Diagnosis: Terminal

She had asked for more weapons to fend off the enemy for another while. The oncologist sketched a circle, representing her head. He drew another circle, just inside the first. He used a few strokes of his pencil to shade in the area between the 2 circles. "The cancer cells," he explained, " are here, swirling around in the fluid layer outside the brain. If it were a ball, (tumor) we could treat it, but not in this area." Who could be haunted by anything worse?

Another myth shot down

After I resigned from teaching at Hoosic Valley, in an attempt to save my soul, I worked at a variety of jobs, not all better jobs than HVC, but invariably more interesting. For a period of time, I worked as a proctor for Civil Service Exams, usually administered at the college or Albany High or some such site. People with disabilities were allowed to take the tests, but the tests needed to be administered individually. Not too many were interested in that job, so I agreed to do it. One day I had to read the entire test to a blind woman, a rather boring assignment that took all of a Saturday, probably 6 hours or so. The woman told me that she had been deprived of her sight since childhood, but had compensated for her loss by developing her sense of hearing, saying she could identify, recognize, and remember the voice of anyone she'd met. After I'd finished reading her the exam, we bade each other goodbye and I went to hand in the exam, sign out, etc , taking about 15 minutes before I left the building. As I was going down the front stairs toward where I'd parked my car, I saw the woman at the bottom of the stairs, looking lost and alone. So I retraced my steps and asked her if she needed any help. She said yes, she would like to be shown the way to the bus stop. So I walked her to the bus stop, chatting with her on the way. We had bonded a little during that long, long exam session. Before she got on the bus, she thanked me and asked me who I was, and how I came to realize she needed help. She had no clue that we'd spent the last 6 hours together, with her listening to my voice for most of that time. I can't remember exactly what I told her, but I know it raised my level of skepticism about sensory compensation.

Dream Within A Dream

Words of praise,

Professions of love,

Ease of movement,

Sense of belonging,

Joy of being:

Gone forever it would seem,

But not so--

In life's recurring dream.

Pogo says....

We have seen the enemy and he is us.   I say I can see the future and it sucks. 

Finale

If there is an afterlife where questions are answered and issues resolved, everything will be all right.  If there is not, then at the end she felt deserted and hopeless because no one would help her.

The Notebook

I found a red 3-subject notebook among my sister's things. The notebook was one of many. She was a note taker of the first order, chronicling everything that she did or owned or had to resolve. She kept records of the proceedings of the dissolution of her marriage; she wrote down every step she took and the hurdles she had to overcome to sell her first home, and then to purchase a new one of her own. Every appliance, home repair, insurance issue, warranties---all duly noted and preserved in writing for future reference. I found pages filled with her struggles which documented her early, and futile, efforts to conceive a baby. She wrote down every step she took to find the best treatment for the horrible disease which came into her life; even when things did not look promising, she detailed all the research at the time which indicated there might be some alternative measures. She wrote pages to various agencies when her disability was first denied and, once gained, later withdrawn from her, even though logic would have dictated otherwise. And through all the events which occurred in her life, her notations were true to the facts of whatever the matter was. She was not one to color her observations with emotion or even opinion---just the facts. The red notebook I came across appeared to be empty, no dates or name or labels on the cover and the pages unwritten on----until I rifled through it and on the first page of the last of the 3 sections found these words written in her handwriting, and curiously, in a little larger script than was usual for her: God can Heal-God can Heal me-

We discussed the disease and we discussed dying, or at least not being alive anymore. She and I both knew we couldn't live forever, and that her time to go might come before mine. But we did not want her to die of that horrible disease. We wanted to be free of it, and knowing that could never be the case, we wished for something else, the lesser of however many evils. It's stupid of me, I know, and seems unfeeling and reeking of self serving cynicism, but I find myself wanting to ask how big should she have written her plea, or her prayer, or her wish. Maybe not in a notebook hidden in her dresser drawer, but on a banner being pulled by a plane over a beach somewhere........

Never

I never thought that I would be placing roses on your grave.