Tag: death

Looking for Cancer

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I’m scared out of my mind, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. Cancer is not unexpected. I’ve been waiting for the diagnosis for years. Still, when I felt the tenderness in my breast a month ago I passed it off as a pulled muscle from weightlifting. I tried to ignore it last week too, told myself my breasts were just swollen from my impending period. But my husband felt it too during sex the other night. He moved the lump under my skin with the tips of his fingers, clearly troubled, and I had to stop pretending.

I find out the results from my biopsy tomorrow. A part of me already knows. They said it would feel ‘uncomfortable’ getting a core sample but it hurt like hell. As I sit here in McDonalds, across from my daughter, watching her stuff fries into her angelic face, I think of our limited time together. She runs off to the play structure and I wonder if she’ll remember me when I’m gone. She’s so young. I wonder how long she’ll miss me. I can’t help crying. People will see. I hide my face, stare down at the page.

It’s not death I fear. It’s the process of dying. I watched my mother grasp at every last second with each new experimental treatment while her body and mind withered, and it was horrific. I’ll opt for chemo, even though I don’t want to. I’ll do it for my kids, model not quitting, to never give up. Show them to fight for life against all odds. I’ll lose my hair, my thick auburn waves—my one feature I’ve always been proud of. I’ll be sick and tired all the time and it’ll all be for naught, just like my mom. Six months, a year, even a few, but cancer will kill me. Once it’s manifested in the system there is no stopping it.

It’s getting crowded in here now. Moms and dads with their kids eating Happy Meals celebrating life. I sit in the corner. I can’t stop the tears. My beautiful child comes running back to our table, her cheeks flush, her expression joyful. I’m afraid to look up, look in her eyes. She senses my fear. Her expression darkens. I’ve robbed her her joy. She asks me why I’m sad. I lie and say I’m not, tell her how beautiful she is. She hesitates, then smiles. She’s flattered but it falters as my eyes fill. I’ve never been brave and I suck at pretending. I’ve let her down again.

There’s a woman staring at me. Her infant son sits on her lap trying to suck a shake up his straw. He stares too. They’re wondering what’s wrong with me. It’s more than just cancer. I can’t breathe. I can’t hold it together. I’ve never been able to hold it together.

There’s no line for the slide, I inform my daughter. She hesitates and looks at the play structure then runs off to play, lost to the moment, lost from me. I stare down and write.

I’ve never dared write about things that profoundly scare me. The written word is so concrete, like casting a possibility into reality. I’m writing it down now because it doesn’t matter. The foundation was laid years ago. The result of reckless behavior is inevitable. I knew it then. I know it now. I’m writing it down because my fear is consuming me, and I don’t want to look up.

If I have it I’ll deserve it. It’s just a reprieve if I don’t. The bullet is coming at me. No doubt about it. I’m not being fatalistic. All the years of partying, smoking, six or more Diet Cokes a day, and of course genetics. I’m a realist. Nothing happens in a vacuum. I set this up with my obsession to be thin, and in. There’s no point in pondering if it was worth it. It’s done. Live healthier now? Somewhat. But I still partake in binging and treats and other bad habits. I only know how to go too far (a la Ed Sherran).

I feel her arms around my waist but know it’s my daughter from her embrace. I melt, barely contain sobbing. I gather her hands in mine and bend to kiss them then let go. She comes around the table and sits across from me. She’s staring at me, assessing my mood. I’m afraid to hold eye contact and look past her at the happy family at the table behind her. Don’t be sad, Mom, my daughter says, and I look at her. ’Cuz I’ll love you forever.

My beautiful child, forever is not as far as it used to be, I think to say but don’t of course. I’ll love you forever, too, baby, I assure her but it feels like I’m lying. Can’t love dead. If I hold her gaze another second and I’ll won’t be able to hold it together. You finished? I ask her as I gather the detritus we’ve left on the table.

She dramatically crunches her empty bag into a ball and goes to trash it. We’ll go home tonight, snuggle in bed and read aloud together. Her first—The Magic Tree House, then we’ll listen to her older brother read Harry Potter. They’ll both go to bed tonight, sleep soundly, and tomorrow will be just another day in a long life to come. Tomorrow will change my life forever forward, even if simply a precursor to what I know is coming.

