Okay, so I thought I'd better explain a little here. I started this blog more than a year ago and didn't do much with it. I have decided to start posting some writing here, so I've begun with an essay I wrote a few years ago. I hope to put something up at least once a week, but no promises!
I'm just learning the formatting and all that stuff, so please accept my apologies for any discrepancies or problems ahead of time!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Death in Triplicate
Here is an essay I wrote about losing my parents and father-in-law in three years.
I lost the only three parents I’ve known in less than three years. Of the age that one begins to lose, I suppose I was not surprised.
First my father. We expected it – once a man with a robust enough appetite to make four or five trips to the Mexican food buffet, he shriveled into a fragile shell of his former self, barely able to eat an entire cheese enchilada. A one-time sufferer of pancreatitis and long-time sufferer of obesity, his life-long habits of indulgence culminated first in diabetes and finally pancreatic cancer. I still see him standing at the kitchen counter, eating three peanut butter sandwiches, assembling and ingesting them one after another, the oily paste feeding his adipose tissue and he too intent to sit to eat.
Fourteen months after my father died, my father-in-law succumbed to the lung cancer that had been silently destroying his organs. We again expected it. He had been diagnosed two years earlier and given only six month to live. The VA Hospital where he was treated had offered no hope and little treatment, but being the stubborn northern plains farmer he was, he defied the doctors’ timetable and went into remission for a few years. When the cancer reemerged, it was relentless and quick. At Thanksgiving he didn’t seem himself as he watched his grandchildren from beneath a quilt, and when he saw his grandchildren play basketball for the last time, it took him ten minutes to make the usually quick walk from the car to the bleachers. He too had invited the disease in by smoking and actively pursuing alcoholism for much of his life. Sober 25 years and smoke free for 15, his lungs and liver were still unable to fend off the disease.
Eighteen months later, my mother’s recurring lymphoma recurred for the last time. First diagnosed just after my third child was born, it was fourteen years to the month that the disease finally wore her resistance down. She was 80 when she died, as was my father, but she had lived a clean, healthy life. One glass of wine made her sleepy and she thrived on fruits and vegetables; always active, she was never more than 20 pounds overweight. She too, however, fell victim to the marauding cells, allowing only oases of health between the cancer treatments. She flew 2500 miles in May, attending my son’s graduation and all the festivities with no hint of the impending recurrence. Four months later she was dead. Hers was not expected. Having lived with the disease for so long, I believed it would never beat her.
So I am a different person today from who I was four years ago. A year into it, I am not sad anymore. But I am a person who has an empty place, just under my heart, which echoes with sadness when memories bump it, and I have to pause, wait for the reverberations to slowly still, and then move on.
I lost the only three parents I’ve known in less than three years. Of the age that one begins to lose, I suppose I was not surprised.
First my father. We expected it – once a man with a robust enough appetite to make four or five trips to the Mexican food buffet, he shriveled into a fragile shell of his former self, barely able to eat an entire cheese enchilada. A one-time sufferer of pancreatitis and long-time sufferer of obesity, his life-long habits of indulgence culminated first in diabetes and finally pancreatic cancer. I still see him standing at the kitchen counter, eating three peanut butter sandwiches, assembling and ingesting them one after another, the oily paste feeding his adipose tissue and he too intent to sit to eat.
Fourteen months after my father died, my father-in-law succumbed to the lung cancer that had been silently destroying his organs. We again expected it. He had been diagnosed two years earlier and given only six month to live. The VA Hospital where he was treated had offered no hope and little treatment, but being the stubborn northern plains farmer he was, he defied the doctors’ timetable and went into remission for a few years. When the cancer reemerged, it was relentless and quick. At Thanksgiving he didn’t seem himself as he watched his grandchildren from beneath a quilt, and when he saw his grandchildren play basketball for the last time, it took him ten minutes to make the usually quick walk from the car to the bleachers. He too had invited the disease in by smoking and actively pursuing alcoholism for much of his life. Sober 25 years and smoke free for 15, his lungs and liver were still unable to fend off the disease.
Eighteen months later, my mother’s recurring lymphoma recurred for the last time. First diagnosed just after my third child was born, it was fourteen years to the month that the disease finally wore her resistance down. She was 80 when she died, as was my father, but she had lived a clean, healthy life. One glass of wine made her sleepy and she thrived on fruits and vegetables; always active, she was never more than 20 pounds overweight. She too, however, fell victim to the marauding cells, allowing only oases of health between the cancer treatments. She flew 2500 miles in May, attending my son’s graduation and all the festivities with no hint of the impending recurrence. Four months later she was dead. Hers was not expected. Having lived with the disease for so long, I believed it would never beat her.
So I am a different person today from who I was four years ago. A year into it, I am not sad anymore. But I am a person who has an empty place, just under my heart, which echoes with sadness when memories bump it, and I have to pause, wait for the reverberations to slowly still, and then move on.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Well it's been almost a year since I wrote anything here, but I'm hoping to make it a more regular thing.
Just got back from Oklahoma with the girls, and the trip was great. I'm going to be posting some thoughts about the trip by the end of the weekend. It was a mixture of pure fun and stimulation (riding roller coasters at Six Flags) and surreal landscapes (a town that sits on the border of Oklahoma and Kansas a year after catastrophic flooding).
I did notice that they have dummied down the "Watch for Ice on Bridges" signs I'm used to seeing. Now, just so there's no doubt, the signs say "Bridge Ices Before Road." Duh. More later. . .
Just got back from Oklahoma with the girls, and the trip was great. I'm going to be posting some thoughts about the trip by the end of the weekend. It was a mixture of pure fun and stimulation (riding roller coasters at Six Flags) and surreal landscapes (a town that sits on the border of Oklahoma and Kansas a year after catastrophic flooding).
I did notice that they have dummied down the "Watch for Ice on Bridges" signs I'm used to seeing. Now, just so there's no doubt, the signs say "Bridge Ices Before Road." Duh. More later. . .
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