Personal Journal

Dr. Young

I figured out what I want to ask Dr. Young. I want to ask him, "How did you know that last time, that it was the last time?"

I disect this experience over days, sometimes my sessions in my mind are 20 minutes. Sometimes they're a few hours long. Sometimes they're in the car on the way to buy the biggest bag of marijuana that I've seen in 11 years... Sometimes they're playing Warcraft, or painting.

I knew something was up - or I think now that I knew. I remember the day before I took her in that Thursday for 2 bags of IV fluids. I'd never seen her so wiped out before. And I was questioning whether it was the new chemo regimen, or whether the tumor was fucking her up. In retrospect, I know now that it was the tumor, and what part of it was chemo will never be known.

Whether my intuition was correct or it was coincidence will never be known. I like to think I'm intuitive. Seems like that's a fairly big affirmation of that, but I'm not used to inuiting such ... well, death for lack of a better word.

I thought Dusty was dying last week - well, in fact she absolutely was. And I thought, on Thursday, Friday, and even Saturday, that Monday I would have to put her down. But she bounced back sometime Sunday, and she's almost entirely her old self again.

Intuition, and where it stands in my life, in my faith.

I'm a good writer because of my intuition, and empathy (I think of them very much as the same thing). My pets love be because I can inuit their thoughts and feelings, and I can imagine what it's like to be a cat. I'm a good lover because I can feel pleasure in a woman's body. Bad subject to head into, actually.

But I've always lived knowing any of my tenates of fate could be wrong. I've had no "Converion of St. Paul on the Road to Damascus"
(reader reference - here's that picture link:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/c/caravagg/05/29ceras.html
(it's my favorite picture in the world)

So, intuition, Jean dying, Dr. Young, me, who I am, what I believe. These things come together in the strangest ways.

I believe Jean is in a better... I believe she's in the best place our individual soul can ever experience. But I don't believe she can "look down" on me. I don't believe she can visit me in my dreams and give me advice. I wish I could.

But there are times when I wonder, and I almost think Jean has something to do with something. Like the fact that the cat I took to her Mom is having a second kittenhood, and Minnie refers to him as "a great companion" (direct quote). It worked. That ornery Chinese War Cat (my nickname for him) is this woman's smile at the end of the day... And I wonder, did Jean talk to him? Did Jean get to do some things since she had to leave this world so early. Like Dusty, on death's door on Friday. Kvetching at me because she's hungry for human Tuna today...

It makes me want to believe in the Chinese practice of ancestor worship. I feel like I should ask Jean for help in what is the rest of my life. She asked me to continue to be a good man. I wonder if she'll be able to be there when I search earnestly for what action a good man should take at a crossroad.

I don't know, but I'll have to listen, and feel, and maybe I'll find something new there to believe. The fact is, I need to believe that Jean can and will touch my life with her eternal soul. Not with memories. Not with coincidences. I need to believe I will hear her in my soul someday again.

I wonder if I will have lost my fear of flying in this. There have been so many times when I have wished I could be dead, truly wished to embrace death to visit whatever it is that Jean gets to visit every moment of eternity. I want death sometimes so that I can go see just see for myself if she's fulfilled... happy.

I can say I don't fear death. There's nothing on the other side of life that I wouldn't welcome openly. I can see myself very easily not fighting to survive if I had cancer. I can see myself in a plane that's going down that Jean is at the end of the ride. And I can see a smile on my face in that image.

We'll see, I suppose, if I fly to California for work in the near future.