Ever smoke?
If so, ever had the experience of pinching off the end with your thumb and forefinger to flick out the lit part for extinguishing?
Have you ever seen that emulated in life?
Friends and family of cancer victims have. Brutal, unfair extinguishing of life that happens quickly and with life still left in the fuel giver.
But have you ever had to be a fly on the wall for the process? Here’s how that goes for some:
-Cancer victim is identified. Cancer victim fights the first time around. Cancer victim undergoes physiological change, waves of vomiting, weakness, lethargy and a host of other unsavory symptoms. Maybe cancer victim wins…..maybe.
-Cancer victim either lives in fear OR makes the best out of the next 4-5 years of their extended life. Intestinal fortitude in play here….
-Cancer victim has an “Oh [bleep], that isn’t right, moment that sends them to the doctor. Hoping for the best, not wanting to alarm, knowing damn well they are lying to themselves and everyone else. (But we are conditioned to maintain the lie just the same. Hope dealers are at times no more savory than the guy that sells heroin in a local high school…)
-Cancer victim undergoes a barrage of excellent treatments that make one feel nauseus, tired, weak, loopy and experimental. (Hope dealers and their cheerleaders [pharmaceutical companies] have their claws in at this point)
-Cancer victims quantity of life is increased…maybe. Quality can only be judged by the eye of the beholder or pursuer of sed life.
-Cancer victim gets “the news”.
-Cancer victim: “What the hell am I going to do with X amount of time?”
(Here’s where it gets to the point where you have to close your eyes and imagine yourself in the shoes of the cancer victim. X amount of time is short. Really [bleeping] short. Imagine less-than-a-month short)
And this is the conversation that happens:
“I’m okay to die, but it is surreal that I am here having this conversation and a few weeks from now…………..”
“I want to know what is going to happen to me.” So they ask a medical professional. “Get Roxanol, get a fan, forgo the O2, don’t be a hero, take the drugs, say what you want to say to people now. NOW. Today. Right [BLEEPING] now.”
*poof*
Life extinguished.
Dying with grace is an acquired skill…….
Still …heavy post man.
Eloquent…and an eerily accurate depiction of how life played out for a dear friend…except the part about being so sick from the treatments. He was oddly quite well through most of it, and his attitude and sense of humor eased OUR pain over the hand he had been dealt.
He is missed…