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110 degrees magazine - Index

110 degrees magazine - magazine - Index

I had seen them featured on MovieTone news
shorts, which used to run before a featured
movie. The other runners all knew each other
and kept asking who this Bill Bristow was.
Running track felt good; I was doing something
from my bucket list that I had always
wanted to do. It was like a dream come true.
A LIFE LIVED ON MY TERMS
Someone once made a list of things that
cancer is unable to do. Cancer is limited
because it cannot cripple love, shatter hope,
corrode faith, destroy peace, kill friendship,
suppress memories, silence courage, invade
the soul, or conquer the spirit.
The words are perfectly true! The past 17
years have been the best years of my life, in
spite of my cancer. In some fashion, they
are, perhaps, best because of the cancer.
When people ask me how I feel, I often
answer them with a paraphrase of Dickens’
ringing opening to A Tale of Two Cities, “It’s
been the best of times; it’s been the worst
of times.”
Cancer is scary stuff. The chemo and radiation
treatments, together with the operations,
are painful; the battle is sometimes
discouraging. But Hugo said it best, “Cancer
doesn’t have you. If you look at your life
from the time of your diagnosis, you can
see that you and not the cancer have been
in control.”
Hugo’s words remind me of the lyrics of
a song someone recently showed me:
When you feel your heart is pounding; fear
a devil’s at your door;
There’s no place to hide; you’re frozen to
the floor
What you do then is you force yourself to
wake up and you say:
“It’s this day, not me, that’s bound to go
away.”
Cancer has simply made me even more
determined to live completely until I die.
The best thing about my life is the people
I’m sharing it with. “We have a big umbrella
above us,” is the way Kathy Leighton put it.
Kathy told us one day that we’re married
to Brentwood. This place is certainly a
wonderful venue in which to experience the
love of friend and neighbor. Sharing my life
with others is the best service I have ever
performed for myself.
I’m Bill Bristow and here is my philosophy
of life: If I can inspire others to hopefulness,
courage, and excellence then I shall
not have lived in vain. °
September/October 2008 www.110mag.com 35