Chapt 66: Life throws a harpoon at me
BAM! Life has thrown a wicked left hook that's caught me squarely in the jaw. For the last three and a half years, I've been a wandering free spirit, clocking up airmiles like crazy as I have flitted from one wonderful experience to another with my friends all over the globe. But as some of you know, I'd lately started to feel that perhaps My Gallivanting Life was preventing me from connecting with something intangible but profoundly important. I worried that my wandering life risked crystallizing into a permanent and insatiable restlessness. But although I had pretty much concluded that my globe-trotting life would have to come to an end, and soon, I was perplexed and paralyzed by my bedazzling surfeit of options. I just couldn't see how to choose one particular life over any other.
But when I prayed for something to come along and ground me to a particular life, I never for a moment imagined that the grappling hook would come in the form of a 2 inch aggressive tumor in my mother's left breast! I arrived in Vancouver for a short visit on the first of September after an amazing week at Burning Man (see chapter 66). My mum and brother met me at the airport and after we exchanged hugs and kisses, I took one look at my mum and said "What the hell is wrong with you?" (My family's mental interconnectedness is frighteningly honed - a legacy, I believe, of my father's alcoholism which made reading the ever-shifting mental and emotional states of others in my family an essential survival skill. More on this below.) Mum promptly confessed that she'd discovered a large lump a few days earlier, and suddenly the dazzling array of options in my life collapsed into one clear certainty: I was going to have to tether myself here in Vancouver for a while, perhaps a long while.
Since then it's been a medical shitstorm at Casa Familia at 1220 Dogwood Crescent. Mum had a mastectomy mid September. And last Friday we went to the oncologist who gave us some pretty brutal news: after surgery, her only treatment option is a very harsh regime of IV chemotherapy that will last 4-6 months and will boost her 5-year survival rate from 20% to 60%. Now, I don't find this to be a terribly encouraging prognosis, but it isn't totally without hope, and it's important, we're finding, to decide to be positive.
But the medical turmoil is not just limited to my mother. My 92 year old stepfather, Hugh, has not been at all well either. He's been on warfarin, a blood thinner that was originally used to kill rats by causing them to hemorrhage to death, and he requires blood tests nearly every day to ensure that he's not going to follow the rats. When I brought Mum home after she was discharged from hospital, Hugh was curiously AWOL. A few hours later we tracked him down - in the emergency room of the hospital. Seems that just as my mum was being discharged from the surgery ward, he was being admitted to emergency with cardiac problems (exacerbated by pnuemonia!) after he collapsed in the street while walking to the bus to go for a blood test. He took out an election placard on the way down to the ground. "I hope it was one of the Conservatives' placards" said my brother. No such luck, though. "It was the Greens," said Hugh. "Flimsy. Not much support." Now I'm going to vote Green next Tuesday, and so as punishment for his election vandalism, I've told Hugh that unless he promises not to vote for Canada's hideous Conservatives, I won't drive him to the polling station.
Joking aside, there's a lot going on and it's actually quite difficult. The whole thing is kind of funny in a terrible black comedy sort of way. But that's only from the outside. To live it, the only thing I can fairly conclude is that old age and illness really are an awful, ghastly, horror show. The idea that there is something ennobling and redeeming in them is just a load of bullshit. As for me, I'm finding that one of my biggest challenges is managing my reflexive reaction of irritation to any sign of weakness from my Mum. Another aspect of that alcoholic family legacy! The little kid in me is enraged that, once again, I have to sort out the adults' shit and take care of Mum's emotions. And of course, my mum picks up on my irritation immediately and reacts reflexively. Our family mind-meld often means that we generate the emotional equivalent of an screeching audio feedback loop. But I'm happy to report that I think we're getting better at recognizing and disabling these old patterns when they get freshly triggered.
The truth is that my mother, brother and I are drawing very close. And I'm truly grateful - I really do give thanks every day - to be able to be here for Mum during her time of need. I've taken a cute little flat in downtown Vancouver, which is a helpful refuge as the cold grey rains settle in for the winter. Yet I still can't see myself settling here permanently; I feel too much like an alien to the bourgeois, anti-social, and small-city smugness of gay life here. But clearly, I'm here indefinitely while I take care of my mum while she's on the long process of either recovering from or dying from cancer. Pray God it's the former, but the truth of what's to happen will only be revealed one day at a time. And that's how we're living right now.
The strange thing is that I saw this coming years ago. Well, not this cancer thing specifically, of course, but the general shape of the current crisis, a shadow looming inexorably on the horizon of my life. But even though, in a sense, it has been entirely foreseen, my knowledge of it has always been purely intellectual. The shock and pain of it, when life's harpoon lands in your chest, is truly brutal.
