On death and dying

It is my intent to keep this blog at least a bit active, because I find it helps me focus my thoughts if I try to explain them. For the past few days, however, it had seemed to me that I wasn't really thinking about much of anything. That was not true. Usually I think about the changes that are occurring in my lifetime or something I am doing or have done or some big life event. What I have been thinking about in the past few days fits all of those categories, but I did not think of it in those terms. I have been thinking about death and dying.

There have been only a few times in my life when I thought I was going to die, and they were quick events that didn't leave much time for contemplation. I was once caught in a very violent tidal race off Point Wilson, a place dangerous enough that the Indians portaged around it, but it was such a beautifully sunny day, and the sea so beautifully blue, that my thought was 'what a magnificent place to die'. The seas settled and I lived to tell the tale. I was in an automobile accident once that started at about 70 mph and involved a missing bridge and a lot of trees and the car tumbling. I sang the Marbeck setting of the Kyrie, and when everything stopped moving, I unbuckled my shoulder harness, fell to the ceiling, and I lived to tel the tale. Once I was mugged on a street in Memphis with no witnesses, and I didn't know what weapons the guy might have. I tried to remember what one should do to defend oneself against an opponent six inches taller and 60 pounds heavier and 20 years younger. I guess I remembered enough, because I lived to tell the tale.

But I have an ongoing opportunity to die, besides the slings and arrows of outrageous fate. My veins are incompetent. They don't do their share of returning blood to my heart and lungs.  That can easily result in deep vein thrombosis, a condition which is very uncomfortable and sometimes fatal. When the blood slows and pools, it clots. If a clot reaches one's heart and lungs, it can mean a quick death. It's a common condition in my family, my maternal grandfather for one, having died from such a clot, although I think that medical scientists are making rather quick progress on having a genetic cure.

I have from time to time spent days in intense pain when I am having a clot. I suppose the pain is useful so one knows one is likely to have a heart attack, right? Because of the condition, I avoid bus trips longer than a few blocks and airplane trips longer than about an hour, and if I travel by car, I stop  watok around frequently. Fortunately, for whatever reason(s)--my anecdotal explanation is that I ride my bike a lot and drink Monsters--I have't had any problems for a rather long time. I lead an unusually pain-free life in my old age, no longer suffering from the headaches and stomach discomfort that plagued my twenties.  (My dear old family doctor in a gentle way without really saying very much suggested that these were the result of my having married, but he never got around to saying that as a homosexual man, I would be uncomfortable in marriage.)

A few days ago, I began to have a  pain, a pain at the end of my right tibia, and it was continuous and accompanied by soreness.  Being an at least partially hypochondriac twenty-first century American, I of course jumped to the obvious conclusion: I must have cancer. I have had a so-far benign sort of skin cancer for many years, and although it has always seemed nothing to worry about, I decided that it had metastasized in my bone or bones.

It was odd the things I worried about. I didn't worry about dying, but about what the side effects of any possible treatment might be. For instance, because of my DVT, I am not a very good candidate for surgery on my legs or feet. And, what should I do with all my stuff? It seems rude to die and leave others a job of cleaning up the mess, so I started to think about selling some things to buy a pre-paid cremation, and to see if some of my friends or relatives might want some of the other toys. (Nearly all of my stuff is digital toys. Whoever receives my Amazon account will have a lot of nice books, for instance.) I began to think that I would really rather die in the Ozarks, so my ashes could be secretly tucked into a crevice at Harding Spring or in the White River. Death seems pretty much to be the same for everyone, but the dying and the remains left behind can vary a lot. I wanted it all to be simple.

Then the usual thing happened. A sort of mottled discolouration appeared on my ankle, one of the signs of clotting issues. I took an extra dose of my half-dose adult aspirin spent some time in bed. I repeated the treatment. Now, all is well again.

What is really odd about these few days is that it is not unlikely that death from DVT might be sudden, and I would be unprepared, with all my devices around me, password-protected to render them less useful to others, and with dirty laundry besides. (My mother the last few years of her life washed her day's clothes every night to leave one less job behind for her survivors.)

The devil I know seems so much friendlier than the devil I don't know, but the well-known devil doesn't do much to spur me to action. I have more or less started to think about returning to Eureka Springs. There are few things in life I enjoy more than sitting under the overhang above Basin Springs Park and smoking cigarettes, drinking Mud Street Cafe coffee, and reading. Maybe doing a bit of drawing. Eavesdropping on the tourists below, whose conversations are often very clear in  the natural amphitheatre above. But mostly, now that the thought of imminent death by cancer has passed, I am back to looking at digital toys. I think that this will really be the week I finally buy a drone. I don't need it, but whoever inherits my stuff will find it amusing, perhaps, and it will look cool hanging on a wall.