About

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Last Things

The blog is such the lunar business.  I am reminded of the time during the 1980s when an eclipse lasted for several minutes.  Upstairs from my son’s bedroom window, we viewed  beside the giant Magnolia into the neighborhood intersection–that strange light, not moonlight, not daylight, a mix of opposing lights in a dark light or bright shadow–not even twilight.  It had a funny feeling to it, a light  sensation of a day cloaked in mystery — still clear, but in shade.   I like to capture the turns and twists of the experiencing of Vic’s “night sea journey,” this, as it is also known, “the dark night of the soul,” from life into the shades of the other side, but lately nothing much was happening, a little more withdrawl, a little more progressive weakness.  Then, one day, she cried again, and we in attendance couldn’t figure out why.  We had been looking into the backyard and talking about how we had worked so hard at it.  We asked her why she was crying, and she said, “Last things.”

I remembered how she cried when her son had left weeks ago to go home to the West coast, “the last time I’ll see him,” she said.  And, then recently, The Annual Fish Fry at her oldest brother’s house:  a fine day, in wheelchair, but sunny and bright, good pictures, a good time had by all.  Then, as we got into the car, I knew why Vic cried, the last one.  Then just a few days ago, planning Thanksgiving, same “last things.”  Yes, it all seems like viewing time through a telescope, an eclipse of normal day; then we really got a curve ball.

Sarah (her cousin) and I were talking with Vic.  I was reporting on the “tornado” house, the one that got hit on 27 April 14.  I was explaining how it was going to be closed (sold) soon, how we had worked on it so much since then, and now that we are out of it, everything is fixed after we lived it in it so long,  and how it looked before, with the garage still there, and blah, blah, blah–we looked over and Vic was crying.  Sometimes we don’t ask her why, but this time we just had to–everything seemed so innocent:  She answered:  “The tornado house, when I didn’t know I had cancer.”   Sarah and I just looked at each other, struck by the obvious logic of it, I guess–the stun of living in an adumbrated, short-lived frame of mind now, the two lives, one “normal” in the past, and one “eclipsed” now with the immanent change of standing at death’s door.  It had an “of course” quality to it and seemed to point out once again how matters looked to her, how reasonable, if one was the one in the hot seat.  The sheer burden to carry one’s death in this strange, eclipsed light of awareness drew closer to us–“the life I had when I didn’t have cancer”–in life, not going out.

Postscript:  An old movie came on last night, “Out of Africa,” but the movie doesn’t matter so much, but the background musical score was a good one to capture the arc of life covered in the drama as good movies do.  I was just watching along, but toward the end, the images got to “last things.”  And then I thought of us and heard the musical score in our own movie when the scenes of life were playing when this movie came out, our days filled with the ordinary life ongoing:  the image of my own office through the years, our rides together with her looking out the window to the countrysides in all weathers, lighted hallways in shadow and light with her great taste in furniture, waving to each other from our cars, her rushing to work, and the evening light, soft and amber, mostly in rooms, that twilight of sundown on her face, a magazine opened, her long hours on the screened-in porches, sitting alone into the gathering darkness, “centering,” we called it–our life–and then I could cry with heart-felt understanding, remembering and listening to our song of life  playing in the background, the eternal now of life then, before the tornado hit, before the cancer.

Limbo

Life slows down.  Vic is sleeping much more now, most days, an occasional trip downstairs to her mechanical bed.  It is a tough business.  One day, Kay said she was sitting beside the bed when Vic woke up.  Vic sat up, looked over to her [Kay] and smiled; then, a look of terror came into her eyes, and she reached up rubbing her head which is now covered in short, prickly hair growing back from chemo.  “I’m dying of cancer, aren’t I?”  she said to Kay, stating a fact more than asking.  Kay explained how it seemed that for a moment she was happy to see her like in the past, then, in the next moment, woke up to the present reality, processing in an instant the knowing of her predicament, seemingly forgotten during sleep and just upon awakening.  When Kay told me this, it seemed to emphasize her life now that goes in and out of her dance with death.  The other day, she said, “I don’t want to be dying.”  I don’t know, but I suspect her crying is the awful experience of that devouring fact that renews itself, seemingly daily and in various moments, but who really knows?

There are some times when Vic sits up, visits, and is very present, talking to her visitors; however, she tires easily.  It is difficult to be this close–still in life, but right in the presence of physical death growing and deterioriating inside her.  Her color is good; she is losing weight, but the black mass inside, or whatever the color of the mossy stuff is, remains invisible.   On sight, on the surface, matters look normal (except for slow withdrawl) and that’s the hell of it.  And, then, Vic had a good day, relatively speaking.  She had visitors and spent the day interacting.  She said she was going to stay downstairs now because the bed upstairs was too comfortable, and she got depressed, and all she wanted to do was sleep.  Now she wants to be closer to the action.  This day is, in fact, even in the face of death, a better way to spend the day.

Sloan, Alisen, and Jennifer came by, our fifth and sixth visitors for the day.  I built a fire.  The rain has been a monsoon, unusually steady for 48 hours, a real fight upstairs with the gods rolling thunder all night.  They asked me about the blog.  I said nothing much happening, that it was difficult to describe a frame of mind, and I asked Vic, “what is a way to describe it?”

“Limbo.”  She said.