Death and Stuff

When you have a chronic illness you notice death more.  You fight it daily in tiny ways.  "Sorry, can't have a beer with ya, my medicine....," "I'll pass on that donut," "I have to find some shade, I react badly to the heat...."

I was looking out our dining room window this morning, counting rooftops and watching the streets stretch and yawn as they came to life, and recalled the movie we watched last night, Astronaut Farmer.  One of the underlying ideas in the movie is how tiny we are, how insignificant, and as I watched a red minivan crawl up the hill on E Street I realized that if I were to die, whoever that was in that soccer-mom's-steed wouldn't have any idea...and wouldn't care to.  My death wouldn't matter to millions and millions of people.  This didn't come to me as a morose, woe is me kind of thought; it was a realistic, statistical bit of trivia for me to ponder. Instead of leaving me with a helpless feeling, it sparked my thought process and led me down several winding paths of ideas and observations.

One was this idea of fighting death on an everyday basis.  As I was looking out the window watching Golden Hill's morning routine unfold, I was practicing my own: pulling pills from bottles and taking them one by one.  One half-pill for my blood sugar, one half-pill for anti-anxiety, two pills for blood pressure, one for cholesterol, a vitamin for nutrition, an iron pill for anemia and energy, and an L-Lysene to counter any viral anythings that might be floating around.  This is another slow battle against death that I wage each day.

Another path led me, as always, to Mom.  You can slow Diabetes down, but rarely can you reverse it entirely, or stop it from eventually catching up to you.  My mother had Type 1 Diabetes (I have Type 2), and always talked about feeling like an 20 year-old trapped in an 80 year-old's body. At 39, I'm getting just a small taste of what she truly meant by that. For her, fighting death wasn't just a daily routine, it was the the driving force behind each breath- she was much more aware of it on a conscious level than I am.  She was told at the age of 14 that she would be lucky to make it to forty.  Later in life, doctors often said she was alive due to sheer will.  She died at forty-seven.

 And thinking of Mom, I always think of her sense of humor- which led me to Terry Pratchett's character of Death in his Discworld series.  It is probably the most appealing portrayal of death I've encountered and I often find myself hoping he's onto something.  Pratchett's Death has always made me grin- here is this big mystery, this idea I have struggled with for years, this macabre vagueness we are all headed straight for...and he speaks in all caps, has this nice mix of innocence and wisdom, and is as mystified by humans and this "life" thing we lead as we are mystified by him.  There are times he just doesn't get us, and times he offers brilliant insights into human character and what we're all about.  And I think that's the crux of why I like this idea of death so much.  It's so, so human.  I can grasp it.  I can totally see Death and mom hanging out, dusting the hourglasses in Death's house while discussing their latest gripe with the Auditors of Reality.  I think mom and Death's granddaughter, Susan, would get along particularly well.

 So all of these trails of thought just tend to branch off into more trails.  They become a never-ending network of images and words that I envision like a mess of veins forming a circulatory system roaming around my mind.  They just keep circling around and around and end up back at the beginning, which leads to more offshoots and explorations.  There is rarely any conclusion, any set end that I can grasp and claim as final. 

This doesn't make me sad like it used to, or angry. I have come to accept it on some level, and grown curious about the enigma of death.  We may not know what exactly we're fighting against every day, but then who wants to battle the familiar day in and day out?  What kind of fight would it be without a challenge?

Strange Girl

Remember when you said you didn't recognize me- how for just a second, you were taken by the stranger leaning on the wall outside your hospital room?  You told me you wondered what her life was like, why she was on the 9th floor of Good Samaritan Hospital, and if she was happy or not.  I never answered those questions, just laughed and said I'd be careful not to wear my hair in a pony tail anymore.

