A decade ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and a biopsy revealed that 80% of my own cells had gone rogue on me. Although I thought, at the time, that I knew almost everything there was to know about grief (wasn’t I writing a book on grief?), I still freaked out. Two weeks after receiving the results of the biopsy, I had a weird dream: I was in a church with all of my work colleagues (what we were doing in the church, I hadn’t the foggiest). A fire broke out inside the church and I led everyone out and directed them to safety, on the other side of the rail track. I took the rear guard. Just as I was crossing the rail road, power suddenly went out of my legs, I could not move. I heard the train hoot. I could do nothing about it. So, I just lay on top of the rail track, knowing fully well that this beast was going to slice me in two. Oh my, just like that! I wasn’t, in the least, startled!

My cancer staging was only a 2b, out of a maximum score of 4; I still had 20% my prostate gland free of cancer and, these rogues were still confined within the prostate sac. ‘So where is all this sheer helplessness coming from?’ I asked myself. ‘Why I am acting as if I am in the ancestral inner chamber, waiting for my name to be called?’ – I knew the answer but the cloud of grief blanketed any meaningful solutions. While all this was going on, it was business as usual, except I could not hoodwink my wife!

One evening at super time, a lettuce came to my rescue. ‘Wow’, I said to myself. ‘This is neat’, so after super, I retired to the basement, to ponder what I had just experienced at dinner table. I decided to pay my respects:

“Thank you, lettuce. Thank you, tomato. Thank you, chicken. Thank you all for revealing this mystery to me in my hour of need. ‘I am who I am, and who I am not, I am too.’ I had no idea how deeply embedded each one of you is in me. You make me who I am. I am part of you and you are part of me – my whole. I am comforted. Thank you for your selfless sacrifices. Thank you for feeding me so I can have the strength to carry on. Thank you for giving me your elements to replenish and sustain my tired body. I am very grateful to you for giving me your fibers, minerals and oils. They will lubricate my passages. I am eternally thankful to you for your protein. They will give me strength and bulk. Thank you for your sugar to power my brain and the rest of me. Above all, thank you for being in me and for being me. I am grateful to you, grocer, for stocking my food and for the long hours you work so I will get my food fresh and on time. Gratitude belongs to you, driver, for delivering my sustenance. You, farmer, what can I say? I am humbled beyond belief when I think about you. Please accept my sincere ‘thank you.’ I am very thankful to you, bumble bee, to you, daddy long legs, and to you, earthworm. I am grateful to you, sun, water, and wind. I am humbled and full of gratitude to you, plant, the engine of life of the planet earth. Thank you all for giving me strength and courage and for showing me the virtues of hard work, humility, perseverance, labour of love and resilience. Thank you for showing me that there are others to care for, both inside and outside my body. Thank you for the knowledge that others took care of me so that I can take care of myself and others. Thank you for showing me that I am interdependent that we are all interconnected. ‘I am because you are.’ Thank you for showing me that, even in my darkest hour, even when the going is rough, even when I feel at my loneliest, saddest, angriest, you are all right here beside me, keeping me grounded. What a glorious gift of life! I clearly see that I am never alone. Thank you for giving me this anchor. I accept and receive it with humility and sincere gratitude.”

After this, I started the journey of befriending and working with my new companion – my own cell, gone rogue – until we can find a mutual way to part company or until the colony of the offspring become the agents that will hand me over to the ancestral world.

I gained three insights (which I incorporated in my Grief book: FINDING COMFORT As you Heal from Abuse, Trauma or Loss – www.https://drguyekisa.com) from this experience.

Like the sun which is the light and power source of our solar system, we each have inside us a light and power source – an inner energy or spiritual central core, the furnace of our being. Sadly, this energy can be dimmed and its power weakened by despair and pain of loss or trauma, making us tired, exhausted and submerged in our grief pain. After loss or trauma, we can and need to bring this light source into our awareness, plug into it again to light up the dimmed spirit, fire up the weakened body and unclog the fogged-up mind.
Death is life in motion. It is death that sustains life for, without death, there is no life – a lettuce plant, a tomato and a chicken died so I can continue to live till my turn comes. However, the pain of death scares the heck out of each one of us. We are each endowed with the strength and potential strength to navigate the in-betweens of birth and death and to ride and transcend the shearing forces of change. Until I die, I am alive and have no opinion on death. So, I will celebrate life.