Wednesday, May 5th
Elizabeth now has the sedan. I am so happy to have forced her to accept it, as I want her to stay in Ottawa as long as possible. I am aware her children and grandchildren in British Columbia need her. But I do too. I want her to have wheels. It's a bribe and a talisman that she stay.
She drives me to my MRI out at the General Hospital in the East End. We mistake the Children’s Hospital for the General and she goes to move the car when we discover the mistake, and I jog over to it. Gee I can jog just fine this huge distance. I can’t be sick enough to have metastatic cancer.
The machine itself is frightening. Every once in a while deep, loud tuba notes bellow from it. They have told me not to move and I chafe at it. I am Pauline in Perils of Pauline, tied to the railroad track. I am thinking of Pauline cos I actually "starred" as a kind of Cruella deVille hottie in a cabaret style high school drama production of it, in which my character FAILS TO seduce a simple, pure farm rube who is looking to keep Pauline out of the hands of me and the mustache twirling bad guy. "Nora has more energy in her little finger," I still hear British Mr. Saunders saying to the limp farm rube, poor boy, "than you have in your whole body."
When I am lying as still as I can inside the machine, thinking of how strong and healthy i am, I realize that it is of no use to comment on the fact I can jog in a pinch for a mile or more. It is a misleading reflection.
I recall two things; both about Steve, my brother.
We would both lead the Sunday nite family singsongs as we shared the gift for loudness...and memorizig Irish lyrics...bawdy lyrics. And we were funny. We were partiers. Six kids, two parents, one tiny two up two down house: more fun than I have ever had with anyone else. We were scrappy Irish opinionated headstrong, and loud. Very loud. The funniest was apparently Barry, cos he won contests around the province for talent where he did his impressions like Rich Little. But for impromptu wit, Steve was self deprecatingly fast and really funny. But Rose and Ade were and are very funny women too. Really funny. Eliza was always laughing her guts out at her younger five and, like my mom and dad, the desire for a belly laugh, to get someone to retell a hilarious story was like a sport, almost, adding to it from the sidelines. Everyone, esp my parents, loved a belly laugh. My parents, left to their own devices after their kids grew up could even be caught cracking each other up, tears of laughter rolling down their faces.
I recalled how, for example, opening night of Perils of Pauline, my brother BOTH cracked up and appalled the audience and cast alike, by heralding each of my seductive appearances with screaming, hooting, and wolf whistling, shouting most memorably at the limp farm rube, "SAY YES TO HER YOU STUPID JERK, YOU'LL NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE AT ANY WOMAN!" and secondly, I am recalling how, at my wedding, Steve, at 6’2” and well up in the 260 pound region, threw me around the dance floor. In my fairy-princess, strapless white dress with all the crinolines built into the skirt, I was helpless as a ragdoll. He could really jive well. Super strong, throwing me this way and that, there was no way to know he would be dead from cancer inside a year.
We would both lead the Sunday nite family singsongs as we shared the gift for loudness...and memorizig Irish lyrics...bawdy lyrics. And we were funny. We were partiers. Six kids, two parents, one tiny two up two down house: more fun than I have ever had with anyone else. We were scrappy Irish opinionated headstrong, and loud. Very loud. The funniest was apparently Barry, cos he won contests around the province for talent where he did his impressions like Rich Little. But for impromptu wit, Steve was self deprecatingly fast and really funny. But Rose and Ade were and are very funny women too. Really funny. Eliza was always laughing her guts out at her younger five and, like my mom and dad, the desire for a belly laugh, to get someone to retell a hilarious story was like a sport, almost, adding to it from the sidelines. Everyone, esp my parents, loved a belly laugh. My parents, left to their own devices after their kids grew up could even be caught cracking each other up, tears of laughter rolling down their faces.
I recalled how, for example, opening night of Perils of Pauline, my brother BOTH cracked up and appalled the audience and cast alike, by heralding each of my seductive appearances with screaming, hooting, and wolf whistling, shouting most memorably at the limp farm rube, "SAY YES TO HER YOU STUPID JERK, YOU'LL NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE AT ANY WOMAN!" and secondly, I am recalling how, at my wedding, Steve, at 6’2” and well up in the 260 pound region, threw me around the dance floor. In my fairy-princess, strapless white dress with all the crinolines built into the skirt, I was helpless as a ragdoll. He could really jive well. Super strong, throwing me this way and that, there was no way to know he would be dead from cancer inside a year.
It is a mistake, I realize, to judge someone healthy simply because they can jog a mile. There is no relationship between the healthy appearance of a person and the invisible-to-the-eye fact of a dark presence chomping away inside a body, creeping towards your lymphatic system so it can expand its kill zone to your vital organs.
To pass the forty minutes in the foghorn I try counting. Then I recall what the cancer reminds me of. It is a poem by W.B. Yeats called "The Second Coming."
