Avoiding the topic

I notice I am doing this a lot. This is why posts on this page are rarer than posts on the other.

I called my mother today, I think she was about to cry. It's not fair, screams the child in me. It's life, says the adult. It sucks, both agree.

She is worried about her hair, but it's only thinning, she's not going to lose it. She chose the less toxic chemo after all, the one that will just make her feel a little better, when it's done making her feel sick.

We've bought her hair scarves and caps that she can wear even while she has hair. Her hair is great. A mix of salt and pepper. Not fading, gray, barely silver, but pure salt and pepper. She wore it well, she's cute. It looks good on her. But that is neither here nor there because she is neither here nor there, but in between. Halfway between life and death, heading, spiraling, drifting closer and closer to death, all the while feeling mostly crappy.

I am not opposed to death, in the sense that all things must die, and to die is natural, even when the cause is not the natural breakdown of age, but a tragedy or a misfortune. I am a big believer in dying well. If you can. I mean to say, dying with hope, or with a fight, or in action, or asleep in your bed peacefully, or suddenly, with no warning, or with a final last conclusive thought... but to die in pain, and suffering, as so many do, I am not a fan of that, and it grates on me that the only thing we can do is medicate medicate medicate, until the pain and suffering become too much, and she's in bed and can't move, and then slowly drifts off... neither here, nor there, but in between, a place none of us belong.

Death is a hard thing, and I think, I am not dealing well with losing my mom. I could never survive losing a child, I say that. To see their laugh, and then to lose it forever? But then, how many parents who've lost a child thought the same?

My friend lost his mother unexpectedly. She passed away May 11, after he'd seen her at Christmas. He said he's glad he saw her at Christmas, and glad he talked to her on the phone after her first surgery. It still is hard, since, really, we have faith in something, we believe in something, and all that good stuff, but it's the one thing we don't understand. It's not the moving on part, it's the 'do we retain our consciousness, our essence, our self?' or do we fade into something different, or part of something else, or more, or less, or just sort of float around? It is hard to believe that we can just take a spirited form of our consciousness and 'exist' as our unique personality in another place.

Ah, but I'll stop now. Especially since my next line would tend to be something like, or perhaps we already are part of one existence, and not really seperate or unique at all, and that would lead into the possibility that we aren't really individual or unique or possible really, we exist only in thought, i.e. we are real because we think we are real, and the moment we no longer believe it, we cease to exist....

Yes, I agree, I should have stopped.
As you can see,

I'm quite adept at avoiding the topic.