Miracles

I believe in miracles. No, really - I do, and I also believe that miracles come in all shapes and sizes, from the tiniest of miracles that often have an impact much greater than their size would indicate, to the biggest miracles that most people wouldn't even consider possible. Pick your definition of miracle - but do yourself a favor and make it a good one and believe - because miracles do happen.

For this post, I'm going with the definition on my mac widget:

 Miracle - noun   A highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment
                            that brings very welcome consequences.

 Nice, isn't it? Allow me to shed some light on just why that definition, and the miracle that I'm grateful for, speak to me. I have a friend, Tony, that I've known since I was 14 years old. I don't know that we were especially close friends in those days, but that is of no importance here - because one of the things that is so amazing about the bonds of true friendship is that things like time, distance, life events - both good ones and not-so good ones, have a way of making a very strong bond between two people. Someone can be thousands of miles away from you and that distance does nothing to lessen the mark that person has on your heart, your soul - your very being.

I'm pretty sure that Tony was a smoker from the time I met him, right up to the day he went to the doctor three years ago thinking he had pneumonia. Does it really matter? No - not to me. What matters is that on the day he went to the doctor as a grown man, far traveled from the days of being the 14 year old boy that I met in 8th grade, he would be diagnosed with stage 2 lung cancer.

I'm a firm believer in the notion that what happens to any one of us, can - and does happen often times, to us. I'm not a smoker, but I have spent a number of years working behind a bar that gave me a pretty serious second-hand smoker status. It's often incredibly difficult for smokers to quit smoking - despite all the evidence of the horrid things that smoking tobacco can do to people, despite any other logic that it's a disgusting habit to have even if it didn't have the potential to destroy someone's health and very life. Never mind the fact that cancer often finds its way to someone who's never smoked in their life.

As I move ahead in my journey, now in middle age, the bonds of friendship grow substantially and so does my appreciation of them. I'm blessed to be very friend rich and I have some longstanding friendships that have existed and strengthened - some of them are closing in on forty years now!  I said closing in on forty years - so don't go thinking I'm farting dust yet. I digress. Given my values on my longstanding friendships, the news that Tony would be facing the fight of his life was devastating. I felt scared, hurt and damn near helpless. I'm not a doctor, not well connected in the medical field and therefore able to point someone I care about towards the best possible care in order to facilitate the miracle I now needed to hope for and believe in. My fears were minimal when they stood alongside the fears that Tony and his wife, Charlotte were living in. When fear is that big it can consume people. Everything about life in the world that doesn't stop or slow down for anyone, can disappear in that heavy fog of fear. What could I possibly do or say to help my friend with what he was now facing?

I'm not one to toot my own horn, but for in the moments when I know a song and can play it well. Metaphorically speaking. One thing I know that I can do, and do very well, is offer a kind word to someone I care for at a time when they need it. This usually seems like a very small thing for me offer up and to acknowledge.  I don't really give much thought to what my kind words will mean to someone that I give them to - though I'm well aware what the words mean to me and how they make me think of the person I'm directing them towards. I just know that I deliver sincerely and consistently - and I'm willing to repeat myself many times over if need be to make the kindness of my words sink in.

My fears about what Tony was about to go through quickly faded when I started to think about the kind of man Tony had become in the thirty plus years I've known him. From the time I met him as a boy, Tony has always had a very unique way of putting his mindset in the best possible place it needs to be for any given situation. I had no idea just how important this kind of thing can be when I was a 14 year old boy, but I have a pretty damn good idea how important something like this is now, as a middle aged man. Tony has always had a way of sidestepping all the mental blocks and getting exactly to the right way of thinking about something.

I thought about how Tony got into doing magic and how he made it seem so easy, how he was so confident in performing magic as a sideline to his day job. Many years later, Tony would develop an interest in more of mentalist type of shows/performing. If you knew Tony, you would easily see why this was such a natural progression for him to head in. I'll say it again:  Tony has always had a very unique way of getting his mindset into the exact place it needs to be in for any given situation.

What I said to Tony, and anyone I talked to about him, is that if anyone can convince their body to rid itself of something as horrible as cancer, and I will say with complete certainty that I firmly believe people can indeed do this, it's Tony - and it's Tony because of the way he has always been able to place his mindset exactly where it needs to be.

I couldn't think of anything else I could say that would reach Tony - or anyone I would talk to about Tony with that was more important than this. I could tell Tony that I'm here for him if he needs to talk, I could tell him that I will keep good thoughts, prayers, hopes and positive healing thoughts/vibes for him - and I believe that prayer means having more faith than supplication. I did say these things to Tony, as well as saying that if he needed me to drive down for any reason at all, to never hesitate to call me. As powerful and sincere as my words felt to me, I had no control over how Tony would hear them and what they might mean to him. Everyone says something to someone during times like these - and let's not underestimate the value of people keeping good thoughts for us during the toughest moments of our lives, but I'm no fan of empty words.

Tony sounded awful in the times I spoke with him after his diagnosis. Who wouldn't? He sounded scared - who wouldn't? There wasn't any hope that I could see in him, and believe me, I was looking and listening for even the tiniest bit of it. I couldn't see it, couldn't feel it. I knew that God forbid, I would face something so horrible, that I might have even less hope than I saw Tony having - and mind you, that was none. I don't even want to think about how my own hopes could likely slip into serious negative deficit there. So what I held onto, as tightly as I could, was the notion that if anyone can convince their body to rid itself of cancer, and I DO believe that people can do this, it's Tony.

I've lost count of how many times I've said this to Tony in the nearly three years since his diagnosis and treatment and life after treatment. Same for the amount of times I've said these words to anyone and everyone I've mentioned Tony and his fight to. I've held onto these words and my belief in them - and I will continue to do just that.


