I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing this week… kicking it, like karate… dreaming of being somewhere else… some other time in the future, maybe… my mother came to visit me today… we sat at the ocean all afternoon…. watching waves… talking some, and dreaming our own separate dreams in silence… counting the albatrosses diving for their take-out…. twiddling in the sand and making art out of the seashells at our feet… I wish seashells were nuggets of gold… I could collect up my daily loot each time I needed to buy my seashack supplies… although, everyone would know, and this place would be crawling with gold-diggers and sand-miners, and they would get so jaded to the sunsets, that they would never look up and notice…
I can’t help thinking about how a couple years ago, I thought my mom was a goner. She was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer… bone cancer… supposed to be the most painful kind, I’ve heard. A real miracle of miracles that she beat it… at least for now. Doctors say it is never beat, but it has gone away for awhile.
My mom’s greatest fault and gift has been her horrendous optimism. Sunshine pours out of her and in the face of any tragedy or misery or life pothole, she has always seen the brighter side of things. I know I got some of that from her…. her teflon conscience and duck-back resilience….
She has been spending a lot of time with her two sisters this summer. Just hanging out and sharing her delusional optimism, as her oldest sister battles her own curse of cancer. I tell her how maybe this is the main reason she ever got cancer herself… So that she could win and share her story to help her sister be strong. Or maybe the cancer knew better and its only purpose was to bring them all together in a nick of time, to resolve and mend any past heartbreaks or chasms between them. Not everyone gets that chance, or dies slowly enough to allow for their healing…. and lucky fortune to forgive and forget.
Seems like a lot more friends and family have been getting sick this past year or so. Nobody imagines they will be the unlucky one… until they are the unlucky one. I know this should be my life altering revelation of how we should all be living like everyone is going to die in the next few days or weeks. But then I forget…