12.05.2003

The standard dialogue goes something like this:

"I'm sorry to hear about your mom. I wish there was something I could say."
"Thanks for your concern, it's been hard. But she died in the company of my brother and I, her two sons. Her suffering went on for a long time and it's finally over."
"Yeah my {uncle, aunt, grand/person, father, mother} died in a {nursing home/hospital} from {cancer, stroke} and it was hard too. You almost feel better when they go and their suffering ends. How are you doing?"
"uhh, I'm doing ok."
"If you need anything, just ask."
"Thanks, thanks a lot."

--

It's a performance on my part. I can even conjure about-to-water-eyes. My feelings more or less represent what I am portraying. It's just impossible to recreate them every time someone asks. Plus there are complexities that are impossible to work into a casual amateur-grief-counseling conversation. I'm not going to have revelations/ breakthroughs or even much comfort every time someone expresses their concern. So I just try to go through the motions of caring that they care. The fact is, frankly, I don't care whether or not they care. Their concern betrays a portait of their compassion levels. But it's obvious to me which people have compassion and which don't.

It's daunting to conceive of a person's existence evaporating and ceasing to return forever. Things can be destroyed and their existence blotted out. For instance, the four towns erased to create the Quabbin reservoir. But the towns still exist in a sense, they are still there, just mostly underwater now. If you drained the reservoir you could even resurrect the towns and repopulate them. It would be a massive undetaking but it was a massive undertaking to create, so it is not absurd to imagine the creation being dismantled.

But a person cannot be brought back. Nothing imagineable can return anyone to life. My current realization of this transparent truth feels strange and new. We live for only a short period, yet we exist-not forever. Our mere years not only pale in comparison to an eternity of nothingness, they don't even compare at all--they amount to nothing, swallowed by the vastness of infinity. Such that there is no existence. I fear for all those near death, even those who claim they are not afraid--the fear will grip you in between your last and next-to-last breaths. The walls of denial will crumble and the armies of dread, terror and uncertainty will come rushing toward you.

The only solace comes with religion. Those blessed people who were indoctrinated young with the ridiculous notion that there is an afterlife, reincarnation, bearded-guy-in-clouds. Perhaps the terror doesn't grip them because their minds believe. Perhaps their faith necessarily wavers when the body and mind die and thus the terror hits them just before the end. Either way, children should be force-fed some sort of belief in the impermanence of death. That way it sticks with them their entire life like child molestation. Even the ancient Greeks' notion of the afterlife, that everyone goes to the underworld and suffers eternally, is more comforting that the truth--we just die and that's it. At least the Greeks went somewhere and they were together. Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope, because the Gods were at least capable of meddling with them.

12.03.2003

Inspired by this crazy person's list, which she filled with her own droppings of banality. To remind myself how fun it was to pick on the nerds in the playground, and to give you an idea of the person behind this mask, I will make my own list.

::15 Random Favorites (in no particular order)::
1. Abusing Policemen
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

::14 Favorite Foods::
1. Sushi
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

:13 Most Watched Shows::
1. The Weather Channel Local Forecast.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

::12 Good Bands/*Musicans In Your Opinion::
1. Eddie Money
2. Huey Lewis & The News
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

::11 Memories::
1. Mom dying in my arms.
2. Arrests.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

::10 Close Friends *(no particular order)::
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

::09 Things You're Looking Forward To::
1. Tomorrow and the next eight days.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

::08 Things You Wear Daily::
1. Underwear
2. Socks
3. Shirt
4. Pants
5. Jacket
6. Glasses
7. Watch
8. Clothing

::07 Things That Annoy You::
1. People.
2. Motorists.
3. Television Personalities.
4. My own iniquity.
5. Patriotic nonsense running rampant.
6. Latent, pervasive racism and homophobia.
7. Mortality.

::06 Things You Touch Every Day::
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

::05 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over::
1. Taxi Driver
2.
3.
4.
5.

::04 Of Your Favorite Toys When You Were Little::
1. Can't remember childhood.
2.
3.
4.

::03 boys/girls You have Kissed::
1.
2.
3.

::02 Of Your Favorite Songs At This Moment::
1.
2.

::01 Person You Could Spend the Rest of Your Life With::
1. Nobody. Not even myself.


