Doozy

Dear blog,

I haven't made sweet wordly love to you since May 24th, and boy has this life been a doozy since then. This life has just been a nonstop train full of doozy...

Coming into 2015, I kinda had a feeling it was gonna be a year I'd always remember. Maybe because I have an affinity for odd numbers, maybe because 2014 was so forgettable, or maybe because on some level my consciousness has already experienced all moments of this incarnation and is just progressing through them to create the illusions of time and free will, and what I perceive as intuitions are actually reactions to a future event that, on a higher plane of existence, has already happened. 

And so yeah. At any given moment I've been drowning in the depths of overwork (know I'm not alone here), experiencing a palpable revival of my appreciation of the universe through camping/traveling, and/or facing our mortality and the fragility of life through the lens of my dad's diagnosis and fight with cancer. And in this moment, I find myself lying on a guest bed in the house that my sister and her fiancé just moved into (Oh yeah, forgot to mention my sister got fucking engaged and moved into a gotdamn legit house) with basically my "normal" life on hold as I try to figure out how I want to handle my dad's situation.

More backstory. Last Friday, about a week and a half ago, I was just about to get out of bed to go to work when my dad asked if he could give me a call. I also forgot to mention that my grandmother has been in the hospital since early July with liver cancer/surgery complications, so I picked up bracing myself to hear something about her. And as my dad told me that he had some bad news, a small part of me hoped that it would be about her, but it wasn't. Basically my dad's doctor had told him that after months of trying different treatments, nothing had been able to stop the cancer from spreading, and there was nothing else they could really do for him. He was going to start hospice on Monday. Then his girlfriend was on the phone saying how he put up an incredible fight, then he was telling me how his sisters and dad were there with him, and how he and his girlfriend were going to their beach house in Hull for the weekend. Somehow I blabbered my way through that phone call, then just kinda let everything sink into my reality.

Perhaps a frivolous sidenote, perhaps not, but for me what happened after that was a super-aware state of mind. Colors and sunlight were brighter, and I swear I could smell my celery plant from the toilet door, which maybe you guys can and I just have a weak sense of smell, but in that moment everything was noticeably heightened. (PS-can someone water my celery plant?) Anyways, the human experience never ceases to fascinate me and I thought this was noteworthy.

So moving forward, I told my bosses about the situation, talked to my mom and sister, and got an earlier flight to take home. I had a great bike ride with Tyler that night, had a great last meal with some of y'all, and most surprisingly had a great talk with my documentary boss, who gave me a book on Tibetan Buddhism that deals heavily with the subject of death. And then I flew home, preparing myself to face death head on without avoiding any aspects of it or having any regrets about the process. 

When I went over to my dad's for the first time, I found that the "end is nigh" mindset that my dad and his girlfriend (and pretty much everyone else here) I had perceived on Friday was replaced with a business-as-usual attitude. They were trying to continue to fight it with his diet, and hoping to recover his immune system, and maybe get healthy enough to get back on treatment. The main thing, his girlfriend said, was staying positive.

When someone's survival strategy is staying positive, it seems counterproductive to ask them how much time they have left. But without that answer, I don't really know what to do. What feels the most right is being around, trying to enjoy time with him, and trying to help with his diet strategy. I love my dad, and I want to do whatever I can to help him through all this. But I can't just hang out here forever, because all craziness aside I do love the life I've cut out for myself with you people, and i have to get back to that at some point.

My dad's going to the hospital in the morning, and I was hoping to go to get some intel from his doctor, but he didn't want me to go. But maybe he'll let me know what they tell him. Anyways, as tough as my situation is, I know his is exponentially harder, so I'm trying to bear with that. So we shall see.

That's all for now folks. I'll leave with a quote I pulled out of the book my boss gave me. And maybe I'll blog more about this book and my other readings sometime soon.

"Whether we fear death and refuse to face it, or whether we romanticize it, death is trivialized. Both despair and euphoria about death are an evasion. Death is neither depressing nor exciting; it is simply a fact of life.

How sad it is that most of us only begin to appreciate our life when we are on the point of dying. I often think of the words of the great Buddha master Padmasambhava: 'Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret. But isn't it far too late?' What more chilling commentary on the modern world could there be than that most people die unprepared for death, as they have lived, unprepared for life?" -p10