Peggy’s prompt—May 1, 2012—hope is a thing

Hope is a thing, an almost tangible thing that I count on. After all, hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? People ask me sometimes how I can be “so strong”, dealing with metastatic cancer day after day. And I guess a lot of how I cope is hope. Hope that tomorrow will be better, or at least no worse, or if not that, then something that I (or my doctors) can deal with. To be totally honest, often times my financial situation causes me to lose hope more than the cancer does. (Of course, the cancer is the main reason I have a financial “situation” so I guess it’s all related.)

Hope, I think, must somehow be hardwired into us. Perhaps living in a family that displays a lot of hope (which mine didn’t) can help, too. But I give credit to my hope to my human genes. Somehow it doesn’t occur to me (or very seldom does) to give up hope. I mean, what would I do with my days if I didn’t have hope? Would I just lie in bed, bored silly, restless, and wait for the grim reaper? What if that took months, even years? I couldn’t last even one day in that condition. I’d have to get up and clean the cat box, and fill the dish washer, and load the clothes washer, and read the newspaper, and watch Dancing with the Stars (yearning to be able to do what they do).

So I guess as long as I have cats, and they use a cat box, I’ll still have hope.