Thursday 26 October 2000

Pic of the day: One more mile...

There is joy for loved ones coming home
and everyone has gone, I'm standing here alone;
but in the shadows I can see her face:
She comes to me, she's here for me.

(Chris de Burgh: One more mile to go.)

This time for real (?)

I got an e-mail from my youngest brother's wife, and then a phone call from him. In short, my mother's got yet another cancer in the brain, and is worsening fast. This time they're saying that they want me to come. And come I will, if I can. Whether that is a good thing or not, I know not.

In some ways, I resemble my mother. (Apart from being red-haired, fair-skinned, intelligent, devoid of earthly ambition, and reserved towards the opposite sex, I mean.) She did not like to travel, and neither do I. Physical proximity did not mean much to us. Even before she started to lose parts of her body, she did not travel around visiting friends or relatives. Of course, she had always a lot to do at home. But I was the youngest of us. She certainly had no small children to look after. Unless disproved by some startling secret, I am convinced that she did not want to travel and saw little or no value in it. A major reason why I think so is that I feel the same way.

Without this information, you may think I sound bitter when I say that she never seemed interested in visiting me (I think all the rest of the family did at some point or another). But actually I was very comfortable with that, because I felt exactly the same way. There was no reason why any one of us should trek across fjords and mountains, just to be in the physical presence of someone we already knew. Or thought we knew.

For the record, I am not going there to visit my mother. I will, if she is still alive when I arrive. Of course. But it is many years since I have made my peace with living without her. If I had any questions worth taking her time, I would have asked them long ago. I am going for the sake of my sisters-in-law, the women who have for some reason married my brothers. They are fully human, at least two of them are, and could no more comprehend my seeming callousness than a deaf could comprehend a blind. Out of respect for them I want to go.

Do you really think that I just conveniently forgot my own mother for all these years, and when she's dead I will suddenly wake up and think of all the things I should have said and done? How many days in these years do you imagine she has not been on my mind? I may not be a parent myself, but I knew that she wanted me just to be happy. And I sure have tried.

It is sort of funny to think about that I would eventually love and care about someone that would move far away, and I would restrict myself to remember that she has her own life to live without me. Sure it is not like a mother's love for her child - what is? - I only loved her like myself, give or take a little; but I still think there is a kind of poetic justice in it. A kind of acid test on the sincerity of what I say.

***

Of course, my tentative travel plans would be greatly facilitated if I were healthy myself. That's not quite the case. Tonight, for instance, I had one of my worst "balloon" attacks so far. I call it so because it feels like I have swallowed a balloon which then inflates in my stomach. My stomach feels full even though it is nearly empty, and I feel like I should belch up a lot of air, but can't. It's a lot less funny then it sounds, but I can't offhand remember anyone who has died from it. It's certainly not listed near the top of the "killer diseases" statistics...

Yeah, I know it is wildly inappropriate to talk about stomaches when one's mother is dying. Then again, without inappropriate actions, some of you would not even been born. So there! Now that was wildly inappropriate!

***

E-pal wrote in her e-diary today about the male transition crisis from the age of ca 40 to 45. It seems that people take this idea very seriously now. Hrm. As young folks say these days: "Duh!" This is a part of life where normally your kids start to grow up, your parents die, your health starts to falter and your sexuality dries up. And you finally have come so far along in your career that you can see you won't reach the top before it's too late. Small wonder people lose their illusions! You have to be pretty dumb to keep them through all that.

Of course, we can still write fantasy fiction, but it's not nearly the same as fantasizing about ourselves and believing it. Trust me, for I have tried both.