Today And Everyday

The table is set for ten. It's tight but they find a way. A few minutes of musical chairs, some cross table rearranging and voila, everyone is met. They celebrate earlier than others simply because it's easier to get the gang together outside regular hours. A rag tag group of self employed creatives, two single parents, a writer, one city councillor, two real estate agents and a landscaper. It's the tenth anniversary of their first official gathering. Some years they're a few shy of the whole lot but not this year. Chris and Carla swapped weekends with their respective exes and Donny, Jim and Shawna rearranged their family and work plans to make this fly. Ten years is a big deal. They were so young when they first met, at least that's how they see it. A decade of accountability to each other, through hell and high water, marriages, divorce, births, death, career changes and relapse. The amazing thing is that they've stayed together. A splinter group that evolved out of a weekly Wednesday night meeting, they sort of fell into each other repeatedly. It was weird, their chemistry. Ten extraordinarily different souls all afflicted with the same disease, all struggling in unique ways, looking for support and finding it in the most unlikely of places. From uptown to downtown, crossing broad racial divides and socioeconomic strata, they found commonality in the details. Chemo knows no boundaries, survival doesn't discriminate by age, class, money or faith. They joke about how they're like the UN of cancer survivors. Diversity across the board except when it came to battling the big C. Everyone fought together, all in, leaning into and pulling on each other so that they became one linked chain, more powerful together than unhooked. Parts of their lives fell away- Chris's marriage, Shawna's girlfriend. Jim found his birth parents with the help of Carla and Donny and after ten consecutive early thanksgiving's they've all officially hit remission. They've learned, multiplied ten times over, there is no sure thing. Every October they come together and break bread, dig down, lift each other up, and resolve to keep on keeping on until one day, hopefully decades down the road, they gather to celebrate extraordinary lives lived to their fullest. For this they give thanks, every day but  today most of all.