Day 0

An epic battle is underway in my body, and I am rooting for my home team to lose! When the process is complete, my blood DNA will be my brother's, yet my tissue will be my own or some admixture of the two. Crazy huh? It boggles the imagination that my brother, Kevin's gift is the only way left for me to survive beyond a few months. I grew up in a time when leukemia was a death sentence from which there was no parole, no pardon.

Well, yesterday was Day 0, the day my brother's stem cells and T-cells took up residence in my blood stream. As with most visits from relatives, the initial meeting was cordial and friendly. However, after the discovery that the visit is a permanent one, struggles over storage space, sleeping quarters, and who gets the remote were bound to begin. There will be conflicts with the neighbors, but mediators are being sent in to help keep conflict to appropriate levels. Eventually, it is hoped that all will become friends and learn to live together.

And as a nice side-effect, I get to live longer. Today is Day +1, what a grand thought and what a wonder to be grateful to one's own brother for!

Mick

Day 0

Imagine you hold a great gift of life,
Imagine that it is a part of you.
Though granting that gift cause you pain and strife,
Imagine that you do what you must do .
What love has a brother for another.
But simply to put his whole life on hold?
What love has another for a brother,
Who gives him his one chance at growing old?
Though ties of birth often weaken with years,
And distance creates a weakening span,
The family ties will bridge fears and tears,
And the younger man saves the elder man.
His sacrifice left us, most certainly,
Joined closely as brothers could ever be.


Mick McKellar
February 2011

Whispers of a Silent Fear

Ultimately, I must stand alone and fight against an enemy born of my own body. Doctors can pump chemicals into my veins. Xrays and blood tests and electrical measurements map the progress of this insidious killer, as well as the small and costly victories in an internal war of attrition. Mercenary troops are recruited, and though ready to kill anything in sight, need strong guidance and training to attack only the enemy, not their new allies.

Each night, during the long dark hours when sleep seems unreachable, I stand alone on that inner battlefield, and search for the enemy. Yet, it does not show itself, sending only the broken and malformed victims of its dark, bloody alchemy. The chemical forces are fearfully strong, yet the enemy of my enemy is my friend, no matter how powerful and gruesome to behold.

I search for the enemy: It is found in the shadows and fights only in darkness. I fight. I fight with the power of my dark allies and with the light sent by my friends.

Mick

Whispers of a Silent Fear

There in the dark at the edge of my mind,
An indigo, black velvet, darkness looms,
Filling the verge and each crevice it finds,
Hallways and stairwells and dark, shuttered rooms.
Voices that tease the sheer fringe of my sense,
Whispering warnings that I cannot hear,
Force me to listen with no recompense,
Forging an aural-steel dragnet of fear.
Rivulets of restlessness drip in the gloom,
Shadows of foreboding form 'round each bend,
Trigger the shivers, that foretelling doom,
Signal a lonely and imminent end.
My friends help me win this dark, inner fight,
By sending me love and faith's brilliant light.

Mick McKellar
February 2011

Masques

Why do I write so much about myself? First, I learned that you should write about something you know and mostly understand. Second, my friends taught me that it is OK to share. Finally, I get to "scoop" the gossips and tattletales.

I grew up as a grimly private little fellow, unwilling to communicate anything about myself or my family. Even while on the John Glenn High School Varsity Debate Team, I was something of an enigma...dynamic in an argument, but reticent...even silent...as a stone. At the time, I built elaborate fantasies about being the lone wolf, keeping anything about me intensely private. My hero? Mr. Spock on Star Trek.

Time spent on stage, wonderful hours spent with my friends in the Calumet Players, and advice from some friends and some artists in the Pine Mountain Music Festival, taught me that in the art-forms of the stage, sharing self can bring characters to life. Life experience also taught me the power of viral velocity and the power of information to grow with each telling of each tiny, titillating tidbit. Therefore, I share, but I write the script, I choreograph my steps, and I direct myself as I perform. My show is my own, and it is based on a true story...at least as I see it.

