Screw this whole idea about growing older = gaining a valuable wisdom that, in the end, makes it worth it. I'm starting to see that growing older = hearing news that gets progressively worse.
My dear aunt got some bad medical news. My friend's father is struggling more and more with his Alzheimer's. A neighbor is facing bankruptcy because of the costs of her husband's mental hospitalization. Another friend just buried her mother, who was laid waste by Huntington's. Yet another friend's cousin, a youngish mother of four, has seen the return of her Stage IV breast cancer.
Now, someone who sees each day as a gift would point out that, number one, I am blessed with friends and family in the first place. The same person might say that with each breath there is hope and in death there is peace. He/she might add that the joy is in this journey. To all this I reply, "Well fuck that."
I would very much like someone to change my mind about this. Personally, I don't think it can be done.
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I won't try to change your mind, because I
ReplyDeleteagree with you.
Sigh.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right, and completely wrong. And the human experience is all about swinging between those two truths on a regular basis. I have a friend who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Her children are about 11 and 13. And I read her blog. And as I read, I watch the pendulum swing between euphoric wisdom accepting her situation and celebrating her blessings, and terrifying resistance and refusal to die. So yeah. Fuck that.
ReplyDeleteI don't see life each day as so much as a gift as just preferable to the alternative.
ReplyDeleteThat's an attitude with just enough cynicism that I can accept it!
ReplyDelete