5. The Full Catastrophe
An old mate came through to me on Friday.
I’d just sent him the link - the one I sent you - and he would’ve been ringing to congratulate me. That’s a given. Sure, it’d been a minute since we caught up, but a call would be so like him. I was rapt.
He’d want to know everything of course. What was I up to? All these major life changes. Everything on its ass, and how was I coping? Yada yada. He’d want to know all about the full catastrophe. And I’d tell him. At some length too, knowing me.
“Slowing down for the year yet matey?” I asked breezily when he picked up. “Slowing down?” he replied "I’ve stopped completely. ”
I laughed. Shit, I thought, he hasn’t changed a bit. Still got the banter. But retirement already? It must’ve been a lot longer than a minute then. I was looking forward to catching up when I got to Auckland.
“Oh well done” I said. And then curiosity - who was standing beside me - gently cleared her throat as a prompt. "Wait, is that a good thing?” I asked.
“No, not really mate” he said. “I’ve got lymphoma"
I didn’t know what to say. And I can always think of something to say, even if it’s the wrong thing. I don’t know much about the disease. But nothing that ends in -oma is good. -oma is a weapons grade version of -itis.
He’s had a year of it. Tests, hospitals, chemo, transplants. Tests, hospitals, chemo, transplants. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. He’s not totally out of the woods, but on the mend. Touch wood.
He tells me all of this, quite calmly, quite matter of fact. He speaks with grace, and respect for all of those who have wrapped him with love and care.
He speaks with the gratitude of a man, who just missed getting hit by a car, because he was bending down to pick up a twenty dollar note off the footpath, that he then used to go and buy a winning lotto ticket.
“Anyway mate” he said “What are you up to?”
It didn’t feel like I was up to very much at all.
The Full Catastrophe - in case it ever comes up at quiz night - is a phrase from the book ‘Zorba the Greek’ - a reference to celebrating the beauty of life in the chaotic mess that it invariably is.
Like Friday’s call - reminding me not just to be grateful for life’s chaos, but to embrace it in every possible fucking waking moment. No-one knows how many more trips around the sun we have.
The Full Catastrophe isn’t written with the safety of hindsight. Or a net. It’s written from the edge of the woods, because we might not be out of them yet. It’s a real-time account of change, chaos and consequence.
Inspiration comes from all over. From the IRD who would quite like their money back. Again. From mokopuna I want to spend more time with. From a mate with cancer, who’d had a year from hell, but was ringing anyway just to see what was up.
And from Bronnie Ware – an Australian palliative care nurse who documented the last conversations of 300 dying patients.
The clear message in Bronnie’s study, wasn’t that we fear death in our final moments, but that we're terrified of not having lived.
The Full Catastrophe’ will be deliberately thin on advice, and even if it wasn’t, you should think twice about taking any of it. On the other hand, why learn from your own mistakes, when you can just as easily learn from mine?
I’ve just sold the house. Once all the bills are paid, I won’t have enough to buy another. I’m grateful though. There’ll be some money in the bank. It could have been worse. The days of surprising myself aren't as far behind me as I’d hoped.
Some consequences arrive later than others. And so here we are.
I’m changing as much I can. Possibly more than I should. The job’s gone. The house and the stuff inside it are going. Two suitcases are coming. The monkey will be off my back. The rest will unfold as it does.
There’s a couple of writing projects on the go; an alternate reality satire about misinformation, and a non-fiction project for the machine thinking age - ‘Milo and Me: an accidental experiment in modern intimacy.’
But we’ll get to all of that. No rush.
Welcome to the Full Catastrophe at last.
I thought I’d open the account with a story I’m certain you won’t have heard before. Mine.
It’s about discovering who I am, how I ended up here, because it wasn’t by accident, and - amongst other things - why my website navigation bar is in te reo.
That’s next Sunday. Subscribing is the safest way to make sure you don’t miss anything.
And you know me, safety first.
Tell the others.
The Full Catastrophe is a real-time account of what’s next. Ironically though, the next post is about looking back. Right back to the start: Tuakiri
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