still life with idiots

Hello, sunshine! I can see you through the blinds. I’m glad to know you’re out there, even if it seems like I’m ignoring you.

Yeah, why am I addressing the sun? I don’t know. Hoping for some sympathetic magic the invocation of the name Ra might hold.

My boss called, and I had essentially the same conversation with him that I’ve had with anyone else I’m close to: The tumors are bigger; the labs for my liver panel look mostly normal; yeah, I need to write a will; no, I don’t feel that great; no, I don’t have a prognosis. He was very understanding, especially when I took a brief and unprofessional detour to diss the inefficiency of our HR department. I was brief! Nobody likes a complainer.

It’s been almost a year since I started this blog, this schizoid, rambling blahhhhhhhhhg of indecision, uncertainty, anxiety, occasional amusement and irrational crying jags. A year ago, I was obsessed with: not having a boyfriend; being patient while my body healed enough to go back to work; my mom and her juice-only miracle diet.

This year, this February 18th or whatever it is, I am obsessed with: how long I might be alive; the fact that I’ll probably never see Paris again; who should get my stuff, my wonderful stuff; wondering whom I might see in the afterlife, and hoping it’s not just confined to the people I used to endure, through wreaths of cigarette smoke, each Thanksgiving growing up. Like, is it going to be some awkward family reunion, where I have to meet Great-Uncle Spark, whose comprehension in life of who I might be was clouded by Cutty Sark and the aforementioned cigarette smoke? I don’t really want to hang around with him, and I’m fairly sure the feeling is mutual. Other people I don’t want to hang out with: the drunk, reprehensible neighbor who burned my childhood home (because he was drunk); my paternal grandfather (lecherous, drunk, favorite term of endearment: “Stupie,” short for “stupid”); my own father.

I love, meaning that I deeply loathe, when people encourage me to contact my father, estranged since 1995, because I’ll “regret” it if I don’t. It is acutely presumptuous of anyone outside my personal skin to make assumptions or recommendations about how I might deal with my father. Those under the misapprehension that the filial bond requires respect are more than welcome to contact my father and conduct their own relationship. If anyone still feels the urge to really, really just encourage me to repair that bond, I will just mention that my father, a genealogy enthusiast, omits me from his family tree, and tells people I’m dead.

I know I said the other day that I do not have time for grudges, and I still mean that. My avoidance of my father is an act of self-preservation, his estrangement the excision of a cancerous tumor. I equate it with stepping around a snake in one’s path: you won’t spend a lot of time hating the snake and dwelling on its terrifying qualities, you just recognize it for what it is, and keep moving.

I don’t know. I’m just rambling now. I’ve been in bed all day, I’m bored, slightly feverish, and pensively grouchy. You may not want me in your heaven, whenever that day might come. I’ll endeavor to do better.

About ten years ago, I went to see Jonathan Richman in concert, in Paris. The venue was a large, high-ceilinged building constructed of stone, and the place was packed.

At one juncture, Jonathan was trying to explain, in his broken French, the concept of being obsessed. Except he didn’t know the correct French word, so he said, “obsessionnel,” which is not a word. Gentle laughter came from the audience, and people called out the right word: “obsedé.” “Ohhhhhhhhhh!” said Jonathan, absorbing this new information, “obsedé. Merci!”

That scenario popped into my mind today because I fear I am becoming a little obsedée about the condition of my liver. Now that there is no medicine going in to try and check its growth, will the cancer just blossom and take over? I can’t help but think that it will. And how long will that take? Do I have six months? A year? One month? There’s no way to know! It is literally maddening.

I need to write a will. I just got some great advice on same from my friend Chris (Go out, have some drinks with friends, bring a legal pad, and then decide who gets what. Or, more directly, who DESERVES what.” Exactly.)

Some of these decisions are easy: my cousin Mary, for example, who not only ratted me out about the Cyclone, but tried to use the information to gain leverage and have an affair with the Captain — she is out. She’s also a coke whore, so would probably sell anything I gave her. That one’s easy.

Some are more difficult. My mother, for example. Eleven years ago, her mother died. I asked for, and was granted, the one thing I wanted from the estate: a painting my grandmother had done of a mountain range across the valley from her house. My mother instantly swooped in and snapped it up, saying she would keep it safe. Over the years, I have asked for it many times, and gotten a variety of lame excuses, the lamest being, “But it goes so well in my back bedroom.” I guess I will will her that painting.

As far as everything else, I’m at a loss. And I’m feeling the crush of a deadline looming, phantom or not.

I have to write out details of a funeral, lest I be propped up in some nondenominational fellowship room with maroon-padded chairs set in semi-circles and the lyrics to the hymns projected via PowerPoint onto a screen above the gladiola-bedecked cross.

I really hope I have a decent amount of time left. I know that once I get these will and funeral details taken care of, I’ll feel a lot better

I’m just a tad obsedée.