April 17, 2025

It's kind of weird that this log begins with ruminations about the past and future. There really isn't any future left. I just used the standard stock that the web log contributed. What does it mean to not have a future? Melinda is here. Pabling is here. Dog, Kitsune and cat, Katsune, are here. More guests coming to say goodbye, assure Melinda that she has family, and that we are loved are enroute. Letting go of all the toxicity that my life presented to me and to us, and embracing the joys, accomplishments, and accolades that we earned on our own, despite some horrific and unbelievable circumstances. We followed our dreams, worked hard, and did it anyway. Learning along the way.

Happened to stumble across an Amazon Prime documentary called, "Take me out feet first," about Assisted Dying. Also, Dr. Phil had a special on it. I found that when I was in my moments of most extreme pain, being medevacked on Ketamine over the Pacific Ocean, for example, I was willing to grit my teeth and accept that this was the way I was just going to let go, accept what was to come, and disappear into . . .? In the hospital, during one of my more painful moments, I was screaming for Melinda, but she wouldn't pick up the phone. Pabling, either. Then, I remember with legs stretched out before me in the air realizing that it was not just my body that was dying, but my soul was dying as well--even though I profess not to believe in such things--that I was just going to be "no more." As by magic, my phone lit up with "Kathy calling," like an angel (like I said, I do not believe in such things,) rang through.

She has been my angel through this, and so many other much needed moments in my life. She will never leave my side. After Melinda and all the kids left, and I was living in a one room broiler room basement apartment under the snow, so alone. She would bring me to her house, make up the spare bedroom for me, make me English tea--warm milk and sugar, and she and her dear husband Fredo would parent me for the night. Make me feel loved and cared for. 

 

Part of a letter I just wrote to her:

 

apparently, and you may know this, melinda went through a lot more than i thought when  i was in the hospital and she was in brooklyn. all the stuff i had been trying to protect her from--the hospice videos that show the terminally ill patient dying, going through the motions, head, eyes, and jaw agape and lax, death rattle, swabbing the insides of their mouths with little sponge tips to keep in moist, not knowing if you will ever see them lucid again, dr's pressuring them to let the patient die and sign the dnr, all coming at her at one, she has already gone through. i cannot believe her strength. and pabling crying to her begging her to let him know he did the right thing leaving me in the hospital while i was delirious and begging to go home. the two of them have such amazing strength. 

 

Everybody sound now. All sitting in the dimly lit front room. On devices. Quiet. Comfortable, Satisfied. Together. 

 

The last two nights were pretty rough. Nothing like the pain in the hospital--had I had to continue that for four more days, I most surely would have made my exit by now. Twice I woke up and couldn't breathe. I went into panic. I couldn't talk, swallow, scream. I was out of control of the cancer and its ravages. Eyes wide open, I flipped on all the lights, and turned on my go to comfort show, "The Incredible Dr. Pol," and tried to focus on that until Melinda got my meds squared away, and I could breathe again. I've been staying up all night, when not reading doctors' reports, looking up funding, I still need $700 for the lethal meds, and $1500 cremation fees, as well as a small stipend that will cover the difference between my SSI payments and my rent for the next six months, I am doing guided meditation tapes on dying and letting go. Most of them are on the fear of dying. But I don't think that it is for me. But I keep changing my mind and feelings the more I grow and learn. Having been suicidal for most of my life, how could I possibly be afraid of death? I understand that it was the circumstances and pain that was inflicted upon me, and not necessarily the life and love that I was unaware was possible, that I was trying to rid myself of. 

But all that has quieted down now. The small and almost imperceptible delights that we brought into our lives eclipse the violence of the rages in the way Carl Sandborg wrote about the fog.  

Poor Melinda had to fill out two DNRs last month. One for me, and one for the big fat king of the cats who didn't make it. 

I have no disillusions that life is energy, carbon, nitrates, etc., and it is that energy that creates photosynthesis and reduces us down to settling next to someone's eggshells and Peet's coffee grinds in a compost pile they purchased from IKEA. One life is no more important than another, and the tapes that reassure the dying one that they were somehow "good" and did "their best," or profess to know what happens next or contemplate the existence of a "soul," are just invented subjectivities to make the idea of being "no more" more palliative for some whose egos insist that they be placed in a hierarchical Godly place above all others, is just arrogant and narcissistic carried into one's fictionalized idea of an afterlife, where they can continue to proclaim their eminence without any glimpse into consideration to truth or beyond any other self-imposed grandiose pomposity.   

You get a lot of that in academia.

The "Take my feet out first" documentary was a bit more substantive. Although it began with a reasonably intelligent discussion of a woman's choice to induce Medically Assistance in Dying, it quickly moved through the process her husband went through during his transition. I thought it was completely infantilizing. For some, I suppose, it might be comforting to be told several times who is in the room with the dying patient. To make sure that they have ice cream to obscure the bitter taste of the medication, to reassure them that it was ok to let go and die. But to me these are all decisions to be made by the transitioning, and if one's goal is to let the patient go on their terms, and not on "god's," then why are these people taking that decision away from them and acting as "god?" It's not your decision to tell me when it is "ok" for me to "let go." 

I do know that I do not want to suffer. I do not want to wrestle with a ventilator. I do not want to be panic stricken in a body that will frighten and hurt me. The two people who have loved me best and most, Pabling and Melinda, and the loyal pets who stayed by my side, Kitsune and Katsune, will join us all in my bed. Am still in limbo as to what movie, (or possibly guided meditation tape,) that I want on. Not entirely unlike tonight. The quiet. The peace. The unspoken togetherness. The feeling that everything will be alright. But with the solicitude and finality that tonight doesn't carry. I won't awake into a new day, with the sun on my face to be shown all the new joys I was deprived of in my youth--but was lucky enough to watch my daughter awaken in them. 

Through her, through the love she then radiates, and then through her friends and true family, I live on.