i will tell you about this thing. but i can’t tell it all at once. there is no road to summary.
i want so very much to be able to answer accurately people who ask me how i am.
i think, well, i can walk.
deborah can’t hardly walk.
and i have this huge sense of being loved and cared about.
i can’t emphasize what a consolation that is. feeling like you are not worth loving is a thing that can take <he skin right off a person.
i haven’t had it much in my life or for long. but it surely made an impression.
mostly, it is a sense of the surreality at the whole affair. you have to go about the business of breakfast and the tiresomeness of putting on extra layers against the rain, while casually breathing in and out the end of time. it is a residue on the tongue. it keeps you from seeing in sharp focus or up close. everything is wild and big. everything eats stars.
the meteor is headed straight into the upper atmosphere and soon, perhaps sooner than we can guess, everything, your little body, your ideas, everyone you have loved imperfectly, the grass the mastodons and your homeland, are smithereens. or less even.
we might not even get to clap the dust off our minds and survey the damage. see? no wonder i’ve lost a little fine motor control.
the problem, of course, and i do think less of myself in that i perceive this as a problem, is that the meteor is only coming for me.
this just means that i can’t run amok, arms in the air, with all my fellow nearly departed. there is none of that looting camaraderie here. i have to keep it down. be cool.
what’s worse, is that there’s all this hollywood precedent where you have to be stoic and full of wisdom. or positive. man, i can not tolerate thinking positive. it feels like intentional self deception. positive thinking wants to deny me the opportunity to explore the rare awful wilderness laid out in front of my feet. even though it looks like it will always be dark and treacherous. but it won’t. because nothing is only one thing. and thinking positive will not let me go forward into this deeply interesting land. will not let me see what is actually beautiful about it. when there is only one acceptable destination (the one i have decided is positive), there is more life i don’t get to have.
anyhow, so here’s what is actually hard about have stageIV metastatic lung cancer with a dollop of recurrence:
A) people are often glad to notice that they are not me. i don’t blame them. but i do wish they didn’t think it was so horrible as all that. it freaks me out. i start to think maybe i’ve got it all wrong. if you are so terrified of <he thing i got, maybe i am completely misreading how horrible it is that i have it. maybe i’ve been completely stupid! i should be freaking out too!
the problem is that freaking out is some seriously aerobic exercise. you can only keep it up for so long. then you have to do something else. or go somewhere else. like another reality. (more on that later)
B) it’s feels a little personal sometimes. although of course i know better. this is a dish we all get to taste. some of you for a second or two maybe. and some of us get to relish its complexity for years and years. we never seem to finish. there is always more. this interminable last supper.
this is an interesting thing that i never considered before. we are all born without knowing it. we gradually become aware that we actually exist. and some of us will die without knowing it and without considering it much, if at all. and some of us will die watching it roll in like a lazy storm. so what would you prefer?
(it’s a personality test)
If it’s any consolation to you, I’m perfectly healthy aside from a chronic skin condition and I have trouble answering the question “How are you?” In fact, I hate answering that question so much I do my best to never ask it. Society seems to require me to respond with some answer in the “great!” realm whereas I’m more in the “fine, I guess,” arena. It just begs a perky answer, that question, and for that I despise it.
And I’m sorry that people are noticing they are glad to not be you. There are some pretty cool things about being you that I wish I was–the ability to Indian Leg Wrestle, for instance. I’m glad you’ve had so many years to contemplate your existence.
Your writing, as always, is so powerfully moving.
The slowly rolling-in storm, I think. You will recognize this scene: Sitting on my grandparents front porch, watching it come in over the lower mountains to the west; smelling it before it arrives. Dark low clouds, lightening flash, thunder crack, promise of the rain bringing refreshment to dry grass somewhere, even if not where we are right now.
Ultimately, there is so much we do not get to choose. So keep choosing the daily step forward, the daily gestures of love, the daily gestures of someone nurturing someone else.
And I think you should read the poetry of Charles Wright. (Son-in-law to Jen & John McIntire whom you will remember) Start with the Journal of the Year of the Ox. If you can’t find it, I will send it to you.
No words for the love I send to you; so I’ll just let that little “love” word do the best it can.
P.S.- I agree; some of that positive thinking crap makes me want to gag in the avoidance of reality that it puts across. You are way beyond the hollywood-esque stoic crp; so far above that in your willingness to be real!
So here I read thoughts of my 9 year old best friend all grown up and then comments from my sister and I see what a gift for words that some of you all have. I knew that; but sometimes it makes it hard to breathe.
And all my brain can think is . . if you wanted to spend more time in a hospital couldn’t you have tried something like falling off a cliff in Argentina?
I am not at all afraid to be you – at least the you I know – the you that catches fish with bare hands, the you that rides down the irrigation ditch on a semi-flat inner tube ducking to avoid barb wire, the you that slides down the muddy cliff with three neighbor girls, the you whos passion for life acts like a magnet to those around you.
And then I think of you now, the you I don’t know but the one with that 9 year old encompassed inside who is still partly there. The passion for life, the intensity of emotion be it good or bad, undying curiosity in so many things, the willingness, or maybe lack of choice, in examining this new you and gleaning more expeience from it than anyone I know.
I would prefer to watch it roll in like a lazy storm. One of the reasons I still choose sobriety is that I want to be present at the end…that seems like such a gift to myself whenever that is, however that is.
That last paragraph in your last blog….perfect imagery.
Thank you.