I am up in the air again, and if you will pardon the silly pun, it is heavenly.   I am not at the controls of my own little four-seat airplane, but in the cabin of an Alitalia triple-seven, on my way from the asphalt of Los Angeles to whatever will greet me in northeastern Italy.

I do love to fly, and perhaps while I am in the afterglow of a doctor’s appointment in which I was told that my cancer is no longer visible to either Dr. Pet or her adorable sister Dr. Cat, I can appreciate even more than ever the miracle of engineering that pushes me against the jetstream and carries me at nearly the speed of sound six miles into the air, past continents and over oceans to the opposite ends of the earth.

The pleasure of riding high above the clouds eastward into the night is made possible by a strange construct that others have called remission.   It is a word I dare not utter aloud lest I tempt the ears of fate who have, with intention or not, granted me this status.   It is, by its very nature, a temporary state, with no clear expiration date, but with a certain one nevertheless.

Typically, my wife and I spend the month of August in Northern California.   But it was there that my first overt signs of cancer emerged a year ago, and it was there that each passing year brought with it increasingly severe allergic reactions.    As is so often the case, half of the people we consulted recommended going up north regardless of a compromised immune system, and the other half recommended staying away.   We opted for a safer path, but while I am just now fit enough to travel, we decided to travel to a place where we had never been, a place where new allergies will not have had the time to develop.

The nurse practitioner in my last visit to the medical oncologist uttered the word for the first time, and she said it in a way that made the depth of its meaning clear.  “While you are in remission…” was how she began the sentence.   The very usage of the term highlighted its temporary nature.   I imagine a police officer pulling me over and demanding that I pay the fine for speeding now, “while I am Denver,” because clearly, if he had anything to do with it, I won’t be there for too long.

To be remiss is to be careless, negligent. I would be remiss, they say, not to tell you something.   But the word, as pejorative as I might be inclined to see it, is also hopeful.   The cancer, for now, is hiding.   It is careless; it is negligent in its duty to destroy.

But while the cancer may be in remission, I am determined not to be.   Whatever it is that we make of our lives, it is nothing if not precious.   This is no news flash to anyone who has made it past adolescence, but those of us who have been fortunate enough to hear words similar to those uttered to me by the nurse practitioner perhaps have a deeper appreciation.   None of us get out of this game alive, for sure, and none of us know how much life awaits us, or even how much strength we might have to meet it.   I may never step foot in my own airplane again, or hear the gentle whoosh of the giant engines propelling me through the sky again, but for now, for this very moment, I am up in the air, and while flying at 35 thousand feet is not exactly heaven on earth, it is heavenly nevertheless.