Lately, I’ve been contemplating that my death could be sooner than later. Of course, we’re all dying. We just have different trajectories. I know something is going to take me out. I’ve wondered just what that might be.
I’ve watched and taken note as much as one can of many different ways of dying including the expected, terminal illness, and unexpected, being hit by a car. I’ve always been curious as to how my earthly exit would come. I’ve died many times in my dreams. As I transition between here and there, my recurrent thought is, “Ah, so this is how it happens,” followed by a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
In any case, I’ve been sick since April. An abdominal illness that continues to metamorphasize from gallbladder to uterus to bladder. It circles tighter and tighter taunting me with hope of a resolution just barely out of reach. I’m not feeling especially hopeful about that resolution right now. In fact, I fear it may be my final resolution. Ironically, I can’t know and won’t know until I reach some as yet undetermined outcome. More than likely I will have plenty of time to anticipate the end if this is how it goes. My job is to not start planning my funeral prematurely.
There is a sweetness to noticing the components of life. There’s no downside unless I start maxing out the charge card in anticipation. My experience is that being in great pain requires focusing on many small things around me. Big things are often out of reach when I’m in this state. My European trip next spring is in danger…again.
As a thought experiment, imaging the world without me is entertaining, seeing where I make ripples and where my presence is immaterial. My love and passions make ripples. Otherwise, my passing is transparent. Noticing these contradictions is reassuring. I’m okay with not inflating my importance. In fact, it gives me hope for the world’s future. I can think of a few people whose importance I would like to deflate. However, my powers are limited.
If I’m dying younger than I’d like, it’d be funny except it’s not. The thing is, I’m important, and important, and important, and then I become a blip, a fading memory receding into nothingness. It’s neither good nor bad. Like gravity, it’s elemental whether I choose to believe it or not. I’m Joceile in this time and place. No one will ever be me.
Ronnie points out I’m scared. Exactly. Yesterday, a doctor used the “C” word in reference to my bladder. Use of that word should only be made with great thought by a medical provider. Saying it’s a possibility is worrying. Could a cancer diagnosis be on its way? I don’t feel like my medical professionals are with me on this. As I await more medical information, I have a message for my doctor, “If I’m going to die, will you at least walk to the end of the dock and wave?” I’ll need a final gesture.
My confusion is, “Is this it?” I can’t know until I know. Life is full of possibilities even as I may stagger to the last day. I close my eyes and look out there in the darkness waiting for a picture to take shape. I’m aware that looking “out there” is also looking “in here” at what’s inside me. The pictures developing are constantly changing decrying a fixed pronouncement.
It’s ironic that the majority of my life I contemplated death because I was suicidal. Now at the nadir when I’m embracing life and fully engaged with it, I contemplate death because I’m getting closer to it. It’s undeniable. It will happen one day. At times, I get so excited I forget I’m just tiptoeing to infinity. The greatest magic is not in what I do but how I feel doing it. That is my value. That’s my judgment. The final straw is that if I knew the day, I’d tell myself. As I don’t, I can’t. Contradictions abound. Ain’t it the way?
To Life.
Joceile
7.25.22
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