Jenny has cancer. Terminal cancer. We learned that in late July. Jenny had dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying. She had been having vague stomach complaints since October. As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing. Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019. Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020. The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas," he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach. "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
It is just there. I mean, there is no below the surface. There are no good days. There isn't a day I don't wish I didn't have less cowardice to just be done. Or less worry for my girls, lest they follow after me. I am not bereft. I am neither morose nor sullen. It isn't that I can't find some modicum of pleasure. I am sitting in a candle lit bathroom with music I have collected and curated since my teens playing in the background. This is a small dream for a small life. I stopped being alive a very long time ago, with some.punctuated moments-like traveling across the country with Abby-of unmitigated joy bordering on perfection. But, it slips away. I have ambled into a castle's keep, the walls of which I only fortify to my own detriment. And yet, as I have done since loss became real back when Corey drowned, I pull back. Without love, without that risk, you can't be hurt, can you? Whether it's disappointment, betrayal, or death, I wasn't built as r...
Entry 1 Sunday mornings are as hard as Kris Kristofferson warned they could be. I'm listening to Anna Scouten cover John Hartford's Tall Buildings . It's a sad song about giving up childhood dreams and succumbing to the drudgery of typical American life. I remember when I was excited about that prospect, when I realized I could actually do such a thing. I have missing years. Not Somewhere in Oregon, 2014ish . like Jesus, more like a low-rent Lazarus, some denizen of the original skid road . A particularly apt description, given my Seattle origins, my preteen retreat into drugs and the attendant abandonment of same nearly 10 years later at the ripe old age of 20. These Sunday mornings are all the more brutal with the advent of spring and daylight savings time. In the darkness of winter mornings, it takes my brain longer to wander into memories and suppositions about what was, what is, and what could have been. In the cold light of early spring, pain shines like a beacon. I...
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