Still, my wise friend Lance Berman, who knows me perhaps as well as anyone on this planet, remarked "This could - in a funny way - be a good thing for you, Peter Worthington." Perhaps he's right. And I am so reassured by his faith in me. But it sure doesn't feel good.
But when I prayed for something to come along and ground me to a particular life, I never for a moment imagined that the grappling hook would come in the form of a 2 inch aggressive tumor in my mother's left breast! I arrived in Vancouver for a short visit on the first of September after an amazing week at Burning Man (see chapter 66). My mum and brother met me at the airport and after we exchanged hugs and kisses, I took one look at my mum and said "What the hell is wrong with you?" (My family's mental interconnectedness is frighteningly honed - a legacy, I believe, of my father's alcoholism which made reading the ever-shifting mental and emotional states of others in my family an essential survival skill. More on this below.) Mum promptly confessed that she'd discovered a large lump a few days earlier, and suddenly the dazzling array of options in my life collapsed into one clear certainty: I was going to have to tether myself here in Vancouver for a while, perhaps a long while.Since then it's been a medical shitstorm at Casa Familia at 1220 Dogwood Crescent. Mum had a mastectomy mid September. And last Friday we went to the oncologist who gave us some pretty brutal news: after surgery, her only treatment option is a very harsh regime of IV chemotherapy that will last 4-6 months and will boost her 5-year survival rate from 20% to 60%. Now, I don't find this to be a terribly encouraging prognosis, but it isn't totally without hope, and it's important, we're finding, to decide to be positive.
But the medical turmoil is not just limited to my mother. My 92 year old stepfather, Hugh, has not been at all well either. He's been on warfarin, a blood thinner that was originally used to kill rats by causing them to hemorrhage to death, and he requires blood tests nearly every day to ensure that he's not going to follow the rats. When I brought Mum home after she was discharged from hospital, Hugh was curiously AWOL. A few hours later we tracked him down - in the emergency room of the hospital. Seems that just as my mum was being discharged from the surgery ward, he was being admitted to emergency with cardiac problems (exacerbated by pnuemonia!) after he collapsed in the street while walking to the bus to go for a blood test. He took out an election placard on the way down to the ground. "I hope it was one of the Conservatives' placards" said my brother. No such luck, though. "It was the Greens," said Hugh. "Flimsy. Not much support." Now I'm going to vote Green next Tuesday, and so as punishment for his election vandalism, I've told Hugh that unless he promises not to vote for Canada's hideous Conservatives, I won't drive him to the polling station.
Joking aside, there's a lot going on and it's actually quite difficult. The whole thing is kind of funny in a terrible black comedy sort of way. But that's only from the outside. To live it, the only thing I can fairly conclude is that old age and illness really are an awful, ghastly, horror show. The idea that there is something ennobling and redeeming in them is just a load of bullshit. As for me, I'm finding that one of my biggest challenges is managing my reflexive reaction of irritation to any sign of weakness from my Mum. Another aspect of that alcoholic family legacy! The little kid in me is enraged that, once again, I have to sort out the adults' shit and take care of Mum's emotions. And of course, my mum picks up on my irritation immediately and reacts reflexively. Our family mind-meld often means that we generate the emotional equivalent of an screeching audio feedback loop. But I'm happy to report that I think we're getting better at recognizing and disabling these old patterns when they get freshly triggered.
The truth is that my mother, brother and I are drawing very close. And I'm truly grateful - I really do give thanks every day - to be able to be here for Mum during her time of need. I've taken a cute little flat in downtown Vancouver, which is a helpful refuge as the cold grey rains settle in for the winter. Yet I still can't see myself settling here permanently; I feel too much like an alien to the bourgeois, anti-social, and small-city smugness of gay life here. But clearly, I'm here indefinitely while I take care of my mum while she's on the long process of either recovering from or dying from cancer. Pray God it's the former, but the truth of what's to happen will only be revealed one day at a time. And that's how we're living right now.
The strange thing is that I saw this coming years ago. Well, not this cancer thing specifically, of course, but the general shape of the current crisis, a shadow looming inexorably on the horizon of my life. But even though, in a sense, it has been entirely foreseen, my knowledge of it has always been purely intellectual. The shock and pain of it, when life's harpoon lands in your chest, is truly brutal.
Still, my wise friend Lance Berman, who knows me perhaps as well as anyone on this planet, remarked "This could - in a funny way - be a good thing for you, Peter Worthington." Perhaps he's right. And I am so reassured by his faith in me. But it sure doesn't feel good.
posted by Peter at 6:23 PM
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