Brain cancer is...

February 9, 2016 2:46 p.m.

...Life 2.0.

[Viewer's advisory:  Serious content ahead.  We hope this is offset by (a) the next few posts, which we anticipate to be happy ones, and (b) the fact that in this image you can see what's under the staples:  Darrell's Terminator skull cap with titanium plates. Cool fillings in the back molars too.]

Yesterday morning as Darrell enjoyed his half of the breakfast burrito with his smiling and patient wife, he remarked, "I don't remember what life was like before my diagnosis."  That got us thinking.  Brain cancer seems to have dumped Life 1.0 from the hard drive and replaced it with Life 2.0. 

Together we composed a list of some ways that our Life 2.0 seems, for now, to differ from Life 1.0. 

• Life 2.0 = Little interest in the upcoming presidential election.  (Life 1.0 = arguing vociferously for our candidates.)
• Life 2.0 = Accelerated decluttering. Life 1.0 = Keep it just in case.
• Life 2.0 = New (ir)rationalities.  Never during Life 1.0 did Darrell want to punch a man using a walker for the heinous crime of living long enough to be old. (Andi has already admitted the desire to punch people in the face, but she's less particular in who's going to get it.)
• Life 1.0 = Empathy for many, many terrible cancers.  Life 2.0 = total preoccupation with just one. 
• Life 2.0 = Learning the other partner's jobs.
• Life 1.0 = The un-examined life.  Life 2.0 = Reflection on every experience.
• Life 2.0 = Augmented reality.  Amplification of colors, beauty, sadness, love, sounds, etc.  Life 1.0 = Didn't see it.  Didn't hear it.
• Life 2.0 = Emotional honesty.  This would have been a good idea for Life 1.0.
• Life 2.0 = Profound appreciation of the connections and love that bind us all to each other.
• Life 2.0 full time job = Cancer and its treatment.
• Life 2.0 = New appreciation that our kids are "cooked."
• Life 1.0 = 5- and 10-year plans.  Life 2.0 = a series of 1-year plans. 
• Life 2.0 = Thinking about one instead of two.  (We know that no one ever knows who will go first; we just never thought of one of us without the other during Life 1.0.)
• Life 2.0 = Asking questions that begin with, "How many more times..." and  "Will we ever..."