Reading the Obituaries...

I am old enough now, I am one of those people who read the Obituaries!  They are the most sad when children die.  I have found friends and neighbors there and often, far too often fellow cancer people, people who sat in the chair right next to me during chemo.  It always irritates me when it is mentioned they died
"from complications of cancer".  I know it was the cure that killed them; they died from the treatment.  It is a voodoo cure at best, like walking across hot coals to the very edge of hell.  If you survive it you are bruised and battered, scarred and crippled, shaken and stirred.  It is an odds game, higher math!  There is no reason why one would survive and one would die.  It just happens.
      I don't really think an attitude will save you.  I am a positive kind of guy and can see great value to almost everything but I don't think my attitude saved me.  It made it easier and I always looked for the funny side of it, just because there is a funny side to everything and I was pretty desperate to find it.
    There is a lot more to the story than obituaries will ever tell you.  It would take a whole book, maybe volumes to tell of this life and death struggle and I am always hunting for the honesty in it.  Was it a battle, like with sharks, that Hemingway could have described?  Was it the good fight?
    We will all get our fifteen minutes of fame, maybe just a paragraph in a newspaper, but I really want to hear all of the story.  The successes and maybe especially the failures, the junctions in the road, I am curious why they turned right or left, who they touched and who touched them along the way.
    It is hard to say goodbye and we never really do.  It might be easier if you realize that "goodbye" isn't a farewell but a shortened version of the original:  "God be with you."
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Life is not Endless

Death and Taxes, that is what they say. I met a lady yesterday who has four months to live.

Cancers are different and some cannot be fought. She is my age almost exactly and had a nice

smile. Secretive, laughing, a bit chagrined. She still drives her car, went skiing yesterday in the mountains near Bend. She wanted to see the sun on the white snow and feel exhilaration, feel alive.

Chemotherapy might extend her death, delay it for two more months. She is weighing the price. Die living verses live dying. Cancer is a card game. You can laugh with a bad hand.

My odds were so much better. If I could win with what I was dealt I could survive and walk away. Mine was more like flipping a coin, or playing "sudden death", just picking one card and hopping for the Ace. Mine was 50-50 and I won.

If you get cancer, (that sounds like a gift), you can't help but think through these scenarios.

I wondered how I got to this game in the first place and went through every step of my life hunting for the cards I threw away. We are in a card game when we would rather be fishing.

What would you do if dealt this bad hand? Knowing that you have only four months to live?

There is the obvious: "get your affairs in order" but after awhile you think, f**k 'em, that will be a job for the living. They have more time. Not to say you would make it inconvenient but with four months this won't be high on your list. Or, maybe it will.

She will die in April or May and she knows this. Spring when the flowers bloom and the Earth

turns forth new life. Eventually we are all at this card table. That is the truth. Even the winners will get dealt bad hands. Some will play blind folded and never know their cards.

When I left her I couldn't say "good Luck", what we often say to each other. I simply said that I was glad she went skiing, felt the warmth of the sun. She offered that slight smile that intrigued me in the first place and began our conversation.

My Other Blog is Here

One Week to Live!

No, no, not me. At least I don't think it is me. We are almost never given this option anyway
and those that do get it are mostly beyond living anyway, too sick to create a "bucket list".
Actually I think this "bucket list" should be for the young, those eager and strong enough to accomplish their dreams. The dreams of youth should be huge! I am always saddened when they are limited to getting a job at McDonalds and buying a car! I am amazed that the Peace Corps
doesn't have lines eight blocks long to enroll in their programs offering a chance to see and live
another's life in a different culture on the other side of the Earth! Too many people live and die within 100 miles of where they were born. Horizons should be expanded, our experiences broadened, our curiosity awakened at an early age.
Youth is not determined by age, of course, and excitement and curiosity can be found in some
of us "older elders"! My mother flew in a hot air balloon over the Kilamari desert when she was
a mere 84! She gave up driving on her 90th birthday! When death took her I think she was ready and her bucket list was empty. She was simply waiting.