65 Sunlight Through a Glass of Soda

Not long ago I had lunch at Zax Pints and Plates, a restaurant close to work. The weather was lovely so I sat outside. My table was under a tree and dappled shade made patterns around me as a breeze blew. I ordered a Dr. Pepper and the waiter set it down on the sunny side of my table.

At first I could only stare as sunlight turned an ordinary glass of soda into something spectacular. Little bubbles from the carbonation floated through the brown liquid, sparkling as they rose. Bright flashes of light glinted off the ice. In that moment this simple image seemed incredible to me – beauty so intense it defies my pathetic attempts to describe its magnificence.

This wasn’t a mere soda. It was a work of art. It was a fleeting moment of perfect beauty as the ice melted just a little and carbonation escaped in tiny increments.

Being a person who analyzes everything and loves finding meaning in the context of a matter as well as its surface, I thought that the sunlight through the glass of soda made for a powerful metaphor:

Sometimes a simple thing transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

I felt privileged to have noticed the transformation. Then I picked up my glass and drank my soda, and went on to enjoy the rest of my lunch.

I reflected on how I felt as though I noticed and appreciated small treasures like that even before I had cancer. Now I’ve got the rest of my life ahead of me once again, and I’m determined to make it count.

I see small treasures with renewed appreciation, because I’m still alive to let them light me up inside. I’m so grateful for my life.

Thank you Dr. Carsten Kampe, my incredible oncologist. Thank you Dr. Timothy Djuik, my radiation oncologist. Thank you for doing what you do – for enduring the pain of losing patients – for staying in your profession and slogging it out with cancer so that people like me can have moments like these. Thank you Dr. Susan Love and all of you other surgeons, specialists, oncology nurses, medical support staff, fund raisers, grant writers, event coordinators, contributors, volunteers, advocates, and rabble rousers who work towards diagnosing, treating, curing and preventing cancer. Thank you to all the people who do what you can in the ways you are able to contribute towards the monumental effort to survive and thrive in the Life After Diagnosis.

Even the memory of sunlight through a glass of soda has the power to light me up inside.

What memories make you glow?

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