My dears, Many people have asked me to elaborate upon the meaning of Val’s tattoo. I tried a few times and got stuck, because actually, Val didn’t put it in words that often. But here are some of the meanings I understood her tattoo to have: The spiral was to Continue Reading
hope
Thanksgiving times two
Fantastic scan news! Everything’s still stable or shrinking! First thing this morning we took a deep breath and met with the doctor for the results of Monday’s scan. These last several months it’s been hard, especially for Val, to shake the uneasiness as we waited to see if the tiny Continue Reading
Status quo + CT comin’ up
Your assignment: focus your divine love rays or whatever you’ve got on CT results as transparent and clean as a freshly-washed window.
fear, blood, life
the last two weeks have been hard. a return of the thin taut fear. color bleeding out of the days as the blood seeped out of val’s nose thinly and we watched it, counted the blots, counted the kleenex, counted the minutes. i think it was two weeks ago that Continue Reading
Tumult and Joy
I don’t understand this life right now. This morning I am walking and walking at 1000 acres with Cynthia and the dog. And then we get lost. Every trail is a riverbed and every culdesac is a homeless person’s tent. The beautiful cottonwoods are telegraphs from my youth in Montana. Continue Reading
Off the Hammock
So on the 28th they are going to put me back into a tube. Scan my chest. Create another picture like the one that started all this. And the doctors will marvel at the 3 dimensional detail of it all. They like to go slice by millimeter slice. (I really Continue Reading
fear, hope and roasted beet soup
One thing about this is the fear. For me so far it’s been a fear of many flavors, but it never ever quite goes away. It sucks at the shoreline of my heart, rearranging my guts, cresting up menacingly and sinking back to build the surge all over again. My Continue Reading
small mercies
Salut, mes amis. Guess what? I have some news that is not horrible! Normally I like to make a proper anecdote, with suspense and story arc, but I won’t make you live through the whole day with us. I’ll give it to you straight up: Val’s PET scan, in the Continue Reading
snippets and faith
Some things that are happening right now: Val is laughing on the couch as Favor tells a story about a time her head was mistaken for a beaver. Grapes and split-pea soup and wine are being consumed (by disparate people). The dog is asleep with her fuzzy muzzle flattened against Continue Reading