All I've Got

Oh, how time passes us so quickly without permission or recognition. It seems as if the months have piled up above my head and have left me lost in a landslide of days and weeks that are scattered carelessly about. I am easily distracted and ask your forgiveness for allowing myself to be so inaccessible and unresponsive. In other words, sorry for taking so long to respond to you and write back. My intentions have always been to let you know that we are happy, healthy, and doing well, but life so easily diverts my attention to another matter that is inevitably seemingly more pressing, more urgent, or more necessary. (Not that it always is, just that that is how it seems.)

To catch you up with California happenings, I would most likely begin with the health and decline of my step-father Greg, who is dying of cancer. He’s been fighting colon cancer for the last seven years, so his condition is not surprising, simply sad. Unable to continue with chemotherapy, the cancer quickly spread from his colon to liver, lungs, and now brain. My mother and sister, who had been living in San Diego, have temporarily moved up to Los Angeles to care for him until his death, which is likely to occur within the next few weeks. Perhaps he might have the wherewithal to hold on until after the holidays, so as not to leave the association of death and holidays so easily transmutable into unpleasant feelings and memories.

Just this last weekend, we went to visit him in his home. Opening the door to his room, he lay deflated against his pillows, his ashen face marked only by dark circles that looked like bruises beneath both eyes. With barely enough strength to sit up, I lean forward to kiss his forehead and greet him hello. He reaches up his arm and hooks it around my neck, breathlessly whispering into my ear, “I love you.” It made me uncomfortable to hear him greet me like that, because his “hello” really meant “goodbye.” Twenty minutes when my mother asked if Gregory and Ashley (my brother and sister) could come in to talk to him, he asked, “Who are they? Do I know them?”

Brain cancer is a funny thing. The brain is such a delicate tissue, the slightest increase in intracranial pressure or abnormal growth within certain areas of the brain can cause a drastic array of symptoms, among which he has experienced: severe migraines, blurred vision, periodic blindness, memory loss, inability to recall the names of people or things, dizziness, loss of balance, generalized weakness, bizarre speech pattern, and the list goes on. Seemingly on the verge of dying, my mother called hospice care who came in to assess his condition and swift deterioration and determined that a particular steroid may help reduce swelling and alleviate the symptoms that had so swiftly swept over him. To everyone’s shock and relief, the steroids improved his condition enough for him to be able to leave his bed and shuffle around the house, albeit for short periods of time. He is not always coherent, (seeing as how he asked my mother, “If I die in the jewelry box, will you bury me with my rings?”), but to compare him to how he looked just a few days ago, you would never have guessed that he was practically on his death bed. For that, I suppose we ought to be grateful, but some small part of me wonders if it is right to prolong the inevitable. Today, as my mother was administering his pain meds, he accused her of trying to kill him. We are now adding paranoia and severe agitation to the list of symptoms. The nurse said the tumor is causing some sort of brain psychosis and doctor has added Haldol to his list of drugs, which also include, but are not limited to: Morphine, Ativan, Oxycontin, and Ambien that he takes each day/night to help manage pain and help him sleep.

Death brings perspective, and with perspective comes reflection; reflection brings insight, and insight moves the heart. Once the heart is moved, we can never be the same - and this is what I'm learning.