is due to an “awakening” triggered by facing my greatest fear, and death. 

When the doctor gave me the good news, I felt and saw old identities try to re-establish themselves, and new ones germinate. 

There was “survivor”, “tough bastard”, “softer” and others. Most of them are not bad, but it seems to me that I picked them up. Perhaps I can put them down too. Maybe ego and identities are merely tools, created primarily for survival. 

Perhaps a tool is only useful if you can put it down when you are finished with it. 

Perhaps a hammer is a liability if you can’t take it out of your hand.  It’s definitely not  useful for sewing. 

This new part of my life, post cancer, revolves around me learning to be able to use the aspects of my identity when they’re needed, and to put them down when they’re not. 

It’s clear to me that most of my thoughts, positive and negative, relate directly to my identity. 

The gift of my cancer is that I can now usually see them from the outside, and that they are no longer in the background running the show. 

I’m guessing that others have had similar experiences? 

While I have learned a lot about myself from my cancer journey, paradoxically I know a lot less about everything else. 

Most of my opinions are now gone.  They are insubstantial and in defendable.  Many of the ones that remain, I can’t be arsed defending.  

All of this blurb so far relates mostly to whats gone on in MY head,  but of course there are other participants. 

Another thing entirely is what goes on for loved ones. 

My family was shaken up and thrown into a world of turmoil which is something that still saddens me.  The tumours took their reasonably solid dad away, firstly with my increasingly crazy behaviour before the traumatic way they were found, and secondly they lost “dad time” as the focus was on treating my illness. 

It pulled aspects of my family together, and pushed wedges in there as well. (We are a gloriously chaotic work in progress).

I’m still getting my head around what’s happened to me before, during, and since, and there is a lot I have no idea about.

One thing I am deadly sure about now is the absolute beauty of kindness. 

I’m now crystal clear that we are here to play (enjoy the gift of life), and to be kind to one another, and the planet.

So before I sign off I’d like to suggest something. 

Every cancer patient is helping build a deeper understanding of treatments and behaviours of cancer, and as such, is contributing  to healing those that follow.  Given that cancer will affect many of us, take as much time as you can to be kind to cancer people.  

Their illness may save your life.

---

What You Don't Know You Don't Know. Part 2.

I heard once that you can break your knowledge into three categories.
There’s what you know.
There’s what you know you don’t know, and..... what you don’t know know, you don’t know.

My cancer diagnosis now meant that I was firmly in a place of discovering a pile of things I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

I previously had the tiniest of understandings about neurosurgery, oncology, and about hospitals.
I had had a couple of relatively minor operations, had brushes with cancer and had heard about Charlie Teo, but that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge about those things.

I definitely had only a minuscule amount of knowledge about brain tumours, brain surgery and cancer.

A results clinic was something I had never experienced and had no clue was even a thing. Apparently, after every few weeks of procedures, brain surgery patients are collected in a room to learn the results of their operation. Its more than that though. They are also coming face to face with the directions that their lives will take from that point on. A results clinic is kind of a big deal.

The “burden” of having a last name that starts with one of the last letters of the alphabet, was never more apparent. One by one, families and patients got up and disappeared behind a door. The patients, whose heads were variously invaded and scarred, were called out of the large waiting room, for about 40 minutes or so.

It seems wrong that a mere 40 minutes could be the context for a conversation that had such huge consequences.

We sat in that waiting room, watching the interactions of the others before me. The families emerged later, most leaning on each other, grey and pounded. Their faces were tightened and contorted. Their eyes were barely seeing as they guided each other out, hinting at the conversation they’d just had with the men who touched brains.

My thirty eight staples were removed from the arc above my right ear, and I returned to the waiting room.
Eventually my name was called.

There were six men in white coats across a table in front of my wife and I. We were squeezed into a room that was too small and entirely inappropriate for finding out the future trajectory of a life.

We sat, and they pulled out files.

The meeting was short. They felt that they had got all of the peach sized tumour. They had a quick look at the state of the wound and the holes that the removal of the staples had left, and admired how well I had healed.

From that point on, almost every question was met with...”your oncologist will answer that”.

I knew almost nothing about oncologists, except that they had something to do with cancer, and that they were definitely not high on my list of professionals to need.

I now know that after a brain operation, you can’t fly until scans show that the air that can enter your head during the surgery has dissipated. I was in Perth (on the other side of the country for almost a month) until it was safe to travel.

Getting back to my home I learned that you can’t drive a car for six months after brain surgery.

