As life goes on time blurs into this endless stream of unadventurous survival. Some, with terminal illness, are well aware of how life is a synonym for dying. Others can avoid the thought of death as much as possible, putting it off until the last possible second, only to come to terms with their mortality with age or accident.
Bringing a new life into the world has always struck me as strangely selfish and cruel — yet I’m doing it anyway. You can say creating life is creating death much the same. The only opportunity as humans we have to avoid dying is to have never been born at all.
My father is very sick. He has been for a long time. I remember the day years ago when he called me to say he was feeling too ill to travel to California to see the latest show I was directing. I was 22 and barely had started my life post college. I was in the very early stages of a relationship with the man I’d eventually marry, but didn’t have plans for much other than paying rent and maintaining a stable income. I always imagined having a family (and him being there as grandpa for a long time) but was in no rush to start one.
I knew his sickness must be something serious. It was unlike him to cancel travel plans. I was worried and waited results from his tests. Soon after, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of late-stage prostate cancer. Unfortunately, unlike early-stage prostate cancer, his type was not curable. He sought the best treatment possible, ending up in the care of expert Sloan Kettering doctors in New York. He was told he had two years to live and put on a variety of experimental treatments to try to increase his life expectancy beyond that.
I grieved back then, mourning the loss of my father before he was lost. Not knowing how to speak of hope when the prognosis was bleak. Watching the months on the calendar go by from across the country and trying to visit as often as I could. Trying to avoid bickering despite that being in our family’s DNA. Watching him become weaker, then stronger again, but knowing that this diagnosis was indeed terminal and the strength would be short lived without knowing how short lived.
Twelve years later, we approach a new phase, possibly. It is hard to know what causes what, and our medical system, despite being really good at curing specific illnesses caught early, is horrible at holistic care in the sense of understanding how one symptom may be the cause of X and another the cause of Y. As I’ve witnessed these past few months, the medical system — maybe rightfully so — focuses on saving your life for the moment, versus what is best for you as a person, mentally and physically, for even the next few weeks. Their job is to save you and pass you on to the next doctor until all the doctors shrug and say they can help you no more.
We all die at some point yet talking about this, especially in the case of a person who knows they are dying at some point sooner than “20 years from now,” is eerily avoided in our culture. We can speak of death after the fact and leave room to mourn the loss of a loved one. We can come together at funerals and memorials and praise their life. But what of dying? We are all dying, no matter or race, age, or gender, this is part of who we are. But we fail to address this in an honest way. We suffer in silence. We pretend we are immortal until we or someone we love is clearly not.
As I bring a new life into the world, I contemplate my father’s strength in surviving and fighting through these last twelve years, and wonder at this point what’s next. To offer hope and a reason to continue fighting, but also to understand and accept, on his terms, when enough is enough. I don’t know if that’s a few months from now, a few years from now, or sooner. I don’t know if I should be making the case to fly across the country the second my child is medically approved to get on a plane to meet grandpa, or to wait. I don’t know if I should support more treatment or less, and I certainly don’t know how to make this whole situation any less distressing or painful than it inherently is.
Yet this is everyone’s life and this is everyone’s death, albeit at different rates of acceleration. Why does it feel like death itself is an illness to be quarantined from reality, to be hidden and spoke of only in hushed voice, vague gestures of sympathy and empathy, and overall avoidance unless we are forced to face it head on?
life with interest 