I’m scared out of my fucking mind.

Aging Well

by jcafesin, posted in aging

I’m a ‘sit on the couch and eat ice cream’ type of person. I don’t live that way. I workout 5 days a week, 5 miles or more a day, watch little TV and rarely stream ’cept when I’m working out and weekend movies. If I had no desire to live an active life, I would have continued to sit on the couch in front of the TV and eat a lot more than just ice cream as I did throughout much of my childhood.

Thing is, no matter how healthy I live, I’m still going to die. And while we all know this fact, generally by the time we are 5 yrs old, we don’t think about it much unless there is a life-threatening scare or we’re facing old age, like when we turn 60 or so. Then, regardless of what older folks tell you, and how we distract ourselves with work or hobbies or relationships, we think about death a LOT.

Am I living right? Getting the most out of this short life? Have I experienced enough? Have I loved enough? Have I had enough fun? What can I do to get the most out of the few years I have left?

What to do with aging…

The idea of heaven is vulgar. I think The Good Place played that hand well. At the end of the series, they were all up in heaven and got so bored after doing everything they could conceive they elected to become nothing, or ‘one with everything’ depending on how you view the afterlife. And ‘getting to see’ people you’ve loved in the hereafter is equally vulgar. Sure, you’ve loved them, but I bet you’ve fought with them too. Can you imagine spending eternity — forever — with your mom and dad and siblings and spouses? No thank you!

I am a devout Atheist, meaning I don’t believe in god, or even the possibility of one. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or spirituality, whatever that means. Hitler (Trump) and I end up the same. Dead is dead. End of game. Life is over and there is no ME anymore. I did not exist before my birth and I cease to exist after I die.

It’s easier to believe in the Christian version of death. Less scary thinking your existence is eternal. That’s why, to date, 31+% of this planet identifies as Christian. Muslims, the second largest religion on Earth, also offers an afterlife in paradise or hell. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism also preach forms of life after death, so it’s no wonder that 84% of humanity identifies with a religion.

The roughly 14+% of the rest of us living day-to-day knowing that we all become nothing after death is core scary at best.

We all want to feel our lives have significance. Substance. Meaning. That we matter! It is why social media exists — it plays on our desire to be seen. Every time we get a Like on our instastory, or see a high view or engagement count we all get a hit of dopamine straight into our brains. We may be shy, or awkward in groups or crowds, but no one wants to be invisible through life. We revel in being seen.

Now, facing old age, and likely 20 to 30 yrs on the outside before ceasing to exist, I’m at war with myself daily on how to spend the limited time I have to live, to BE ALIVE. To matter.

What does it really mean to MATTER? Three generation drops from now and most won’t remember today’s trending influencers, to our current or past pop/rockstars, to our great grandfathers. I know this intellectually, but emotionally I too want to be remembered by more than just my remaining family, and when they go, so does my memory, my significance. It’s hard, if not impossible to imagine not existing, though at 4:00am I lay in bed too often now panicked by the notion.

Kick back, honey, I tell myself as I stare at the glowing stars I stuck on the bedroom ceiling during the series Heroes when it got too bloody to watch throughout. I should just do what I feel like doing when I get up in the morning and quit pressuring myself to be someone. I already am to my kids, and a few friends. The problem, the war in my head that loops till twilight: ‘Why isn’t that enough for me?’

Close to 30 yrs ago a friend asked me to describe my perfect day a decade forward. From waking up till falling asleep that night, describe in detail what that day looked like to me. Let’s just say I didn’t get close. [Expectations. They’ll screw you every time.] I was supposed to be a known author long ago. I was supposed to have a house in Marin to leave to my well-adjusted, accomplished children. Married to the love of my life. My work read by tens of thousands, my words helping my readers become more personally and socially aware, live better lives.

Did I want too much? I lay in bed wondering why it matters to me that I’ll leave no real imprint on history. Who does, really. Albert Einstein comes to mind. Hitler does too, but oh so very few. And even those names will fade with time, buried under layers of more history.