Now you probably know more useless information about me than you ever cared to know. Thank the Lord that another human has decided that his/her personal triflings are important to the public-at-large. Not only does this human harbor hubris and narcissism, they want to tell you all about it. Every specific little meaningless detail. Thus adding one more drop to the ocean of voices, opinions, and feelings, all melding into the national polluted sea-of-bullshit.

Shakespeare could show up in these lines and no one would read it. Because no one knows it exists. It's not enough to just compose the plays, you must perform them as well. You can't make plays unless you're out on the field, playing downs. You'll never be a movie star until you spend some time in front of a camera, appearing on film that people actually watch. In this huge world you have to grab your audience, your opportunity. This is not elementary school where the community is family and everyone knows everything about everyone. In this community you don't exist until you release your self. The advantage goes to those comfortable with declations of self.

A friend of mine said the images cease haunting you in about four months.

Memory has already obscured the image enough that I almost viewed her as courageous in my mind today.

Four days?

Memory serves the conscious mind. It stands to reason that the reality of the actual event exists pretty much as you experienced it in the subconscious. This event was unequivocally terrifying. Thus today's slight remembrance of it as brave proves the skewering effect of the conscious mind upon memory.

In laymen's terms: Your mind tweaks and invents memories to protect your psyche and to serve conscious goals.

In the film, Memento: "We all make memories to remind ourselves who we are...I'm no different."

Invariably one decision is as good as the other: To sleep alone is hard, in an Eddie Money sense, but being tired and cranky at work is equally distasteful. Basically the entire business makes choosing next to impossible.

You do something, and you have no choice--you must be there. Therefore it's work.


Life is suffering
Now I know the meaning of courage
Only under duress it asserts itself
Death is release

11.30.2003

I witnessed my mother pass Friday, November 28th at 9:20 p.m.

She suffered tremendously in the days, months and years before her death. She turned the corner and began her final approach around June. That's when the cancer nearly broke her leg, forcing an emergency surgery from which she didn't really recover.

In what feels like a world ago, she was first diagnosed in 1995. In many ways she endured an 8 and-a-half-year descent.

She kept turning corners, it seemed, as she got nearer. The cancer in the right side of her body spread to the bone in early 2001. Sometime early this year she lost most function of her right arm. In the summer it was her leg, enormously swollen, which caused endless pain.

<----->

She suffered, wheezed and constantly changed positions in bed to somehow deal with the intractable pain all day Thanksgiving and Friday. She was conscious and could respond to every question we asked her. Although it was hard for her to talk, she could.

7:30 p.m. We were near crying on each side holding her hands certain she was near death. I asked if she remembered family hugs with Jessie. She nodded confidently, instantly. The tears poured forth as three minds recollected a forgotten event. From 1984-1998 we owned a mixed breed terrier named Jessie. During our younger years, the four of us used to hug and my mother would call it a family hug. It was just a whimsical activity that families do. It was unique for our family, but not unique within the context of families in general. Like the invented languages that siblings create, it was our definition of self, unity, love. This tradition, those particular instances that defined the tradition, all cycled through our minds simultaneously, knowing that one mind soon would no longer be able to revisit fond loving memories.

Some things are best left unsaid.

Around 9:20 she removed the oxygen from her nose and pulled the apparatus off her ears. My brother and I held her hands as her breathing slowed to forced gasps every 10 seconds. Each one we hoped would be the last. Those memorial moments between gasps, eternal. Like the infinite second between heartbeats. In a healthy person, we're fairly certain the next beat will come. We were fairly certain each gasp would be her last.

No more breaths, no more pain. But we weren't certain. We hugged a corpse for an indefinate period before making phone calls and calling the nurse.

The human capacity for suffering is indeed endless. Her suicide, albeit a technicality considering her condition, proves that only the conscious mind can curtail the spirit's ability to suffer. She ended her suffering, but she had to decide to end her life in order for this to happen. I probably will continue to deconstruct 11/28/03 for the rest of my life, but no meaning will be gleaned other than what was on the surface. I will not truly understand her in those moments until I am in my own deathbed. The images of that night will haunt me forever. I am glad children are not born with such images etched into their minds as it would cause the decimation of humanity.

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