The Repair of Human Beings

Things change quickly. My sister, whose overall prognosis remains the same, is feeling better. And just like that my irritation with her little ways returned. I have to put it in context, remind myself how very small and inconsequential her little preferences are to me. I’m not saying this well. What it is is that I have to remind myself of how little I will remember her idiosyncrasies when she…

My house is a mess, my schedule is a mess, my mind is a mess. I don’t know which to start on first. My mind, probably. To be able to think through all the things that need to be done. Then I get conflicted about the purely physical things that certainly need to get done…bed coverings to be washed, kitchen to tidy, bathrooms to wipe down. Nothing seems sufficiently urgent…

But. That is what my sister told me. So pancreatic cancer. The worst. Today was hard. Very hard. I do not know how I would regard the dawning of the end of my life. But surely that is what I should be doing. My own not unblemished health record should move that realization further up into my consciousness. It does not. I believe that given the choice, I would take…

What constitutes repair of the human spirit when there is a deadline? Why does the notion of death push us into this otherworldly space, in which nothing makes sense. Is there a better way for us to deal with loss? How do we keep the pieces together before they are irrevocably torn apart?

I’ve been despairing about missing last yesterday’s post. This is the conflict right here. My ‘repair’ process does not admit of chastising myself for being too unwell to post. It does require that I meet the small objectives I set myself, though – which proved too difficult to surmount yesterday. I have had a tremendous two days of pain and exhaustion, so I have not been to the hospital. I…

He pulls up the chair to the bedside, this doctor. He sits quietly, seriously, somberly. He doesn’t move. I think he is letting the room soak into him before he begins to speak. So we wait. Then he does. He talks about the diagnosis, the details, the surgery. He talks about repair time and discusses the probable prognosis. He does all this quietly, with a not-quite-hushed tone. He responds to…

I looked outside the hospital window this afternoon, with the sun shining over palm trees and sky a cloudless blue, the cold air just barely seeping in. I thought how odd it was that this was just the 4th day of January. The sun is just as bright, people are just as busy, and no one thinks the world is falling apart. But it feels like it to me. I…

Barack Obama didn’t invent hope. He enunciated something that many people felt the lack of without themselves giving it a name. Many young people connected to that feeling in a deep way. At the time, the surge -resurgence – of hope felt like a fundamental shift in the nation’s outlook. These days, hope seems bold and audacious. Particularly personally. My stores have been depleted and I am struggling with the…

Death is a peculiar thing to contemplate in the middle of living. All the habits and patterns of existence support being alive, being furiously alive. Dying is an aberration. But of course it isn’t. I have been thinking about it today. It is a hard concept to grasp, of course. Everyone struggles with the sudden absence of someone that death brings. That is not this situation. Yet. But it is…