I want to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night like I used to. I don’t want to be getting up 4 times a night to pee! I’d like to tell you that impending death looming doesn’t feel like the proverbial ax over my head since no one knows when they’ll die, or that age is ‘just a number’ and ‘it only matters how young you feel,’ but that’s all bullshit. You can skydive on your 90th but that doesn’t keep you from being old, and likely rather reckless with fragile bones.

I sigh heavily, then throw the blanket back and roll on my side trying to cool down with my third hot flash of the night. The weight of aging gets harder to bear with each passing year, month, day. Hate to tell ya, there ain’t much upside to getting old. We likely have more life experience, but we aren’t any wiser, most of us stuck in patterns of behavior we adopted in childhood, and the reason history keeps repeating itself.

Look at my phone on the nightstand next to my bed. It’s only 5:10am. I can get up and spend much of the day SMM my latest work to get read and try to ignore the fact that I viscerally hate marketing. Or I can laze the day away writing whatever moves me, reading, baking, building, get a massage, stream Netflix if I feel like it because why the hell not enjoy BEING ALIVE with the limited time I have left…

About Face—A Dog Story

by jcafesin, posted in aging, dogs, pet adoption, pets

I got her at the pound on my 26th birthday, a fluff-ball Shepherd mix with big brown eyes, floppy ears, and a perfect black diamond dead in the center of her tan forehead. She was just seven weeks old, not yet ready for adoption. I lied to get her out. They found her in the San Fernando hills and thought she was feral, but I told them she was mine and I’d lost her on a hike up near Mt. Wilson.

I named her Killer Dog Face. Killer as in cool. Dog because she was one. And Face after a term of endearment my mother used to call me. I figured she deserved three names like most everyone else had, but I called her by her last name almost all the time.

My beautiful Face.

Over two feet tall and 70 pounds by her first birthday, her paws and ears remained adorably exaggerated against her slender but muscular frame, and for almost ten years everyone thought she was still a puppy. An impressive athlete, she could pace me on my bike at 25 miles an hour, and clear a five-foot wall or a six-foot wide river in one fluid motion.

I worked from home, so we were together practically 24/7. Tail would be swishing and she’d have her happy smile on when she’d periodically lope in throughout the day from sunbathing or chasing squirrels and crows in the backyard. She’d smooch her muzzle into my thigh, then rub her body along my legs rather cat-like, soliciting for strokes. I loved her company, felt sated when she was with me. Face was easy to be with, required little and listened well. And she always made me feel important, and valued.

I taught her to Stay. Drop. Leave it! And that was about it. Stupid dog tricks were degrading. She accompanied me everywhere, muzzle out the window, jowls flapping in the wind while she took it all in, reminding me to get out of my head and absorb the moments at hand. She greeted most everyone with a tail wag and her happy grin. Face was a gentle lass and she genuinely liked pretty much everybody. I gave her a home, and the attention she required for her security. She made me feel wanted, appreciated, safer, and not so alone. Forever forward, our relationship will remain one of the most stable, even exchanges of love and respect I will ever know.

I found out about the slip disks in her spine a few months after her 10th birthday. We had gone hiking in the coastal mountains of Marin and she took off after something pacing us along a grove of redwoods. When I called for her, she was way down in a gulch, and I could tell she was struggling to make it back up the hill to me. The vet said she’d probably messed up her back, and that even though it was treatable with vitamin supplements, eventually she would get arthritis from the bad disks pinching her nerves. And though it took another five years, the vet turned out to be right.

I never expected to be faced with having to put her down. I assumed she’d go off a cliff chasing a squirrel or miss when jumping over a river and I wouldn’t be around to save her. Everyone kept telling me it was time. At 16 she had hip problems, and walking problems, and was becoming incontinent. I felt sad for her a lot, watching her struggle to get up or stay up while excreting. And then I had my son. And Face wasn’t the baby anymore. And she was sad a lot too. Her health problems went from bad to worse and picking up her poop all over the house where an infant crawled was more than just disgusting. It was a health hazard.

I’ve always thought that if I ever got a terminal disease, I would choose to end my life before I was unable to do so. Before I lost all my faculties I’d go in the garage and turn on the car or find the right drugs to take me over the edge. It never dawned on me to think differently until I was faced with the responsibility of having to make that choice for a loved one.

