“Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!”

The title quote is a friend’s recent text to me, after learning of the latest good news resulting from a PET scan a few days ago.

Yes. The test results reveal the Hijacking Hitchhiker, one of my names for the “stage 3 incurable cancer”, is now in stasis, neither growing nor receding from the previous labs three months back. This absence of growth is indeed cause for celebration here.

It was but seven months ago that a left hip x-ray, for growing pain in the area, presumed to be arising from a herniated lumbar disk, revealed this threat to my life. And it feels my body has aged ten years in the subsequent months. An extreme loss of physical strength and endurance, debilitating fatigue, tiredness, mental fog and social disconnection are some of the treatment related challenges faced as I step into this ‘first day of the rest of my life.

And for a guy who has enjoyed a blessed vigorous physical and mental engagement with the world, these challengers are not small. Clearly, 76 and with rapidly diminished psychical capacities, I will likely now never again do many of the things that have given joy, purpose and meaning to my life; like rowing the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon multiple times, for sure.

Another thing is for sure too, however. And that is my desire to show up with presence and courage and intention and purpose for this day and all the subsequent first days of the rest of my living. Surely life is too easy a thing to take for granted in the daily grinds of ‘making a living’ and paying the bills and doing the chores, especially in a culture that needs and feeds on our busyness to sustain its own cancerous voracious consumption of this one planet—in service of profit and power and comfort for a few.

But how will I continue to show up with gratitude and passion for living a life of my own authorship in these give-a-way years of my life? Being vs Doing?

How shall I meet the inevitable letting go of the activities and abilities Death will progressively require my release of, like supporting folks through nature-based retreats. Such deep play is nurturance for my spirit and soul, even as it is for participants. Do we not all hunger to re-member our true nature is not separate from the wonder and awe and beauty we find in an old growth tree or the wild waters of a mountain creek? Or a glorious desert vista or sunset?

How shall I meet the inevitable letting go of the activities and abilities Death will progressively require my release of, like supporting folks through nature-based retreats. Such deep play is nurturance for my spirit and soul, even as it is for participants. Do we not all hunger to re-member our true nature is not separate from the wonder and awe and beauty we find in an old growth tree or the wild waters of a mountain creek? Or a glorious desert vista or sunset?

The best vision I can muster, at 3am as I write this, of how to meet these Life invitations and challenges, as I emotionally prepare to encounter another round of IV chemo in the morrow is this. It is to meet them one breath, one inhalation and one exhalation, one oar stroke in the river, one handhold on a cliff face and one foot placement on the trail, filled with gratitude and blessings upon the mother, one at a time.

Mother Earth graced me into an odd intimacy with my dying when I first considered how I might take my life in the 3^rd grade. Yes. So many years ago, now. It is, however, one thing to intellectually know the inevitability of one’s death. It is another altogether for the visceral and somatic knowledge of such to inform one’s living.

Such bodily intimacy is a gift, this walking through the first day of the rest of my life with Death holding one hand and Life the other, for today might also be the last day of my life. “Together, we are one,” they each in-form me.

Oh but that I might continue to open this gift of deep inner intimacy!

And so it is that with this post, for now at least, I will close these caring bridge updates. I invite you to follow my ongoing blog reflections at www.larryglover.com, where you can also stay updated as to ‘the book release,’ anticipated in the first quarter of 2025 sometime.

And please know that although there is no way for me to adequately express the gratitude I feel, for all the love and support of friends and family as I travel this journey, and no way for me to keep up with all the notes of care and love that have come my way during this time, each and all are treasured by me. As are you, dear ones.

Let us live truly and fully now, for this oneness is all we have from which to be re-born into a more beautiful Now!

Thank you for walking by my side. I love you.

Note: The two photos are from Fall retreats I was able to cohost along with Cheryl Slover-Linett (leadfeather.org) and the support of a bevy of friends.