I also learned that I was highly likely to have a fit.

In the following months I also learned just how far people I loved would go to help, because of those things.

I very clearly learned that there were many people everyday, who were moving through different versions of this, and that many others situations were many times worse than mine.

I discovered that I wouldn’t swap my life for anyone’s and how much I loved my life.

I discovered my friends in a new way when things got bad. They morphed into something that had the flavour of their pasts with me, but with a light that shone brightly from behind that. I was driven everywhere, whenever I needed. I was watched by a flock of hawkeyed carers, to make sure I didn’t have a fit (or hit my head) whenever I surfed (way before I should have) and..the ultimate offer, made before I was allowed to fly...the friend who offered to drive across the country to collect my wife and I and drive us back. (knowing him, I truly believe it was an option).

I have always loved my community and had always known the value of keeping towns small and more intimate. Nothing validated that opinion more than my cancer diagnosis.

Navigating getting to work, to scans, treatments and appointments was handled effortlessly and with sensitivity and care. I was torn between the seriousness of the situation and the magnificence of my people.

I now know just how pervasive our fear of death is, and I know now how as a society, how poorly we deal with it.

I also learned that a cancer diagnosis (along with other major life events) changes relationships. There are some I was close to who disappeared, unable to deal with the possibilities of my cancer. Many of the strategies that humans use to avoid pain, discomfort and the “dreaded” death conversations, became very clear. Some people even crossed the road, or carefully went up a different aisle at the local supermarket.
I bare no ill will for them. I completely understand. I had felt the discomfort of not knowing what to say to someone facing cancer, and I know many who had disappeared had seen others walk that path only a few years before.

I know that the way I treat people with cancer is different now.
I go straight to them and I ask, “how are you travelling?”.....and then listen.
If I’m not up to that, I say, “I heard you were unwell, let me know if you need anything”.
I know how important being acknowledged is. It’s a fundamental desire of well people, and a gift to the sick.

I know that the cancer care people in my region are wonderful, as is my doctor, and the magnificent nurses I met in general, and in oncology. I can’t say enough about them. They rock.

Interestingly, I’m now drawn to people who have cancer, or people who are in a wheelchair, or who are clearly dealing with a hand that is challenging. The difference it can make to them, (and me) is magnificent.

It’s the small things...

I had simply signed a piece of paper.
No big deal.
It was a petition and it was a year or so before I collapsed.
It was to have a new melanoma drug put on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

It turns out that it was a breakthrough in melanoma treatment and it was having good results. The treatments were almost prohibitively expensive.

I’ve had opinions about our medical system. While I know it’s not perfect, I’m gentler and more sparing with my criticisms. I am now endlessly grateful to my government for my experience of our medicare system.

Scans, brain surgery and treatments were paid for by our taxes, and for that, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your contributions of your hard earned tax dollars. I am alive and writing this because you did (In many other countries I would probably be dead and my family bankrupt).

My three weekly trip to the oncology ward at the local hospital (to take the now free drug) showed me a world I had never known existed and information I had never even considered.
There were the blood tests prior to each treatment.
I discovered that blood can behave differently when you have cancer in your system.
I learned how firmly you have to push to get a needle through your skin. I had the “joy” of injecting myself twice a day with a blood thinner to break up the clots in my lungs. This was made more enjoyable by doing it in front of my squeamish friends (I’m a child).

I learned that not all doctors and nurses can get a cannula into your veins painlessly. I learned that you can’t puncture veins endlessly, and that the more they are punctured they harder they can be to puncture.

I learned I’m not a big fan of the side effects of radiation, and I’ve learned that my jokes now have a “darker” flavour, and are not to everyone’s taste.

Having said that, I now know that most things are now very funny, particularly the tiny and ridiculous concerns I had about many things in the past.

I learned how to superficially read scans, and watched, through tears in my eyes, the tumours in my lungs diminish and finally die.

There are still many things I don’t know.
I don’t know how many tears have been shed in the stairwell of my oncologists office, but I do know how many were mine.

The visits to the chemo ward were eye opening and transformational.
I re-learned something that was already in the column marked ‘what you know you know”.

While I thought I knew it, I realised that I actually didn’t really know it before. It had been a trite and shallow “knowing” that wasn’t truly understood.

Really sick people and children can give you the most incredible insights, if you listen, and I mean, REALLY listen. They can have a perspective that has had all the bullshit completely pared away.

