indecision and hilarity

i read the obituaries every day. i have for years. i try to take note of all the people disappearing. snatched out of place. this place where we live. this valley of land near the criss-crossing rivers, watched over by a sharp volcano. buildings, boats and freeway exchanges keep us in order. and we all go on every day, but then some don’t. and i think some small hole collapses in when it happens. and we all silently move in to fill it. a degree or two. and we don’t even notice. 30 times a day or so in Portland.

it is true what they say, it often happens at 80 or more. it is not uncommon to see 60. lots of 50s, usually from cancer i have noticed, when the unclean living catches up. and then there are the people who are 44. women with breast cancer. 42. car accident. 34 hit by a drunk driver. 24 they often won’t tell you how. some are not even a month old. and i wonder if they ever knew that they were being cheated out of 80.5 years of indecision and hilarity. did it seem like a raw unfairness or just a great flurry interrupted by the solemn joy of breast feeding?

since being diagnosed i no longer want to look. but it is a compulsion. counting coup. i scan the dates quickly. if it is a small number i must look to see if there is a how. some days everybody dies in their eighties or nineties. a good omen. and some days the page is littered with cancer death. 58 Hazel. 69 Allen. 42 Marcy.

the worst is a battle with cancer. or lung cancer young. i have not seen that spelled out. can i use this as material for a self-delusion?

today Carolyn, 55, lost her 5 year fight to cancer. 5 years of fighting. was there ever time do you think to just go to the grocery store? was she fighting even in the aisles? did she care how much the bing cherries were a pound still or was her entire being just a battlefield? raging raging. $3.99 a pound is too much. even for organic. every second of five years was a fight that burned through all the life she was saving. the slow life can go on into turtle years. she used up 30 years of fight in 5.
She is survived by her husband Scott.

maybe she didn’t fight at all. which doesn’t mean she didn’t want to live. maybe fighting won’t actually make us live longer. or better. i know that is counter-american. or maybe, even more scandalously, she was half-relieved at the idea of dying. all these choices every day to make. who to be? how to be? the applications to fill out, the people that you love and can’t help, the lost piece of paper with your account information, the burgeoning compost between the stove and the counter.

maybe we are all fighting every day anyway.

my grandmother died after losing a 93 year battle with dust and indelicacy. with the hunger of the baptist peoples, with aimlessness and self-aggrandizement. or maybe she didn’t lose. maybe she just died.
of a heart attack we guess.

i am in a battle for my life. not with my life.  so perhaps the indecision will get me in the end. or maybe my 39+ year battle with imprecise language.   all those stickers i inadvertantely consumed on my fruit?

heck maybe even a heart attack in my kitchen before breakfast but after tea.