(((Daniel))) something made me get up at 2am and look into this group. I'm
think of you dear sweet friend......
--
Daisy
"Daniel" <deltaechomike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:dg6ub4h9fm6if3do1iqabgpifc8vo0d1kt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> It does not seem possible that it has been three years since my father
> lost his brief, brave fight with cancer. There was a soft-tissue
> tumor on the liver, with metastases to bone and lung and probably
> elsewhere before he had a diagnosis. We barely had time to start to
> fight, and it was over. He barely had time to realize this was going
> to be the one that got him.
>
> In her wonderful novel, "Momento Mori"(1959), Scottish author Muriel
> Spark brings up the question of historical characters. Before the age
> of daily newspapers (and sometimes even after that) we often know of a
> famous person only the year they died. No cir***stances. We go
> through so many years of school (or at least we used to -- I'm getting
> old, so that must have been "old school"!) memorizing dates. I'm told
> the children in England used to have to memorize the names and dates
> of reign of all the English monarchs. "Edward III, d. 1377" -- Muriel
> Spark asks, "What did they die...of?" History is so often silent on
> the ends of the greats. Unless they took an arrow through the eye at
> the battle of Agincourt or some such.
>
> But for us, the parents and sons and daughters and friends of great
> people who (I'm assuming) were not famous, the details of the ends are
> carved deeply into memory -- so deeply no amount of abrasive living in
> the uncaring world can erase them.
>
> For those we love, we know what they were sick, what they died, of.
> Slowly or suddenly. In what place and at what time. These were huge
> happenings in a small -- i.e., personal -- way. Not historical beyond
> a small circle and within a small number of generations, these losses
> nevertheless are bigger than Armistice Day, bigger than any number of
> National or Hallmark Holidays in our own personal way of observance.
>
> Say our sun really is the center of the space-time continuum. Say
> when a loved one dies, a huge cloud of grief is emitted around the
> planet. It lingers there in space, a nebula of recollection and
> emotion. Every year our little planet swirls back around and smacks
> back into that same cloud. Oh, not everyone notices. Very personal
> grief-pheromones and emotion-scents linger and are only picked up by
> the persons involved. That's what Sadiversaries are like.
>
> So I'm back in the nebula of September 4, 2005, once again. "Dad's
> heart just stopped last night. They say he was not in pain." I had
> his durable power of attorney for health care. I was the one that
> signed the do not resuscitate form. I was the one that ok'd upping
> the morphine drip. So I guess . . . I'm the one responsible for him
> not being in pain.
>
> He waited until nobody was there. I think he knew in spite of the
> drugs and all. There are ways of nerves and Body+Mind -- and then
> there are spirit ways of knowing, too, don't you think?
>
> Anyway. "Celebrating" another sadiversary. Tomorrow I will celebrate
> by doing what Dad did for so many years -- get up and go to work. The
> older I get the more I admire him for that.
>
> Peace and love to all of you,
> --
> Daniel ( deltaechomike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
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