No, this isn't another bitch and moan entry. Finally. Thank you, whoever you are that read this, for putting up with the ugly and easily rattled side of me. Serenity isn't something that comes easy for me when dealing with business. Ya think?
Today I got up at the crack of dawn to drive out to my cousin's place to accompany him to his second chemo for metastatic prostate cancer treatment. After six and a half years it has spread to his bones. Joe is 62 and has been alone all his life. He lives simply but nicely, having retired early from the job he held for thirty-some years. He has a lovely home in a small age-restricted community right across the street from the hospital where he volunteers three times a week, and where the cancer center is.
Joe has no one, except a very few close friends and my sisters and me. He's always been a member of our family, invited to all family holidays and celebrations after the death of his father, my mother's big brother. Uncle Joe died quite young, of complications brought on by a hospital infection, just shy of the first anniversary of his second marriage (cousin Joe's mother had died many years earlier). Uncle Joe's second wife was an amazing woman who took Joe under her wing and helped him become independent, and her daughters became good friends to Joe, too. My niece and nephews call him "Uncle." I think that's sweet. He's an only child, so that's as good as it gets for him.
But for the kindness of relative strangers I don't know what would have become of him. He's a good guy, but socially retarded, to put it mildly. As a child I was afraid of him. As an adult I don't always understand him, but I can see his goodness and his loneliness and it brings out the better side of me. His social skills have also improved with age, to the point where he is able to carry on a conversation, though it will be stilted and interrupted and somewhat chaotic. He suffers from Neurofibromatosis, also known as Elephant Man's Disease (though John Merrick didn't actually have this), though for Joe it manifests as brittle bones, small overgrowths - like enlarged, flesh-toned moles, and café-au-lait spots. He can break his foot just by putting weight on it after getting out of bed. He has a leaky heart valve. And now, he has cancer in his bones.
He sees himself as a glass-half-empty kind of guy, blessed in some ways and extremely unlucky in others. I don't know, personally, how he keeps his chin up even that much. He tried dating services for a while but his personality is not fully developed, and his appearance isn't exactly charming, though I wouldn't say he is deformed. But he long ago gave up on partnership. His friends sustain him, and he's had the same friends for more than 40 years. He travels with them or to visit them. I know I'll see him in Washington, and he's excited to have another place to visit.
Anyway, it was nothing for me to sit with him and chat while he got his treatment. It's a pleasant place, for such a thing, and the nurses are lovely and friendly. The view out the windows was of a peaceful garden, with the heathers just coming into bloom. Other than the needle stick and his chronic impatience, he didn't have a hard time there. I'll go with him again next week. He's off the following Friday, and we're being packed up that day. That's the last I'll see of him for a while, until he makes his plans to fly to Seattle and visit with us.
I believe my duties in taking care of people are fully discharged. Aunt Grace will survive without me. Joe has always survived without me. But there's a big part of me that still wants to care, wants to help. I wish I could do more. I wish that at least I could stop sweating the small crap like selling the house and moving. No one will give a rat's ass about that when all is said and done. But I believe connections of the spirit go on, and are our true legacies. Thoughts of the people I've loved, and those who have loved me, will be the important, indelible and tangible things that I take to my grave. All the rest is the puny stuff.
There's been a spiderling hatching. The side of the house is festooned with fluttering webs, like a cruise ship leaving port. The weeping cherry is littered with bumble bees, or carpenter bees. I haven't take the time to rifle through my master gardener materials to figure that out. The grass needs to be mowed, the native honeysuckle that twines with the trumpet vine is already fully-leafed. The gayfeather is coming back with a vengeance, as is the bee balm. The woods are waking up. There will soon be fawns out in the woods walking with their mothers and aunts. Judging by the remains of an exploded dove in the back yard, the Cooper's hawks are already busy feeding their young. I have a chance, now, to change my life. I hope to heaven I take it and run with it.
