Day 09 - Your beliefs
Today is as good a day as any to write this topic.
I've seen people suffer. People I loved, too.
My father in law lost most of his jaw due to a tumor. He couldn't bear his new face, or his illness, or the poison that became his medicine. He slit his throat behind the house but some little girls found him and he survived, only to die of cancer related pneumonia a few months later. Murray Stanley was 67.
My grandmother knew something was wrong for a long time but didn't seek help until it was too late to save her liver. She stayed with me for months after the diagnosis, only for her to life end in a Fresno hospital a few days after I told her that I was pregnant. Bertha Lopas was 70.
My mother in law had what the doctors thought was a stroke but it was later discovered that she had a baseball sized tumor in her temporal lobe. This took a year or two to kill her, and she lost her cognition and language skills in the meanwhile. Telephone calls were rife with anguish and confusion. Beverly Stanley was 74.
Then my grandpa was gone, but it was years after a stroke that confined him to the most depressing convalescent home I've ever seen (and sadly, I've seen quite a few). It changed his mobility but this was less worrisome to me than the complete change of personality that evolved over the next few years. His notes became cryptic and hyper-religious. I saw him before he slipped away, in hospice care in his own home. He had already lost consciousness when I last saw him. All we could do was squeeze his hand and tell him how we felt. Alvin Lopas was 84.
My mother, of course, suffered greatly through countless chemotherapies, her stem cell transplant, the GVHD attacking her skin, gums, gut. The week in isolation from radioactive isotopes, the injections and the IV's into her chest port. The times she told me she didn't want to live, that she didn't want to do anything, and I told her that she had to. A miracle: she lived. But she suffered. Mom was 59 when it all started, and it lasted for two to three years.
My remaining grandfather, sadly, succumed to his prostate cancer shortly after my mom came home from the Cancer apartment. I spent a lot of time with him that last year, sitting in the Chemo room while he got his treatments. His body changed, wasting away. He fought death with valor and ferocity, taking angry swings at death in the ER between professions of love for my remaining grandmother. Days later he released and finally passed. Harold Wilson was 86.
The point is, no death is fair. No death is easy. To document suffering of those I've lost can't even begin to record the anguish of those they have left behind. The suffering I had been witness to up until this summer, while indisputably awful, were also endured by those who lived good lives, who experienced life, who watched their children grow up into adults.
Then Maxwell Smith passed on, my cousin's eldest son. He was eighteen years old, a victim of Lissencephaly. He did not speak. He could not write his name, or walk. He brought so much joy and purpose to my cousin, and she loved being his mother. He was adored by his sisters and grandmother and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a miracle that he was in our lives as long as he was, as he was one of the oldest children still living with this condition. He died last month. There is no explaining what this is like for her, because I believe that it is inconceivable to anyone, anywhere to try to imagine. I haven't said much about it in public because it feels wrong to try to explain this kind of pain. It feels impossible.
Yesterday, Jesse Dukellis died of bacterial meningitis. Jesse was 27, and left behind a lovely wife and baby daughter. He had just purchased his first home.
I've known Jesse since 2002, the day he walked into my coffee shop. He traded Alex a mocha if he'd pilfer a Denny's mug from work, where he was a cook. Jesse had no qualms obliging Alexarc. For a show of appreciation, we made a point of having a midnight snack at his Denny's after work one night. We ordered some kind of snacky fried stuff platter. The plate arrived at our table with a veritable mountain of deep fried tasties; easily five times the ordinary portion. Fries and rings were cascading onto the table, it was incredible. He came out to say hello and did so by turning somersaults down the dining room asile, ending with a bow and a flourish. And that's how we got to know Jesse.
I've seen Jesse somersault down my front steps, and I've seen him leap onto the pylons that abut the "bump-outs" on the street corners downtown. Jesse had an incredible well of energy within him.
He was quick to defend people he cared about, was deeply loyal and genuinely kind. He brought Tristan a big pile of D&D books and some figurines, which Tris still has. I couldn't bring myself to tell Tris yet. I will tell him in the morning. I had to pull myself together first, you know?
Jesse and his wife, Bethany, asked Alex and I to be present at his wedding a few years ago. We met in the afternoon on the corner outside the coffee shop. Jesse was wearing a tricorne hat, if I remember right, and a leather vest and pirate boots that went ridiculously past the knee. Bethany wore a long lace gown, and raised her hem to walk and show me her dainty toes poking barefoot out from her Tevas. We walked to the courthouse and watched the judge perform the succint ceremony, which was closed by Jesse's brother, David, churning out a killer air guitar at the end.
