Category: Uncategorized

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 is gone. That bald fact is always just beneath the surface, waiting to remind me, waiting to be pulled up like a sheet of despair over every conversation, every note of hope.

It is teaching me patience. Patience to appreciate the moment, and just let that be what it is about. Just that moment.

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 for me to take action – despite the small progress being made with my sister’s plan of care today. She is feeling somewhat better than last night, and I am trying to celebrate that. I keep trying to get my self off the work schedule, but it is almost always down to the wire before I know. Difficult for me to plan, but who can blame them. The business must be run, whether I am employed there or not, and whether I show up or not.

It is all very messy. All of it.

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 this from her, for myself. Why I think I am any better prepared for it, when I cannot handle it happening to someone else is not clear.

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 am struggling with the idea that my less than critical health situation should take ascendancy over my sister’s more immediate need. Apart from being exhausted, I could picture a way in which my presence would help her if I lay down on the couch in her room, writhing in pain.

I must and will be there tomorrow with the upcoming surgery in the afternoon. I do not wish her to be unaccompanied before that. I do not know what to expect, pain wise. But it will, at least, be warm. And we have been told she has the best most experienced doctor at the hospital for this procedure.

So, one day at a time, still. One day at a time.

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 questions in this same way. His whole person conveys that doctoring is a serious endeavor in which he regards with appropriate gravity each human life that he touches. It is impressive.

When he is finished, Dr. B looks at her, and then just sits in silence. He waits. This time I think he is waiting for her – us – to speak. It takes a little bit before we realize that this is what he wants, so the room is simply quiet. “Do you have any questions for me”, he asks. We have no more.

He sits a few more seconds, then gently replaces the chair. Now he reaches for each of us by hand, shakes it and says “nice to see you again”. He leaves so much of himself behind that I am not quite sure when he actually left.

This whole experience with doctors and nurses has been an education. Mellow and caring and attentive. I wonder how they are when they are not here. I want to look behind the veil. In ordinary life, my instinct would be to consider them sincere. But when they are like this as their job, is that likely?

I don’t actually care if I’ve got it wrong. This works for me. I am simply happy to see my sister in such attentive hands.

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 don’t have stories about this experience. I just don’t have words to synthesize into digestible bits that resolve into a message, an understanding or a clarification. Nothing. I have no words.

Once I started, I thought, writing would not be difficult. The rhythm would arrive. I’d just sit and type, and beautiful, emotive stories would dance across the screen.

Obviously not.

I’m tired. Most activities feel pointless and this self indulgence is irritating and embarrassing. However. I have made a commitment to myself for the month of January. So I must write – rubbish or not.

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 very idea of its existence.

I suppose the thing is, tonight I am deciding to be audacious. To foster the life affirming force and just deal with it [when] it fails.

Actually, perhaps that is hope’s true purpose? To get us from here to there? No solution, no resolution – just transition. This just occurred to me.

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 dire enough that I must think of it. Cancer. The oncologist today said with my sister enduring this illness, and given our family history, we should be tested for the gene. She used the phrase “blood cancer” She meant: starts in the blood. It had a chilling effect.

Well.

I am simply winding ideas up like a spring of stress in my head. I cannot really think. We just have to work through this, come out on the other side. More later.

She is, at any rate, good humored and well-tempered. It is remarkable.