FUBAR

I guess maybe there comes a point in time where one has to acknowledge that he is fucked up in a general, irredeemable, intractable sort of way and just leave it at that.

In astronomical terms we may compare this particular sort of event horizon in life to that point at which matter--the earth, for instance--falls into a black hole, from whence nothing, not even light can escape. It makes no difference what effort is expended, no difference what means are used, nor by what thrust or twist escape is attempted, there is simply no way out, for the sheer gravity of the hole is nonnegotiable, supreme above all.

Most of us as we grow older yet persist in the strange notion that everything still is just as it has always been. I am still myself, for instance, just as I am and have always been, despite what the latest photograph depicts. How curious that I should appear otherwise. Perhaps the next picture will better capture the true essence. More probably, we simply pose for photos less often, knowing that the resultant image will be yet another unsettling lie, an unkind warping of light and feature. Obviously your camera lens needs to be cleaned, because that, my friend, is not me.

We are used to the idea that maladies are merely temporary things, exacting a period of discomfort, but then passing on their way. We recuperate, maybe go to the doctor, get this or that fixed, take this or that pill, and then live again, like a boxer down for three or four counts, then on his feet again.

But what I'm talking about now is the pain that comes and stays, the broken thing that stays that way, This is the black hole that swallows light, the prognosis in place of the cure.

I remember when my father was suffering with cancer. It was a cancer that started in the gallbladder and spread out from there, like spilled ink, oozing and saturating all, to bladder, to stomach, to intestine. He had in his lifetime suffered as many troubles as most--nor more or less afflicted than the next guy--the flu, a bout of pneumonia, a problem with his spine, a stomach ulcer, a fall from a ladder. I believe that he thought this was no different. One must simply take the necessary steps toward cure and recovery. He would see the doctor, he would undergo a surgery--and if that didn't work, he would see another. And all the while--and a short while it was--we observed the obvious process of death, parading through his body, his face, his eyes, with all of its black flags flying.

How could he not know, I wondered? How could he possibly imagine that one more visit to the clinic would turn the tide?

This is the terrible gravity of finality that beckons from the maw of the black hole in time. This it it, the last word, the last dot. This is the sentence that has come to its end.

And we cannot bear to look.

I am no different than my father, and we are no different than any other man, old or young. The time is never now, and the cause is never lost. We go on. There may come a day, but the day is not now. It will never at the present moment be now, but will ever remain beyond the border of the lens, outside the edge of the print, not yet part of the picture.

The Dead We Know

I wonder what happened to my Canadian friend. She used to visit me often here, and sometimes on my LJ as well, but I haven't seen her in a while now. Something I said? Busted computer? Just busted in general?

I miss people when they're not around anymore, and I take people for granted when they are. I miss my mom and my dad, though I did not miss them when they were here. But that's not quite right, honestly. I think I always missed my dad, from the time I was a little boy and unto this very day. I failed to take heed of the passing time, the opportunities which came and went along the way. So did he.

I miss my brother. Twenty-seven years gone now. I still dream of him. Those are good dreams. He seems most often to enter into the dream that is confused and troubling and somehow take command of it, defusing anxiety, dispersing the fog, leading to the path, the purpose, the light. I am glad I still dream of my brother.

I miss my children. My step-children. Ex-step children. All grown up now, scattered like so many marbles to the corners and under the tables. Only two or three years ago I would speak to them nearly every day.

Most of all I miss my son, abducted by schizophrenia so long ago, lost to me in lands of his own, which I can neither enter nor name. And yet my heart continues to search, day after day, remembering when we held hands on the way to school, remembering how he rode on my back, remembering the games we played, the places we went, the stories we told. My heart remembers the fierce love of its youth, the panic in thinking for a moment that we could lose him, the solemn and unbreakable promise of a parent to never leave, never forsake, and never let harm get past his guard.

So it happens that tears so readily come to my eyes. So it continues to happen for the first time, over and over and over again. My mother, my father, my brother, my son.

