In 1995 she was given two years, but being young and strong, her doctors applied the most aggressive techniques; she was spared, it seemd. Cancer is eminently adaptable, however, and despite optimistic remissions, resurfaced again and again.
In late August, she was given an awful diagnosis: "months." She did not last even one. The remaining available treatments had such awful side effects--and so little efficacy--that the cancer, i.e., Death, became preferable; she entered a home hospice program on September 24, passing on the evening of September 29, her husband at her side, her sister upstairs brushing her teeth. She was just a few days shy of her 39th birthday.
Her blog is factual, not emotional, but the facts about the oxygen tanks and the difficulty breathing or focusing or reading are deeply painful, deeply lonely (but not, as far as I can tell, afraid). Go, and be with G-d.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Painful Things
Without guilt
What is a man? An animal, isn't he?
A wolf forgiven at his meat,
A beetle innocent in his copulation.
- Archibald MacLeish
I was in the desert when word reached me. My agent on the ground back home reported that he had figured out why I had not been able to make contact with her: she was not there. Seems she had moved in with a man in Baltimore. Ironically, her letter reached me only days later. I still have it, somewhere.
To jump to the middle of the story--it turns out I am understanding and grateful, yea thankful for her actions; indeed, I have a vested interest in the success of her marriage (yes, she married the man from Baltimore): her claims of ineffable (literally--she could articulate no reason) love could only make sense in that context, through the success of that pairing. Under those conditions, I can understand her motivations, if not her actions. And, of course, those events set me up for the my own eventual satisfaction and success.
I may develop this story over time, in a single post, adding and subtracting parts as I see fit. But given the point of this blog--to figure out what it means to be a man--I will post for my reader(s) the initial, base, male response.
Upon returning to the States (and I will save the intervening time and activities for another day), my first action was to break into her apartment (if you can call it that, given that I had a key and was paying the rent; but it felt like breaking in). My main fears, as a man, had to do with sex and money (I was rather unreceptive, at that time, to the idea of, for lack of a better term, true love). This man either was a better lover than I (but, of course, prior to commission, how could one know?) or clearly he must have had more measure (measure, in this case, could mean money, connections, power, worldly goods, whatever it is that men accumulate in their attempts to attract women; you know, crow-like "sparklies.")
Sex. Money. What is a man? Strangely, if the answer has to do with sex and money, I am okay with that. [I read somewhere that most mathematicians develop their best ideas before age thirty, then spend the rest of their careers defending those ideas; in related research, it seems that mathematicians, male ones anyway, are struggling for the same thing as most men: feminine attentions. We just want to be wanted, need to be needed, that sort of thing. Oo-rah.]
That is about as much recollection as I can stand at this time. We'll see how this pans out. I will, however, jump to the current time and state that my daughters and sons could do worse than to emulate the academic and professional achievements and passions of she to whom I was first betrothed (an unripe liaison, since annulled). I seek not "closure" here (a term, and a goal, that annoys me, "closure," as if anything is ever, ever "closed."); fact is, I do not know exactly what I seek (heck, I am still near emotional ignorance of my father's passing).
More later. Maybe.
What is a man? An animal, isn't he?
A wolf forgiven at his meat,
A beetle innocent in his copulation.
- Archibald MacLeish
I was in the desert when word reached me. My agent on the ground back home reported that he had figured out why I had not been able to make contact with her: she was not there. Seems she had moved in with a man in Baltimore. Ironically, her letter reached me only days later. I still have it, somewhere.
To jump to the middle of the story--it turns out I am understanding and grateful, yea thankful for her actions; indeed, I have a vested interest in the success of her marriage (yes, she married the man from Baltimore): her claims of ineffable (literally--she could articulate no reason) love could only make sense in that context, through the success of that pairing. Under those conditions, I can understand her motivations, if not her actions. And, of course, those events set me up for the my own eventual satisfaction and success.
I may develop this story over time, in a single post, adding and subtracting parts as I see fit. But given the point of this blog--to figure out what it means to be a man--I will post for my reader(s) the initial, base, male response.
Upon returning to the States (and I will save the intervening time and activities for another day), my first action was to break into her apartment (if you can call it that, given that I had a key and was paying the rent; but it felt like breaking in). My main fears, as a man, had to do with sex and money (I was rather unreceptive, at that time, to the idea of, for lack of a better term, true love). This man either was a better lover than I (but, of course, prior to commission, how could one know?) or clearly he must have had more measure (measure, in this case, could mean money, connections, power, worldly goods, whatever it is that men accumulate in their attempts to attract women; you know, crow-like "sparklies.")
Sex. Money. What is a man? Strangely, if the answer has to do with sex and money, I am okay with that. [I read somewhere that most mathematicians develop their best ideas before age thirty, then spend the rest of their careers defending those ideas; in related research, it seems that mathematicians, male ones anyway, are struggling for the same thing as most men: feminine attentions. We just want to be wanted, need to be needed, that sort of thing. Oo-rah.]
That is about as much recollection as I can stand at this time. We'll see how this pans out. I will, however, jump to the current time and state that my daughters and sons could do worse than to emulate the academic and professional achievements and passions of she to whom I was first betrothed (an unripe liaison, since annulled). I seek not "closure" here (a term, and a goal, that annoys me, "closure," as if anything is ever, ever "closed."); fact is, I do not know exactly what I seek (heck, I am still near emotional ignorance of my father's passing).
More later. Maybe.
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