Back in 2007 I was driving truck (18 wheeler) and was homeward bound out of Fort Erie. I had been fighting a snowstorm for hours.
It was one of those storms that drops your speed to a crawl because your visibility is barely beyond the windshield wipers and the headlights reflecting off the snow squalls are hypnotizing.
I pulled into my fueling stop, and barely overheard another trucker (on the CB radio) relating how the storm gets too bad and it stretches well beyond Sudbury.
I couldn't handle it for another three hours and thought, maybe, I should just get into the sleeper and call it a night, but I wasn't tired enough to sleep. Then I thought I may have heard him wrong, or he was a young driver and/or a worry-wart.
I decided to chance it and when I pulled back onto the highway, I knew I had made a mistake. The whole world disappeared in a blinding sheet of white. I couldn't just turn around, so I thought I would try and get to the next town and park it for the night.
The CB radio was quiet, the loneliness was horrible. A while later I could hear these two, southbound, truckers chatting away so I asked what I could expect. The man who spoke was calm and very reassuring as he said the storm only lasts for another hour and it was clear highway from there.
He told me to take it slow and I would make it, so I continued. It wasn't until a while later I realized I was enjoying the storm and was quite comfortable being out in it.
I wondered why, in such horrible weather, I felt good about my surroundings. Then I realized it was because, just up ahead, I knew it was going to end and I would be back on clear highway again.
I couldn't help think of my journey through cancer. As long as I remembered it was going to get better, the struggle to get through was so much easier.
I have learned, through life, that as long as I believed in myself and my ability to carry on, I could handle whatever life decided to throw at me. It is only through reflection I realize there were times I thought I was alone, lost faith in myself and endured a cloud of sadness that was only dissipated by someone who cared enough to encourage me.
I learned to ignore, and not talk to, those who would tell me of someone who passed away with my type of cancer. Like I ignored the worry-wart trucker and listened to the more experienced, encouraging drivers to make it safely.
Now I find myself in another storm. A virus that threatens the world as we know it. Isolation that makes me feel that horrible loneliness, as do a lot of us enduring for the common good.
But this time I don't have that calm reassuring voice to tell me I am going to be OK. Now I need to draw on my inner strength, my faith in humanity and the hope that all will be well.
Because, most of all, there is nothing so compelling as hope. And hope begins with “US.” I am reminded of a native prayer that says, in part; I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy … myself.
Stay home, stay safe.
Hanmer resident Kevin Shanahan is a cancer survivor and a former Northern Life columnist.