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
How surprising, I think, with little emotion, that my time is up.
I don't want to gnash my teeth and rail against the Fates. I want to be smart. I want to know when the end is near, like I didn't know when, at 47, my brother, Steve died.
I told Rosemary this by long distance. I said that everyone pretended things were positive for Steve for so long that when I sensed the end was near and asked my other brother how much time Steve had left, Barry admonished me for not having faith that Steve would prevail. Hence, seven weeks later, when he died, I was up in Algonquin Park, far from any phone that might have told me to get to his bedside in the hospital. I wouldn't do that to people, I decided.
People are already beginning to advise me to "think positively" long before the facts are even in. I know they say this to be kind. But kindness is also available after the facts are in too. What was it Voltaire said, "to the living we owe respect; to the dead, we owe the truth?"
I thought about what agonies of grief my siblings and I suffered when Steve died. Comparing our grief when our parents died to our grief over Steve's death I reflected that Alzheimers and NPH were these wonderful grief-assisters, that mitigated the pain of sudden loss.
The advanced ages my parents died at also helped the survivors who loved them. I'd said last night to Rosemary that it was the duty really of the living, to take care of the survivors afterwards, if advanced age and dementia weren't helping out. You have a responsibility, sort of, to help those who love you to get over your death.
I don't blame Steve, at all, I think as I lie in the foghorn. He had two daughters, one of whom was only thirteen years old when he died. He had to think positively, for them. The alternative was unthinkable.
I am thinking about our conversation on the phone the previous evening. Rose and I reflected on how extravagant was the grief. It was an independent force like gravity; or like a baseball bat that would come out of nowhere and smash you across the guts just when you thought you were okay.
I recall going on a lengthy bike ride on a forested trail with Dave, my husband, after Steve's funeral, and how suddenly I was curled up in a fetal position crying, in a wee cave I'd spotted for the purpose. Dave riding ahead had no idea where I'd disappeared to.
Seven months later, at Christmas time, decorating the house, I'd had a mixed tape of carols on, and one of them was Ave Maria, played at Steve's funeral. Again with the baseball bat across my abdomen.
After the MRI, Elizabeth and I get a table and a pair of coffees in the cafeteria. She breaks down at one point, and seizes my wrist. I am her baby too, really. She was thirteen when I was born. She is recalling going to see me when I entered the world, at the hospital at the air force base in Cold Lake.
"You had this thick black hair when you were born," she is saying. She can't continue cos she is weeping and holding my wrist. I am stronger now. I don't cry. I thank her for her tears. They are like prayer words, or words in a moving poem. They speak what we dare not use words for. They are the truth. Unpolished, and snake oil-free.
As a new member of the "group to be known from now on by the symbol Omerta" I am indeed owed the truth. From now on I won't settle for anything less.
I thought about what agonies of grief my siblings and I suffered when Steve died. Comparing our grief when our parents died to our grief over Steve's death I reflected that Alzheimers and NPH were these wonderful grief-assisters, that mitigated the pain of sudden loss.
The advanced ages my parents died at also helped the survivors who loved them. I'd said last night to Rosemary that it was the duty really of the living, to take care of the survivors afterwards, if advanced age and dementia weren't helping out. You have a responsibility, sort of, to help those who love you to get over your death.
I don't blame Steve, at all, I think as I lie in the foghorn. He had two daughters, one of whom was only thirteen years old when he died. He had to think positively, for them. The alternative was unthinkable.
I am thinking about our conversation on the phone the previous evening. Rose and I reflected on how extravagant was the grief. It was an independent force like gravity; or like a baseball bat that would come out of nowhere and smash you across the guts just when you thought you were okay.
I recall going on a lengthy bike ride on a forested trail with Dave, my husband, after Steve's funeral, and how suddenly I was curled up in a fetal position crying, in a wee cave I'd spotted for the purpose. Dave riding ahead had no idea where I'd disappeared to.
Seven months later, at Christmas time, decorating the house, I'd had a mixed tape of carols on, and one of them was Ave Maria, played at Steve's funeral. Again with the baseball bat across my abdomen.
After the MRI, Elizabeth and I get a table and a pair of coffees in the cafeteria. She breaks down at one point, and seizes my wrist. I am her baby too, really. She was thirteen when I was born. She is recalling going to see me when I entered the world, at the hospital at the air force base in Cold Lake.
"You had this thick black hair when you were born," she is saying. She can't continue cos she is weeping and holding my wrist. I am stronger now. I don't cry. I thank her for her tears. They are like prayer words, or words in a moving poem. They speak what we dare not use words for. They are the truth. Unpolished, and snake oil-free.
As a new member of the "group to be known from now on by the symbol Omerta" I am indeed owed the truth. From now on I won't settle for anything less.
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