This, I learned, is the true value of autobiography over auto-grandiloqui

Mick


Masques

I'm dancing a desperate minuet,
My lines are a dimly-lit memory,
My steps are manic and frantic, and yet
The truths of my feelings are plain to see.
The costumes are exquisitely designed,
And clash with the coarse choreography;
Yet, I think the audience does not mind,
As long as I speak a soliloquy.
What starts out as an intermedio,
Can quickly become a pageant, full blown --
Much faster than TV or radio,
Has the velocity of gossip grown.
And so, my friends the true story will know,
Through my true, elaborate, one-man-show.

Mick McKellar
February 2011

Touching

My online world is sight and sound. Words on a page or a screen are often touted to "touch" someone or "strike a chord." Though words can inspire, tire, even foster desire, there is nothing quite like a poke in the ribs to get your undivided attention. A hand laid gently on the shoulder connects two people immediately and forges a physical link impossible to duplicate with any word or whisper.

Our society has established many boundaries and rules for the proprieties of touching each other, because it is such a powerful sensation. Yet I know that nothing reassures a half-sedated and thoroughly-confused patient like the gentle touch of a nurse or the warm pressure of a loved one holding your hand. Nothing touches the heart like the feather touch of a grandchild's tiny hand on the venerable face of a doting grandfather, or the quiet peace of a grandbaby snuggled in your arms, content to dream in your embrace. Touch says: "I am here!" It says: "I am not alone!"

Mick

Touching

My soul must grow or wither away,
Every second, every day;
And both sight and sound must feel, to play
The harmonies of my living lay.

I touch the world and it touches me:
A partnership of necessity.
Without that most tactile reverie,
My song would falter and silent be.

Could I not feel life's most tattered thrum,
While holding it twixt finger and thumb,
My soul would fade and my heart grow numb:
I know I would to despair succumb.

Yet the briefest touch or swift caress
(Even a slap in the face, I guess),
When human shell, under sweet duress,
Senses connection and tenderness --

It makes my world of shadows and stone,
Where a sense of "other" is unknown,
A tactual realm of blood and bone.
I know that I am not alone.

Mick McKellar
February 2011

Journey's End

The doctors at Mayo Clinic certainly spend a great deal of their time pointing out the dangerous and risky nature of blood and marrow stem cell transplants. They are required to describe in detail all the things that can go wrong with the process, all the terrible outcomes that are statistically and distinctly possible. Much can go awry, they say, and then they add that I could die. As they do so, they look me right in the eyes, as if to probe my thoughts and find all those dark little shadows, the dim and shapeless fears dancing about behind my orbs.

I spent hours closeted with a psychologist and even a few minutes with a psychiatrist, as they measured my resolve and my coping skills. However, in my life I have seen death. I've witnessed it, smelled it, and even tasted it. I have danced with death more than once myself, most recently as I drifted, sleepily, near the brink during a blast crisis. I remember dancing a fiery dance with death when only 18 months old. And I remember the shivering dance and cold pain when my appendix nearly burst at age 14. I watched a friend die in a sudden, horrible accident, and stood the death watch as my mother slowly passed from this world. I held the lifeless body of a dear friend and tried to blow life back in...to no avail. Death and I, we are acquainted. My dreams of late have reviewed these meetings, and my prayers have sought solace and understanding.

William Hazlitt said: "To die is only to be as we were before we were born." Jesus said that life is everlasting...

Mick

Journey's End

There was a time there was no me.
Why should I worry to cease to be?
All those centuries I was not there,
Why should my absence cause much care?
I journeyed on Earth, some time to spend,
Yet ev'ry journey has an end;
Though my weary body down must lie,
My soul, my spirit does not die.
I feel no need to worry or cry,
We talked about it, God and I.
I will simply cease on Earth to roam,
Lie down, and sleep my way back home.
Because I lived, because I was me,
I do not fear to cease to be.

Mick McKellar
February 2011