In the two and a half years of treatments, I never once heard someone in the chemo ward say that they wished they’d worked more. I never heard someone say they wished their peers had envied the car they drove, or that they had a better TV....And I definitely NEVER heard one person say they wished they had worried more.

They had, however, wished they had spent more time with loved ones (and told them they loved them). They wished they’d let petty grievances go, wished they’d worked less, and absolutely wished they had played more.

Those people, and my cancer, showed me something wonderful that I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

I didn’t actually know how to really, truly live.

From sitting in that room with those people, the sick ones and the carers, I was given a life changing choice.

Suffer or live.

I chose to experience my cancer ride (as much as possible) with my head up and eyes wide open, milking each moment dry.

I chose to watch intently my own fear and concerns, and enjoy the gift of being able to feel even them.
I chose to look into the eyes of people I love, and deeply savour as many of the flavours of life as I possibly could...even the crappy ones, until I was either well, and free of cancer, or, my eyes finally shut.

---

---

Numbers. Part 1.

84, 50. 600. They’re just numbers. Seemingly insignificant, and yet I’ve discovered that they are in fact indescribably monumental.  

84 years. That’s roughly how many years an Aussie bloke has on the planet (give or take).

50, is roughly how many times my heart beats per minute.

600 times is roughly the number of times I breathe in an hour (calculations done with the limited accuracy of my phone’s functions).

Being relatively fit, well and active was who I was - and, I was pretty  sure I knew who I was.

The “I” I thought I was, was reasonably happy with that person, despite being aware of most flaws. 

I was fairly comfortable with life (apart from that tiny voice in the background that wasn’t quite satisfied, wasn’t quite sure that I was enough).

There was something in that voice that was comforting though. Perhaps it was mildly comforting because it was mine, and yet at the same time it was uncomfortable, like having an itch that wasn’t quite strong enough to have you go to the effort of having a good old soul soothing scratch. 

It was just there. 

The voice would chime in occasionally, and remind me of my dissatisfaction and inadequacy, sometimes screaming in my ear, and other times barely a whisper.  

I would unconsciously, and often, distract myself from it by doing lots of things until I inevitably did something so stupid or impulsive, that it couldn’t be hidden, and it would appear more obviously. Generally though, I largely ignored it  and went about my life. 

And then..... “I” died. 

The Doctor, an Irish woman, from behind the CT scan results said, ”You have a mass in your brain and lesions in your lungs”. Try not to worry, it might not be malignant”, or something to that effect. My hearing became a little fuzzy half way through that conversation. 

Her slightly indifferent, self-protective facade didn’t hide her concern though, and she left to do some unknown job in the depths of the hospital.

She left me in that bed, in a hospital, on the other side of the country. Alone, with my thoughts; alone with that voice. 

I’m a knockabout bloke. I’ve had my share of stitches, injures and trips to outpatients. But, I’d never been taken there in an ambulance, and I’d never collapsed after losing control of my body, and, I had not wet myself for a long time.

The voice was primed.......”You are royally f$#ked, it stated solidly”. 

I’ve been scared of cancer for a long time. If I’m honest, terrified would be a more accurate word. I’d seen enough of it to scare the living crap out of me, including the death of my father who I was sure was indestructible. 

That Doctor left me in that room with my thoughts.

I’ve been scared before; and done enough dumb stuff to have felt fear before, but this? This was next level. The fear I had felt in the past had been fleeting, and usually it was over in moments. 

This fear was epic; air driven from your chest, taste the adrenaline fear, and it threw itself full force at my rib cage,  over and over again, and each time the voice in my head started telling me what I knew about melanoma. 

 It took me back to the melanoma that had been removed from my shoulder three years earlier.  

I thought I knew what metastatic melanoma meant, and it was not pretty. Round and round my mind went.... epic fear, a tiny moment of escape, then back to blood draining from my face and a Mike Tyson punch to the sternum. 

I don’t know how long I did that, but eventually I’d had enough. 

Attempting to escape from my mind had not  worked. It was relentless. I was beaten,  busted up, scared and small. I was 53 years old. I wanted to hide in a tiny corner, and.... I wanted my Mum. 

It’s when I died. 

Or, should I say, “I” died. 

There is much that this experience has taught me, and many ways I am different because of it, but in fact,  I’d go so far as to say that it has been one of the most incredible times of my life. 

It know this seems a strange thing to say but having had stage 4 metastatic melanoma in brains and lungs was one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me.

