Wednesday,
May 14,
2003
A Journal from Austin, Texas.
A Project of LBFFP Stealth Publishing.
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A Journal from Austin, Texas. |
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doll heads for sale on South Congress
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A day in which the reality is death and its attendant ceremony, not tennis.
My calendar said that I would attend a tennis 'play day' with Westwood ladies. Instead, I had an early workout and drove to Cleburne for a funeral. Sir Thomas Browne spoke of 'the thousand doors that lead to death.' Other doors are temporary reprieves. You dodge today but one day there is a tiger beyond the door you choose or wander through. Beyond every door. That's a certainty. Due to my background, most of the services I attend are religious, mostly Protestant. People are celebrating the loved one being in heaven even as they weep. They talk about 'eternal life.' It's enough to me that there is an end, that our lives and therefore our responsibilities, are finite. Today's papers reported that a new drug for Multiple Myeloma had been approved with a very short trial period. They hope this treatment will prolong life for people with this disease. I suppose I should wish that my mother's disease had been diagnosed earlier so that we could have tried more treatments or that the timing had been different. (According to one doctor she 'presented late' which, in my mind, meant the doctors diagnosed late but transferred the blame to the patient.) But I don't wish this. I wish, rather, that my mother had suffered less, had an earlier diagnosis not to necessarily save her from death from this disease but ease her through it without so much suffering. I would wish for myself and my loved ones an easy death, especially when we've had a long life. I respect death, accept it, hope I can embrace it when the time comes. I worry more about suffering. Suffering is more amenable to our science. The cure for death is a long way off. I am not religious. But I've picked the following verse for my obituary. Not because I believe that death is better because something comes after but because it is the coda of your life, a time to reflect on what you leave behind as a legacy. Hmmm...better start building a legacy.
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Death
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Food Diary. 8:50 banana, two pieces provolone cheese 11:45 Dr. Pepper (12 Ounce) and sausage roll with cheese in it 1pm A giant iceberg lettuce salad with creamy ranch dressing, cheese and lunch meat and more cheese and olives and even a couple of pieces of tomato with cheese garlic bread and black coffee. [The road is very, very bad for food! On the way home I drank a bottle of water. That kept me awake and felt much better.] 7pm Rice, hot sauce, onions, a little cheese.
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Time flies.... Get up about 6:20 and off to the club after some coffee at 6:40. Get back about eight. Shower, dress up, eat, get ready to go get Dad for funeral. 9:20 Leave for Dad's. Dad is all ready with an ice chest with some sodas and his commuter cup full of water. I've forgotten my commuter cup. Oh, well. I'll skip coffee and drink a soda. By 11:45 we've reached the small town of West north of Waco, gassed up, had a sausage roll and we go on. By a little before 1pm we are in Cleburne via my dad's navigation and have found the funeral home via a MapQuest map off the Internet. I confirm that it's the place and we go to Joe's Italian for some coffee. Only I ordered Joe's salads and some garlic cheese bread. In spite of the iceberg lettuce, the salad is really pretty good and they bring apparently homemade rolls as well as cheese garlic bread. And I drink the (credible) coffee with the food, something I rarely do. I don't finish the stuff but I feel stuffed. 1:30 or so We are at funeral home. The widow is surprised to see us. Her first husband was my mother's first cousin. As it happened she and her first husband were also Dad's neighbors, living a few blocks away from them in Mesquite. The first husband died, maybe ten years ago, of a brain tumor. Nursed at home at the end by hospice, a sister who was a retired nurse and Dad. "This is Clyde..he was my savior last time," said the widow. She married a friend from high school, a friend she and her husband had kept up with about four years ago. Now this husband has died of a brain tumor, nursed by a local hospice at the end, apparently. Her children are my distant cousins (second? third?) and I actually recognize some of them. Someone says I look 'just like my mother.' Anyway, these guys' grandmother and my grandmother were sisters. Dad had a little cough during the service and slipped to the back. He doesn't want to linger after it's over. He navigates us to a highway to take the back way home. I'm having trouble staying awake and I stop at a convenience store in Hamilton and get a bottle of water. That helps. Soon we are in Lampasas and before long we are in Austin sprawl in a jam on 183 that is like a cake walk compared to the jam going north. By 6pm we are home. An eight hour
excursion. I read the day's papers while watching
West Wing and Law and Order. I switch to Memento.
Boy...that's a hard movie to figure. I've never seen it all the way through.
The unwinding backwards, his 'condition.' I appreciate the condition.
Just now I was looking for the entry where the guy whose funeral was held
today visited. Some of the entries that popped up could have been tattoos
that reminded me of my life. They seemed something that happened to someone
else. Maybe that's why I keep this journal. Because otherwise my life
slips away into a non-specific morass
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Reading. I am still reading Robert Massie's Peter the Great. He is off on his first military campaign. I am still reading Journey Through Genius in small bites. My respect for Euclid grows. I have a desire to sit down with a compass and a straight edge.
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Yes, I'm thinking about setting aside time to 'exercise my writing' and not just this journal.
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Exercise 15 minutes on recumbent bike |
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My stomach is in an uproar in the morning but is calm the rest of the day.
113/74 92
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164
JUST
TYPING