Hold tight to what you have, cherish and adore, for tomorrow keeps its secrets to itself, and takes no council in determining its course.

Some Ironies We Could Do Without

We have read of the recent commuter plane that crashed, killing all aboard. Among the passengers was the wife of one of the 9/11 victims--those who had seized their jet from the terrorists before it crashed in Pennsylvania farmland.

How bitterly ironic this seems. So bitter, in fact, as to seem more than irony or accident.

How can such things be?

Do you remember the boy, Steven, who was kidnapped way back when, taken by a man posing as a reverend, sexually molested for years, until finally rediscovered by his family. Do you remember that some few years later, Steven was killed in a motorcycle accident?

What can it mean?

There was a movie about a Cambodian man who suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. Miraculously, this man escaped his captors, and while thousands were being slaughtered, the man made his way to freedom in the face of incredible danger and hardship.

Later on, living in America, he was knifed to death while trying to help a citizen who was being attacked.

What madman is in charge here? What must we do to reconcile such deadly irony with our own sense of what is proper and deserved?

One conclusion only can I find at this point, tired as I am, heartbroken, perplexed: Whoever is in charge, whomever he may be, he is certainly a long way from being us.

For All That It Matters

Today is my brother's birthday. He would have been 57. He died 27 years ago of cancer. That's a long time ago. Yet almost like yesterday. So defined is he now by death, that I cannot imagine him being alive at 57. It just does not fit. It seems somehow not so sad as proper. And I think he's happy this way. What is a birthday in the aspect of eternity? Such things are for worldly amusement only, and do not translate beyond time's circumstantial kingdom.

Love and Reformation

One thing I remember most about my brother is how alive he was just before he died. I know also that this was a conscious decision and effort on his part, applied with uncommon energy even in the throes of terminal cancer, in fact because of the cancer.

Facing the certainty of death, he underwent a dramatic shuffling and reordering of priorities. Relationship thrived at the core of his being. He reached out, to family, to friends, to enemies, to the otherwise anonymous human being.

My brother had this advantage. He knew with a certainty that he would soon be leaving this world. The knowledge freed him. He was able at last to devote himself to love, to forgiveness, to connection despite the barriers of the past which imprison.

I call this an advantage, and so I believe. There appears to be no better way to recapture the essential goodness that should always have been at the very heart of our being than to find oneself facing the absolute end of all of life’s hermit-like carefulness and conceit.

My friends, we are all about to die, we are all about to leave this world. We who have MS, or any other serious disease, bear within ourselves the workings of our own demise. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that MS is always fatal. It is, however, very often closely acquainted with whatever does prove fatal in the end.

We have, therefore, no time to waste. We have nothing to protect ourselves against other than the illusion that time is on our side. Reach out, love, mend, heal, encourage, reconnect—and if those in the world who are healthy and eternal will not receive the good will you offer, do not tire, but try yet again, and know that you were born to do so.

Before It Is Too Late

I am not dying. Not because of MS anyway. Or of anything else that I know of at the moment. But I am living more vitally, more completely--and that is because of MS. It's an irony, yes? A paradox.

Illness and disability have a way of making mortality more real, more immediate, than it had seemed before. The motions of time have entered me physically, flowing now in my blood, buzzing in my extremities, burning little holes in my brain.

What I do not do today may not have time for being done tomorrow. I am pressed, impatient, frustrated by the notion of proper channels and appropriate emotions. I want to connect, today, this minute, for I have come to realize that time has never been a thing that could be spared.

I want to retrieve the embers of all in life that has been best, to catch them up, still glowing, from the dreary depths to which they had been sent by weakness, by pride, by wounded love, and hold them again--not to remember, but to see, to touch, to redraw the very breath of conception.

Please believe me--the past is not so very important that it should accompany the future to its death. Here is where all the chances are stored up--here, now, in this time, this life. How sad when even a single one is let slip between our fingers.