It was not so hard believing in the end
as long as it remained abstraction,
shadow the wind dragged through
waist-high grass, a passage like the wave
some philosophers say our lives are,
a body stirred from nothing
to brief crescendo, then dropped
into nothing once more. Each one of us
will take our turn crossing that field,
far from the lights of cities, nameless
under nameless stars. Alone
in that emptiness, the small gears
of civilization dither and lock,
and the older, larger gears, the ones
ever-turning and ever-silent, let themselves
be heard for a moment, long enough
to let us know the shadow
on the edge of the field is no mirage.
But we are not the wind. We have
a choice which direction we take.

--From Al Maginnes, “The Edge of the Field”

I was asked by our friend and my newest ASU colleague, Dr. Kathy Miller, to discuss “cancer and the family” in her graduate seminar last Monday night. I was happy to do it. Her students have been reading my blog and their questions were informed and polite, plus I had the advantage of having talked through some of what I might say with San, who gave me the theme I ended up using: “That when you receive a cancer diagnosis everything changes and, at the same time, life goes on.”