It has been a wonderful gift, and has had me learning the lessons and changing, because of one simple thing I did. 

I surrendered. 

I stopped fighting. 

We’re supposed to fight, strive, push, get ahead. 

I stopped. 

I let it all go. 

I even let “me” go. 

In moments of crisis you get to find out who you are for “your” people and your community.

(I have to say that this part is difficult to write without crying - something I seem to have no problems doing now, as disconcerting as it is for others....and amusing for me).

I was humbled,....utterly and completely humbled by people. The efforts of the people who rallied, who rang; who offered help, who helped my family, who did things I wouldn’t ever have imagined needed doing,  has changed me forever. 

It was breathtaking. 

It was a shock to discover I was loved. 

I had gone about my life, helping out when I could, but never thought too much about it...until, it was turned back on me. 

What a revelation. I was actually loved. That voice I’d been hearing in the background that put in it’s two bobs worth about how unworthy, inept etc I was, either wasn’t seen by the people who loved me, or....it was ignored, accepted, and I was still loved, despite those failings. 

Perhaps who I thought I was, wasn’t  same way as many others saw me. 

I have forgiven myself for my behaviour prior to collapsing. The discovery I had a peach sized tumour in my right temporal lobe, pushing a part of my brain down my spinal cord and warping reality, got me off the hook.

Looking back, some of my behaviour was difficult to understand and seems crazy. It was easy to forgive myself for that, but what about the stuff I’d been doing all my life?

I couldn’t expect others to forgive all that? I couldn’t expect people to forgive my small behaviour, my rants, my occasional crankiness, my overzealous emotional blindness and clumsiness? Could I?

Why would they?

They had, and they did, because humans at their core are good. They have, beneath their pain, busyness, lives and their stories; a desire to contribute, and if you scratch down deep enough, they love, and they want to love. 

Underneath all our pettiness and greed, and all the potential to hurt, is the  the “L” word. Love. It’s there, it’s deep down, buried by advertising, squashed by the economy, and hidden by deadlines, lost in the scratch to survive, but.... gloriously, endlessly and wonderfully, it’s there. 

Songs have been written about it, religions built on it, people sit on cold rocks and chant in the mountains to come face to face with it. 

It’s there. 

I saw it, and, I still do. 

I am eternally grateful to those people who rose up and helped. They did entirely everyday actions, and yet they did something huge. They showed and gave me love...despite my flaws. 

That love was a text, a photo, a plane ticket home, money, concern, and more, but what it was was capital L LOVE, just below the surface. 

That net of love, helped me to surrender. I fell back into the arms of people and decided to look for the love. 

There were logistical things happening in the background too. I was moved to another hospital, I was ambulanced, nursed, doctored, brain surgery-ed and fed. Sometimes love was deeper in the person, hidden behind doing, but, it was there, always there. 

I  now know “surrender” to be a word laden with incredible possibilities. 

So many indescribably beautiful things were available to me as a result of surrendering.

To be clear - surrender doesn’t mean giving up. It means trusting, it means acceptance, and, it means peace. 

I discovered a peace that I didn’t know existed. Behind that peace, behind that acceptance, there was little need for “me”. 

In surrender I discovered that I wasn’t who or what I thought I was. 

“I” died.

I discovered that “I” was largely unnecessary in the face of brain surgery and cancer. I discovered “I” was a construct. 

I was free of “me”. I was free to see behind the stories, and what I saw was love. 

When my daughters flew to my side and sang a few words of a song I had sung to them when they were children, I wept like a baby. I wept deep tears of gratitude. 

When the neurosurgeons read me the list of potential side effects, I felt their concern, I felt and saw love. 

When I woke some 7 hours later, in pain and confused, the nurses were love. The tea lady who made what was possibly the world’s best cup of tea... made a cup that tasted of love. 

The end of life counsellor, physio, speech pathologist, all did their jobs. Everyday, mundane activities - but, now that “I” was out of the way, behind it all, all I could see was love. 

Everyday activities, everyday breaths, heartbeats, mundane? 

If you say so. 

I came out of my brain surgery and into my dance with cancer, conscious of my breath, conscious of the 13.8 billion years of stars collapsing and cosmic convulsions that allowed me to breathe, to have a heartbeat and to be conscious. 

“I” died, and I fell deeply in love with  some numbers. 84, 50, 600, 13.8 billion. With that recognition of the importance of those numbers, also fell utterly and deeply in love with life, and, seemly strangely enough, even in love with cancer.