Normal

We cannot live in the excruciating moment 
the moment of shock, then disbelief,
then despair.
The wound is tended to immediately by
the psyche’s attempt to make meaning,
take control, to vector itself 
back to a state of normal.
Even if nothing about the excruciating moment
could be considered acceptable,
acceptance comes. Little by little. 

I lived thirty-two years, incrementally accepting
the unacceptable until one night, weeping,
driving on ice in the pelting rain
I knew this was not normal. 
The excruciating moment 
cracked open a long-hardened
shell of denial. 
Something had to change. 

Then came the excruciating moment
of being loved in all the ways
it had so long been denied.
Shock, disbelief, despair. 
This was not the normal, prescribed order
of things. Yet Love persisted,
insisted, on the truth of a 
lovable soul. Acceptance
came. Little by little. 

We are six weeks from his diagnosis,
one week since his first chemo. 
Tears fell like rain as the nurse 
pierced his skin with a needle, the 
IV tree of chemicals at the
ready.  “This is our virgin 
run,” he said, smiling. 
“We’re just being redirected.”
These have always been my 
Beloved’s words when we are 
lost on the road, wandering a 
landscape of mistaken turns.

We cannot live in the excruciating moment 
the moment of shock, then disbelief,
then despair. So we cling to the thin thread 
that all will be well. All is well. 
A new normal. Acceptance 
comes. Little by little.