As I am looking at the last few milliliters of Rituxin in the IV bag, the words "It is finished" flash like fireworks across my mind. All day today I have had a more positive feeling. On the first day of this round they handed me a schedule for "the next round" in October, and I had to remind them that this was it, the last maintenance round. I won't be back in the chair in October. The IV machine beeps and Jesse, one of the RNs comes over and says "Done" before removing the bag from the stand and unhooking the tubing from my arm. Then removing the needle from the vein and clipping the ID tag from my wrist, she wraps the cotton ball over the tiny hole with coban and says, "you are free."
It is likely, she or one of the other nurses has used those same words on any of the other 15 days I have been in for an infusion in the last 2 years. Like a whisper that your not sure you really heard. They just didn't have much weigh before. Some how, today, they seem more real. Tasting and swallowing that cool refreshing water, the mirage has become real. What is hoped for has come true.
My reason says that there are many possibilities in the future, this likely is not the end of my cancer experience. Materially, in this world it is yet to happen. Yet...
...It is finished.
I am not even sure why, but for some reason, there seems to be a significance here, beyond my reason.
A gnawing...
...a knowing beyond my reason...
...telling me that those words have a meaning beyond their daily use in our language.
Like so many truely spiritual things, they don't make sense, they may not even show up on the radar until we get there. And we can't explain it to others until we look back, and even then, the explanation, the words do not convey the realness of the experience. Very little words need to be said for those who have been there...a knowing smile may be all that is needed. A shower in a mountain falls, the green flash before the sunset, the oppressive weight of the stars on a moonless night above treeline in the wilderness, the smile, indelibly creasing the face after floating through waist deep powder.
I am not looking back yet, I have no reasonable, cognitive explanation... the knowing is deeper than that.
"It is finished," is the trailhead to reality.
