The Condolences

I have typed the phrases "My condolences" and "I'm so sorry for your loss" into my various social media posts way too often—almost daily, sometimes several times a day—for the past few months. In part I blame my demographic. I'm a late-middle-aged woman with metastatic cancer trying her best to stay alive in the midst of a serious pandemic, a pandemic which also has exacerbated the opioid epidemic and prompted a rise in suicides. So many of my friends have lost not just one family member to COVID, but multiple—both parents, sets of grandparents, all four grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, siblings, children. The catastrophic loss of elder wisdom in our culture will leave us bereft for generations. Others have been so sickened that their quality of life for their remaining days is profoundly altered by permanent disability. I've expressed my condolences to so many friends and family members of people killed by COVID, and because I am connected to folks in the cancer community, we've had many final farewells there too. In some cases of people I know with cancer, COVID was the reason for their passing, and cancer was cited as a "co-morbidity." I'm not a physician listing cause of death, but it seems to me that if a person with cancer contracts COVID and dies of respiratory failure, the cause is COVID, not some co-morbidity.

What an awful thing to ponder, your co-morbidity. Ugh. And to have arrogant, healthy politicians arguing about which caused a victim's death, the COVID or the "co-morbidity," is insulting. It reveals their ignorance about the risks we all face from pernicious respiratory illness, as well as their disregard for those of us who are at greater risk through no fault of our own, including the elderly. (The politicians on the right especially talk of how it's mostly the elderly being at risk, as if our elders are just expendable, so long as everyone else keeps well, which isn't happening, by the way.) Am I more likely to die if I get COVID than someone else without cancer would be? Probably. But will the cancer have caused my death? The combination of COVID and cancer? Or just the COVID, since my immune system has been busy keeping my cancer in check? It wouldn't matter to me. I'd be dead. 

And yet, currently, people with cancer under the age of 75 don't necessarily yet qualify for priority vaccinations where I live. So, that's not awesome news.

My socials have carried the sad news of many deaths from other causes too. The suicides. The car and motorcycle wrecks. The overdoses. The celebrity deaths (from COVID, cancer, overdose, suicide, old age). The beloved, aged relatives whose time had simply come. The beloved pets who crossed the rainbow bridge to pet heaven. My Facebook feed is o'er full of obits. I type, over and over and over: My condolences. I'm so sorry for your loss. Prayers for you and your family. Lifting you to the light. Etc. Etc. And I mean every word of it, and even more than those formal words say. What I mean is this: if I can hold even one tiny particle of your grief for you, help you carry it in any way, I want to do that. Because you've helped to carry mine. It's what friends and family do, and even the most superficial of "friends" on social media do, because right now, there is just...so...much collective grief. We could all use a little help.

And of course let's not forget deaths in Washington, D.C. caused by the actions of thugs and traitors and a traitor-President who needed to be removed from power as soon as he started spewing lies about the election results. Don't get me started on that heavy shit too. Peace, peace, peace, y'all.

The bleak January skies are making me both rage-ful and ponderous. Thank goodness my Christmas amaryllis has decided to bloom. Also, there are buds on last year's orchid, and store-bought flowers to ogle as well. In a few weeks we'll see forsythia and daffodils gilding the lawns of Nashville. Beauty and hope of more. And gratitude for this life, even stained and torn as it is by grief. We're living it, even when it's hard. That's the balm, today, along with the hope for fewer condolences as vaccinations proceed.

A Raging Bore

A raging bore...which is better than being a raging boar...or boor.

Friends, my most recent CT scans have been deemed "unremarkable" in the language of medical reporting, and I couldn't be happier to be so dull.

The imaging machinery found no evidence of cancer from my neck on down into my pelvis. So. Eight weeks, and we roll again, next time with the brain, since my particular brand of cancer keeps wanting to throw parties up there, and we need to make sure no revelers are setting up for a rave.

But seriously, it feels impossibly silly to crow about my good news in the face of our current national meltdown, eh?

Despite the ill-effects on my mental health, like normal folks, I've been following the news, which recently has been way more important and way more interesting than my scans. But not interesting in a good way. As wonderful as things are inside my body, and as grateful as I am for that—for all the prayers answered and all the medical science that went into keeping me in good shape on the inside— things on the outside of my body are looking pretty grim. 

America, we have a problem. That problem is us.

We know the root cause of it, going back to the very first time a European brought an enslaved person from the continent of Africa to the Americas, believing humans could "own" one another. Or more precisely, that white people could "own" black people—and force them into labor to enrich white people. It was a fucked up idea then, and we continue to fuck up now when it comes to matters of race and justice.

Our country was founded with the evil of slavery already in place. And despite a war supposedly fought to end it, and laws written to bring all people justice and harmony, we are reminded every day that we still live in a country intensively and hatefully divided.

Unfortunately, much of the current leadership is not up to the task of bringing us together. Speaking of boors. The person whose job it is to lead—to be a model of citizenship, fairness, and good sense—sits tweeting madly on his throne about non-existent conspiracies. (Has anyone seen The Madness of King George? About King George III? Remember how that turned out for him?) We can expect nothing good from Washington.

Oh, and don't get me started on the ideological schism over who wears a mask and who doesn't? What is this...The Watchmen?

People, it's up to us. Up to us to call out racism in ourselves and when we see it in others. It's up to us to be kind and smart. It's up to us to stop racism, violence, injustice, coronavirus, a tanking economy, environmental devastation, general rudeness, and lots of other shitty things I've left off this list. Oh, and cancer. All. At. Once.

No wonder the country is having a meltdown. No wonder I am. See! A complete, raging bore.

So folks, this is all I've got: For God and Country, or just Country if you're an atheist (which is FINE by the way, no judgement here) mask up. We've got some voting to do.