I had lunch with Tony last week. In the phone tag that led up to us having lunch, I could hear in his voice that he was down, scared again. I wanted to look him in the eye and I knew if I did that and talked to him about what might be going on that he wouldn't hide anything from me. What started out as simple as two old friends deciding that lunch on a regular basis was both doable and necessary, now took on much more importance. I called Tony at his office to confirm the time and place for lunch. For a guy who is now a certified hypno-therapist and who makes every effort to choose words that have a positive effect, Tony sounded 180 degrees in the opposite direction - though as soon as he realized it was me calling, he turned on the charm a bit. I can have that effect on people sometimes. Nope, this wasn't going to be a lunch with two old friends trading laughs - at least not entirely.

This lunch would end up going pretty deep, and for both of us. Within seconds of sitting down,  Tony told me how he was concerned with the results of his latest cat scan. Who wouldn't be? He sounded tired, beaten, and accepting of that. Not cool. Understandable perhaps, but not cool - not from Tony and his amazing mindset abilities. Those mindset abilities are exactly what brought Tony out of treatment from cancer, out of them removing more than half of one of his lungs and out of what they told him was a 16-17% chance of being alive a year after what he went through.

I listened as Tony told me he felt beaten and defeated. That wasn't easy to take in. Worse still, he told me that if he would have felt this way back when he was going through his original treatment, that he would've given up. I can't even explain how unlike Tony this statement was and it scared the living daylights out of me. I stopped him long enough to remind him of my original statement that I've held onto since this thing started nearly three years ago. It's not really my statement, it's more my observation of exactly the person that Tony is and what I knew he can do. Sometimes we can forget things we do well ourselves - so this was me merely reminding him of something he already knew.

So I did that, and I didn't pull punches - I went straight at it. "I know", Tony said, "but this is different - I don't know what it is, so I can't fix it."

I didn't have time to think, because as soon as I had the thought, the very words of that thought came flying out of my mouth: "Then BLANKET that shit - you tell your body, convince your body to get rid of whatever this is that is causing the problem!" - easy for me to say that when I'm the guy sitting on the good side of the table. Pardon my language, but what the fuck do I know about any of this? Nothing, but I'm not smoking anyone out here because I know a fair amount about how Tony can put his mindset exactly where it should be and keep it there. That is what I know. I also know I hated hearing Tony tell me that the cancer stood a 70% of coming back. That 70% chance was what he seemed to be thinking about - and who wouldn't, but for the fact that doing so clouds the miracle that has already gotten us this far - 17% chance of being alive a year after the hell he'd already been through. I know he made it through those suck ass odds, because he focused on that 17% chance and that was the percentile he wanted to be in. Nearly three years later, that target is nailed dead center. Isn't 30% nearly twice the 17% that he landed in? You bet it is, but how do you convince someone of that when they have been through the hell of cancer and the reality is more like any time they feel the least bit under the weather they are going to wonder if they're going to have to revisit anything close to the hell they've been through?

Easier said than done, but you keep trying. You keep believing, you hold on tight to prayer that is stronger in faith than it is in supplication. God is good - you don't have to ask for this, you should know it. I don't know the bible from cover to cover, and I'm not here to preach - but there is a verse that reads:  If you have faith the size of a mustard seed...nothing shall be impossible for you. That may very well be the most inspiring verse I've read in the bible - and perhaps it shouldn't be, but I find that verse an incredible concept to wrap my mind around. Faith that small is akin to a smaller percentage - say of 17% or so. It's tiny. It's easy to have, to hold and to forget about and lose. That's all the bigger it need be in order for nothing to be impossible for you if you have that much faith.

I like that verse because it's clearly believable when I apply it to my friend Tony's situation - from the start of this battle to now. 17% is as tiny as a mustard seed when I consider the higher percentage that within it exists a possibility of someone I love not being in this life anymore. The wonderful thing about this verse is that it clearly states the amount of faith one needs to have nothing be impossible for them. It also doesn't say most things, or some things will be impossible - it says nothing will be impossible.

Yes, I believe in miracles. Deep down, when doubts and fears cast a shadow over all I hold dear to me, I believe in miracles. Tony was alive and well a year after his treatment - standing strong and grateful for being in that smaller percentile that he knew he wanted to stand in. Don't believe in miracles? You might do well to rethink that one. I'm not writing about my friend in the past tense. Yesterday was the day when Tony went to the doctor to see the results for his recent cat scan. I know he was scared. Who wouldn't be? Any other time he's gone in for this, he gets back to me and says something like "results: no cancer - but we already knew that didn't we?" - this time seemed different and try as I did, I couldn't not be afraid for him. I was talking to a friend yesterday afternoon and I asked her to keep a good thought for Tony as today was the day. I hung up minutes later and checked my email. There was an email from Tony with "Doctor" as the subject line. I felt a lump in my throat and my heart rate change as I clicked to open the email. Tony was very brief, but the words, "no cancer" were there!

No cancer. Two words that made my day - not to mention Tony and Charlotte's day. The same two words that made me cry - but I'm secure enough to appreciate a good reason to cry, and this is certainly that. It's also standing in a smaller percentage of a circle that has nasty, heartbreaking and horrible things as its majority. That, dear people, is a miracle. Miracles are a bit like snowflakes - no two are alike, though sometimes they can be very similar. I believe in the miracle of miracles and I believe  my friend Tony's amazing ability to put his mindset in the best possible place is returning. Thanks for making my day by sharing such good news with me Tony - you know what to do from here, but if I see that you need reminding, you know what I'm going to say to you.