I sat on the floor next to my dog in her newly confined space in the tile entry wishing she could tell me what to do. She lay in her bed with her head in my lap as I scratched her muzzle, then behind her ears. She rolled onto her side for me to scratch her belly. Her pained expression turned to momentary bliss as I gently stroked her, recalling some of our time together. Yellowstone; Breckenridge; Yosemite; the Grand Canyon; watching her tear after birds on the countless shorelines we’d strolled. We’d shared some grand adventures, but mostly quiet exchanges of affection, like the one we were sharing right then. Perhaps these moments — the times I stroked her or rubbed her belly made living in pain worth it. Who was I to facilitate her death? I was suddenly torn by the choice I had to make.

I had her put down eight months after her 16th birthday. She couldn’t walk. Her hind legs kept giving out. She wasn’t eating, or even drinking much anymore. I made the call on a Saturday morning. A certified veterinarian came to my house with a truck, complete with a metal table and loaded with medical equipment. I carried Face to the truck and placed her on the table, then stood there stroking her and crying. The doctor softly informed me that he would be giving my dog a tranquilizer, then taking her to his office where he would administer the fatal cocktail that would kill her. He assured me she would drift into blackness forever without waking. I didn’t ask what they’d do with her body. I didn’t want to know.

I held my dog’s head in my hands while the vet administered the tranquilizer. “Thank you for sharing your life with me, for being my friend,” I whispered to her as the doctor removed the needle from her hindquarters. “I love you. I will think of you often. I’ll miss you terribly, my beauty. Goodbye, sweet Face.”

She lay on the cold metal table and stared at me until her eyes closed. I stroked her head one last time, lay my hand on the black diamond marking on her head and kissed her between the eyes.

As I left the truck the doctor assured me I’d made the right decision, the “humane choice.” I stood at the curb until the truck pulled away, held my arms clasped on top of my head to hold in my brain, and contain my emotions. My quiet street was deserted again, and I looked around for my dog to come inside with me when it hit me, my Killer Dog Face was gone. My arms came down and with it any facade of composure. I sank to the sidewalk sobbing. I must have sat there for 20 minutes crying, until I got up and started walking, then running.

I ran as fast and hard as I could, for as long as I could, trying to outrun reality, trying to outrun my grief. My beautiful Face was dead, the first loss of a loved one I’d ever experienced, and the idea of her gone from my life was so profoundly empty, black, lonely, that it made me physically ill by the time I got to the bridge. I stopped in the center and threw up over the side into the L.A. wash.

When I finished vomiting I stood gripping the cool metal railing of the bridge and staring down at the thin stream of water below. “I HATE YOU!” I screamed. It was dusk by then. No one was around. Not a whole lot of people even knew about that bridge. At one end was an upscale residential neighborhood, on the other were exclusive condos. “You killed her and I HATE YOU!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, knowing I wasn’t speaking to anyone, nothing was hearing me.

“May I help you, Miss?” He asked softly, but it startled me anyway. I hadn’t seen him approach. He had come across [the bridge] from the condo side. He was Indian, from India, middle-aged, with soft brown eyes and dark, close cropped hair. I think he thought I was going to jump off the bridge.

“My dog died,” I told him. I started crying hard again hearing that reality aloud. I don’t know why I told him. So often when people ask we’re supposed to pretend we’re fine because they really don’t want to know anyway. “I really loved her.”

He nodded, let a few moments pass in silence then said, “My aunt died last week. I’m still very sad. I miss her very much.” He stood a few feet from me, his head slightly cocked to one side. He let his eyes rest on mine.

“I’m sorry about your aunt,” was all I could think of to say. The man had put his aunt on par with my dog, and I was humbled, and grateful.

“I’m sorry about your dog,” he said. “I hope your sadness will temper in time with good memories.” He gave a slight bow and moved across the bridge.

I watched him until he disappeared into the neighborhood beyond, and left the bridge soon after him. On my way home I let my mind wander over my time with my Killer Dog Face. I cried. I even smiled once or twice through the tears.

My sadness has tempered over the years. Most times when I think of my beautiful Face the memories are sweet. But to this day, 20 years later, the pain of her loss still fills me with unmitigated terror, a now ever-present awareness of the enormous cost of love.