Mom's cancer is back. It's fast this time. It's bad. I think this is the one, despite my attempts to pull a positive wildcard out of the field of possibilities. I know a way exists, but perhaps, we already walked that way, and that's what's lead us to here. Perhaps I pulled that card three years ago.
It's hard seeing her weak. Watching her body fail. I think how hard it must be for her. I think of my own. Aging every day. I remember my grandmother's death. Her body. Our dreams each evening. Every night I fight in my dreams. I rip out lips and wander angrily, anxiously through dream corridors. I wake myself in the might, fighting with an invisible adversary, trying to take my favorite book from my hands.
I find this quote, from Terrance McKenna,
I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.
I've spent the evening with a group of my mom's friends. I am reminded of my own deaths. Not many, a few. Those times I've turned the wheel. Those were not final. Those were metaphors, methods to help me become a person I could only dream of. My mom's death is not one of those. She will be gone.
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