Their baby has the biggest blue eyes. I've seen the toughest, hardest grown men I know melt into a puddle as they carried her around the coffee shop. Jesse loved being a father. He loved his wife.
I don't very often detail "my beliefs" - at least on the Internet - because I know it dismays my mother and grandmother that I don't believe in God. I've identified as athiest for the better part of the last ten years. I kept telling myself, "There is no justice, there's just us."
But that can't be. It can't be that life is pointless and all we can do is slog it out on this world until we can not. That a person can get so close to having everything and the cruel Fates remove it as a joke. That a person can be without the simple abilities we all take for granted for a lifetime, and after that there is nothing more than that experience. We we have will, and before we willed, the intangible will must have come from something. Therefore when we go, our will must go somewhere.
I believe the purpose of life is to use what we have. We must learn what we can. We must be kind and we must use our brains and our hearts. We must work and find purpose in that. Rest and find purpose in that. Love and find purpose in that. Suffer and create, build, smash, grow, give, whatever it is that we do while the clock is ticking, we are obligated by the condition of possessing will to look for the purpose in that. Otherwise, the will is a waste.
Does this mean I believe in God? No. I don't even believe that there is a god-like thing out there. But I do believe that there is something that knits sense into the universe that I am not capable of comprehending. That the possession of will has purpose, and therefore the condition of pre-life, life, and post-life has purpose too.
My grandfather's gravestone (neither of the grandfathers I have mentioned above; I was blessed with many grandparents) says, Vaya con Dios or, "Go with God." It was a song he loved. He had a brain aneurysm perhaps before I was born, so although I remember him, he was severely brain damaged. Walter Michael Harlow II was 65.
The offer of prayers or love or sympathy means the same thing to me as what I proclaim to believe above. It is a declaration of purpose, an expression of meaning. It is a way to identify as a human with will, even as it implies that whatever it is out there knitting sense into the universe will do right by you. And maybe it will.
I hope it will.
Now the hacienda's dark
The town is sleeping
Now the time has come to part
The time for weeping
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love
Now the village mission bells are softly ringing
If you listen with your heart
You'll hear them singing
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love
Wherever you may be, I'll be beside you
Although you're many million dreams away
Each night I'll say a pray'r
A pray'r to guide you
To hasten every lonely hour
Of every lonely day
Now the dawn is breaking through a gray tomorrow
But the memories we share are there to borrow
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love
I've seen people suffer. People I loved, too.
My father in law lost most of his jaw due to a tumor. He couldn't bear his new face, or his illness, or the poison that became his medicine. He slit his throat behind the house but some little girls found him and he survived, only to die of cancer related pneumonia a few months later. Murray Stanley was 67.
My grandmother knew something was wrong for a long time but didn't seek help until it was too late to save her liver. She stayed with me for months after the diagnosis, only for her to life end in a Fresno hospital a few days after I told her that I was pregnant. Bertha Lopas was 70.
My mother in law had what the doctors thought was a stroke but it was later discovered that she had a baseball sized tumor in her temporal lobe. This took a year or two to kill her, and she lost her cognition and language skills in the meanwhile. Telephone calls were rife with anguish and confusion. Beverly Stanley was 74.
Then my grandpa was gone, but it was years after a stroke that confined him to the most depressing convalescent home I've ever seen (and sadly, I've seen quite a few). It changed his mobility but this was less worrisome to me than the complete change of personality that evolved over the next few years. His notes became cryptic and hyper-religious. I saw him before he slipped away, in hospice care in his own home. He had already lost consciousness when I last saw him. All we could do was squeeze his hand and tell him how we felt. Alvin Lopas was 84.
My mother, of course, suffered greatly through countless chemotherapies, her stem cell transplant, the GVHD attacking her skin, gums, gut. The week in isolation from radioactive isotopes, the injections and the IV's into her chest port. The times she told me she didn't want to live, that she didn't want to do anything, and I told her that she had to. A miracle: she lived. But she suffered. Mom was 59 when it all started, and it lasted for two to three years.
My remaining grandfather, sadly, succumed to his prostate cancer shortly after my mom came home from the Cancer apartment. I spent a lot of time with him that last year, sitting in the Chemo room while he got his treatments. His body changed, wasting away. He fought death with valor and ferocity, taking angry swings at death in the ER between professions of love for my remaining grandmother. Days later he released and finally passed. Harold Wilson was 86.
The point is, no death is fair. No death is easy. To document suffering of those I've lost can't even begin to record the anguish of those they have left behind. The suffering I had been witness to up until this summer, while indisputably awful, were also endured by those who lived good lives, who experienced life, who watched their children grow up into adults.