My life is nothing special.  I get up at 5:30 weekday mornings, drive my husband to work, then myself.  I work 2-6 hours for a financial and insurance broker as a personal assistant.  I get off work and either walk the beach, hike the canyons, or pick my son up and run errands. Sometimes we go to the beach to read and laugh a lot.  Then I (we) pick my husband up and head home.  Some nights we go out to watch or perform music and poetry, but recently most nights are spent at home.  We write, watch Hulu or Netflix, cook together, read together, goof off on our computers, have long conversations and try to go to bed early if we can.

I have a lot of people in my life that I love like family, and an extended family that is fragmented and mostly silent.  I spent twenty years in Arizona and have a lot of people that have become brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, uncles, children and aunts to me.  Most of them are artists of some sort.  We spend holidays together.  We argue with and compete against each other.  We support and encourage one another.  We drunk dial each other and cuss each other out.  We bring each other hangover remedies and forgiveness in the morning.  We lend each other money when we need it most.  We "forget" to get paid back.  We write together.  We perform together.  We laugh together.  We travel together.  We love each other.

I was at the Nephrology Unit to see you.  I had my hair up because: one, it was summer in Phoenix, AZ.  Two, I had been watching 6 children.  Three: All of the children were under the age of ten.  Four: When I got the call you had been air-evac'd to Phoenix again, it was either put my hair up or tear it out.  I had thought about bringing you flowers, but thought better of it when I remembered how my last attempt at a thoughtful gift combined with humor had blown up in my face.

Flashback to last time I brought you flowers:
I sauntered into pod 9B and found your bed empty.  Kari, your nurse on many occasions and my personal favorite, said, "She's in dialysis."  
I grabbed a pen from the table by your bed and wrote, "We have to stop meeting like this," smiley-face and all, on the complimentary card and tucked it into the flowers. I headed to the dialysis unit and walked up to the nurse's station. 
The man behind the counter looked at me like I was a so, la, ti, and a doe short of a full scale when I plopped down the flowers, grinned and said, "Debbi Finney?  They told me she was in dialysis- they air-evac'd her here earlier," I rolled my eyes and said, "again...she has a hard time staying away from you guys."  He just stared at me as I shrugged my shoulders.  "I'm her daughter."
"You don't know, do you?  She's in a coma."  The letters on the card were suddenly embarrassingly bold. I brought the flowers with me to where you lay more to save face than to comfort anyone.
End flashback.

So flowers were out.  I was waiting outside your room because they were performing one of those mysterious "procedures" behind the flimsy privacy curtains and wouldn't let me into your room until they were finished.  I didn't notice they had left your room because I was lost somewhere in my own head.  My mind juggled thoughts about who would watch the kids while you were here and how long I'd stay tonight with worries about you and your condition, and the ever-present question, "Is she going to die this time?"  I was trapped between routine and panic, or maybe it was that panic was becoming routine.  I was there because I didn't want the last time I saw you to be the last time I saw you.

And to answer your last question, the stranger outside your room is happy.  I moved to the ocean after Dad died.  A combination of things brought me here.  The desert you loved was if not killing me, was at least beating me into submission.  After several bouts of health problems I had become nearly sedentary.  A magic potion of medications turned the sun into my nemesis instead of my savior. And, somewhere deep inside me I think I saw too many people close to me dying.  Everywhere I looked there were reminders of death: heat, dust, bones, thorns...or worse, manufactured life- golf courses and cities where there weren't enough resources to sustain them.  Borrowed time.  Stagnation.  I wanted life.  I wanted green.  I wanted movement.  Maybe moving to San Diego had elements of running away from my life, although it feels like running straight into it.

The kiddles are all grown up and have become amazing people with giving spirits.  My husband and I are silly in love with each other.  I'm no longer stuffing everything into that black knapsack our family prides itself on: silence.  I write, I paint, I sing, I cry, I laugh....a lot....annoyingly so.  So yes, I'm happy, and there is a good chance you wouldn't recognize me at first glance.

So those are your answers.  Now it's my turn.  What the hell did they do to you behind that curtain??