But This Day Gives Pause

By Steve Carr

My morning ablutions began today with cold water. I can’t remember when I didn’t splash water in my face, eyes wide open, first thing each morning. Call it a ritual, but it serves to clear the slumber from my brain.

During my visit to the privy, my eye caught an Esquire magazine headline, meant, as they tend to do, to get me to look inside. It read, “84 Things a Man Should Do Before He Dies.”

As one who does fast work in that smallest room in the house, I didn’t open the magazine, but left thinking, why 84 and not 101 or 500? And then realized I wouldn’t even read the article before I died.

I did check my emails.

Three messages gave me pause. My college roommate’s mother endured a twelve-hour surgery for esophageal cancer.

My selfless and intuitive New York friend and personal “editor” wrote from a hospital room where she stands watch and demands attention for her mother, who has pancreatic cancer.

The third came from the administrator of a prostate cancer support website. The same site I discovered four years ago, after my own diagnosis and before surgery, the site where hundreds of men share experiences, hope and advice. The site that helped me feel not alone.