Then Maxwell Smith passed on, my cousin's eldest son. He was eighteen years old, a victim of Lissencephaly. He did not speak. He could not write his name, or walk. He brought so much joy and purpose to my cousin, and she loved being his mother. He was adored by his sisters and grandmother and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a miracle that he was in our lives as long as he was, as he was one of the oldest children still living with this condition. He died last month. There is no explaining what this is like for her, because I believe that it is inconceivable to anyone, anywhere to try to imagine. I haven't said much about it in public because it feels wrong to try to explain this kind of pain. It feels impossible.
Yesterday, Jesse Dukellis died of bacterial meningitis. Jesse was 27, and left behind a lovely wife and baby daughter. He had just purchased his first home.
I've known Jesse since 2002, the day he walked into my coffee shop. He traded Alex a mocha if he'd pilfer a Denny's mug from work, where he was a cook. Jesse had no qualms obliging Alexarc. For a show of appreciation, we made a point of having a midnight snack at his Denny's after work one night. We ordered some kind of snacky fried stuff platter. The plate arrived at our table with a veritable mountain of deep fried tasties; easily five times the ordinary portion. Fries and rings were cascading onto the table, it was incredible. He came out to say hello and did so by turning somersaults down the dining room asile, ending with a bow and a flourish. And that's how we got to know Jesse.
I've seen Jesse somersault down my front steps, and I've seen him leap onto the pylons that abut the "bump-outs" on the street corners downtown. Jesse had an incredible well of energy within him.
He was quick to defend people he cared about, was deeply loyal and genuinely kind. He brought Tristan a big pile of D&D books and some figurines, which Tris still has. I couldn't bring myself to tell Tris yet. I will tell him in the morning. I had to pull myself together first, you know?
Jesse and his wife, Bethany, asked Alex and I to be present at his wedding a few years ago. We met in the afternoon on the corner outside the coffee shop. Jesse was wearing a tricorne hat, if I remember right, and a leather vest and pirate boots that went ridiculously past the knee. Bethany wore a long lace gown, and raised her hem to walk and show me her dainty toes poking barefoot out from her Tevas. We walked to the courthouse and watched the judge perform the succint ceremony, which was closed by Jesse's brother, David, churning out a killer air guitar at the end.
Their baby has the biggest blue eyes. I've seen the toughest, hardest grown men I know melt into a puddle as they carried her around the coffee shop. Jesse loved being a father. He loved his wife.
I don't very often detail "my beliefs" - at least on the Internet - because I know it dismays my mother and grandmother that I don't believe in God. I've identified as athiest for the better part of the last ten years. I kept telling myself, "There is no justice, there's just us."
But that can't be. It can't be that life is pointless and all we can do is slog it out on this world until we can not. That a person can get so close to having everything and the cruel Fates remove it as a joke. That a person can be without the simple abilities we all take for granted for a lifetime, and after that there is nothing more than that experience. We we have will, and before we willed, the intangible will must have come from something. Therefore when we go, our will must go somewhere.
I believe the purpose of life is to use what we have. We must learn what we can. We must be kind and we must use our brains and our hearts. We must work and find purpose in that. Rest and find purpose in that. Love and find purpose in that. Suffer and create, build, smash, grow, give, whatever it is that we do while the clock is ticking, we are obligated by the condition of possessing will to look for the purpose in that. Otherwise, the will is a waste.
Does this mean I believe in God? No. I don't even believe that there is a god-like thing out there. But I do believe that there is something that knits sense into the universe that I am not capable of comprehending. That the possession of will has purpose, and therefore the condition of pre-life, life, and post-life has purpose too.
My grandfather's gravestone (neither of the grandfathers I have mentioned above; I was blessed with many grandparents) says, Vaya con Dios or, "Go with God." It was a song he loved. He had a brain aneurysm perhaps before I was born, so although I remember him, he was severely brain damaged. Walter Michael Harlow II was 65.
The offer of prayers or love or sympathy means the same thing to me as what I proclaim to believe above. It is a declaration of purpose, an expression of meaning. It is a way to identify as a human with will, even as it implies that whatever it is out there knitting sense into the universe will do right by you. And maybe it will.
I hope it will.
Now the hacienda's dark
The town is sleeping
Now the time has come to part
The time for weeping
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love
Now the village mission bells are softly ringing
If you listen with your heart
You'll hear them singing
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love
Wherever you may be, I'll be beside you
Although you're many million dreams away
Each night I'll say a pray'r
A pray'r to guide you
To hasten every lonely hour
Of every lonely day
Now the dawn is breaking through a gray tomorrow
But the memories we share are there to borrow
Vaya con dios, my darling
Vaya con dios, my love