Famous Blue Raincoat

I have an uncle who is in very poor health, with multiple conditions:  pancreas removed several years ago, diabetes, COPD, amongst others. He takes more than 20 medications a day, and he's really been touch-and-go for the last year or so. He was previously rejected for a lung transplant due to his poor overall health, but he finally made small improvements over the summer, enough that a transplant center was willing to see him in October for a consultation on a possible lungs transplant.

He had several conditions which needed to be met in order for them to consider him a candidate: he needed to gain weight, he couldn't have any more blood clots and he could have no more hospitalizations for any condition before his appointment in October.

Unfortunately, he had another hospitalization in September, and between his medications and diabetes, he is unable to gain any weight. He went for the consultation anyway, but as you might imagine, he was rejected yet again. He's basically been sent home to live as long as he can in general failing health, or in other words, sent home to die.

I wonder what that feels like.   

We will all face this at some point, in either our loved ones or ourselves. After watching my mother-in-law and another uncle die slowly from cancer, I'm convinced that those of us who go quickly--in a heart attack, stroke or car accident where we don't know what hit us--are the lucky ones. I'm not even convinced that the short sharp shock of a sudden death is any more traumatic to our loved ones than watching us die slowly over weeks/months/years from a terminal illness. There is a different trauma that comes with watching someone you love suffer so long and knowing you can't do anything to change it.  

Those of you who know me also know that I am ever the eternal optimist--Pollyanna, even. I get sad or mad for a bit, but the setback or disappointment or traumatic event passes and I move on and look forward to the next good thing that is sure to come.

Those good things will end at some point.  

Whether we go quickly or linger for weeks/months/years with a terminal illness, there will come a day where we've seen our last sunrise or sunset. Drank our last coffee.  Eaten our last meal. Had our last kiss or hug or words with someone we care about. 

Is it better to know death is coming, and sooner rather than later? What about folks who know the date and even the time of their upcoming death, such as inmates on death row? Would I have the courage to decide the date and time myself if I were terminally ill and it became clear there was nothing else to be done except be kept comfortable and wait for nature to take its course? 

Food for thought after receiving the news about Uncle Mike, on a rainy Friday, while listening to Leonard Cohen.

A Life in Pictures

Can't sleep. The lost photos are driving me crazy.

I think of all the crap that made it here somehow and which we probably should have thrown away before we even moved, compared with the few things that got lost, and I'm disgusted.

Why didn't we bring the photos along with us in the car? I don't know, and yet I sort of do:

A. We weren't very organized the day the packers came, and they moved through the apartment very quickly. A living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, home office, three large closets and the contents of assorted shelves and storage areas were packed, very safely and efficiently, in less than two hours.

B. We had limited room in the car, and we knew we would already be taking all our important papers (due to risk of identity theft and/or for documentation purposes in case of tax audits, etc.), my jewelry (of which I have very little, believe it or not--just two small boxes), things that the movers wouldn't take like my perfume collection and acrylic paints, five days worth of clothes, the cats in their crates and the stuff we needed for them, plus the awful airbed and some bedding. There was no room to spare.

C. Frankly, it just didn't occur to us that anything would get lost. We expected some breakage, perhaps, so we opted for Full Value Protection of our goods, minus a small deductible, but we thought all of our boxes would make it there.

And of course, photos have really no dollar value, only their priceless sentimental value.

The photos were in two photo boxes which we stored in the closet that also contained the items in the lost boxes. We believe the photos are also in those lost boxes.

One framed photo of Mr. 42's dad was somehow in with our craft supplies, and we are thankful to have it.

I am sad to lose things like my photos from childhood, our wedding photos, pictures of pets we used to have, etc., but some of those things I can possibly get copies of from other family members. And those family members are still alive.

I am beyond sad about Mr. 42's photos. Both of his parents are deceased and the photos are all he had left of them. When we brought the photos back from Mother-in-Law's house after she passed, he went to great lengths to get them all sorted and organized and neatly boxed, etc. It meant a lot to him (and to me) to have those photos, and for reasons I won't go into here, we are not able to get any photos from his other family members, if they even have any.

We had very few photos of Mother-in-Law to begin with. Her family's house caught on fire when she was 14 years old.  She was very badly burned and her young boyfriend was actually killed in the fire trying to get her and her little brother out of the house. Most of her family's possessions were destroyed in the fire, including family photos. When we sorted through the pictures, we found no childhood pictures and just two photos of her from her youth, both taken in her mid-to-late teen years.

There were photos of her from Mr. 42's childhood, but not many. She disliked having her photo taken, and there were very few photos of her taken after she was in her 40s. We have had a digital camera for more than 10 years, but somehow we have no digital photos of her, so at this point, we have NO photos of her. Not a single one.

Well, what's done is done. Unless they can find the missing boxes (and I really don't care about the missing clothes and shoes at this point), we have to accept that the photos are gone. I am creating this blog entry as a last ditch missive to the universe, with hopes that some kind soul will find the missing boxes, or at least the photos, and return them to us. Universe, do you hear me?