Wellness

Are my eyes clouding over?  I ask myself this question in the early morning, light reflected from the white porcelain of the kitchen sink, tea brewing.  Maybe not, regarding the eyes.  The ocular situation, whatever it is, seems remarkably better once my glasses are on.  In any case, I have an ophthalmology appointment in a couple of weeks.  All will be revealed.  Well, not all.  There's always something to worry about, and these days I find plenty.  My abdominal muscles are growing weaker with age and supporting an expanding belly load of fat, all creating a hernia-like state, according to my surgeon.  He strongly suggests diet and exercise over slicing open my guts.  Something else to worry about.

Marlou has much more to worry about.  And in this sense she is my current teacher and guide.  Marlou is not particularly concerned about diet or exercise or anything that produces marginal benefits.  She has an aggressive cancer.  Chemotherapy is an aggressive remedy that is not working anymore.  She quite openly says that her emphasis is on facing things.  Marlou hasn't given up.  She soon will talk to a doctor at the University of California Medical Center about clinical trials of some new drug.  Marlou has no illusions.  The trial drug may buy some time.  It's worth exploring.  Her expectations are limited.  Her priorities are elsewhere.  It's time to confront reality, do what needs to be done and enjoy what is left.

As for the quality of what is left...well, it's like things are giving way, much as ice crunches underfoot or beach sand shifts with each step.  There is a quality of revelation about our conversations, our personal admissions, our days.  This is what Marlou probably knows better than most of us around her.  She hasn't given up the struggle, but defined it.  Her cancer is moving slowly enough to reveal our relationship.  To risk saying difficult things to each other.  To find out what we really have, and don't have, as a couple.  I've always wanted an intimate relationship.  Now I've got one, and it's going.  But the going is making clear what I've got.  The very taking away is making the relationship what it is, or even more of what it is.  Observation is affecting the observed, like something out of Heisenberg.

These days we can flare into anger quicker than ever.  We retreat to our separate corners.  But it is as though we both hear the same referee's bell.  Round two.  We come out, usually put the gloves down.  Someone gets the technical knockout.  It doesn't matter.  Round three doesn't matter.  We send the fans home.  The empty arena is ours.

Things giving way.  The floor dropping out.  This physical sensation comes in those moments when I accept that we are discussing the end.  It's not in sight, this end, but it's in the room.  It's in range.  It's in feeling.

It's like opening the door for Elijah during the Passover Seder.  Let him in.  He has supposedly good news.  It's a choice, a physical move, to make this guy part of the action.  If death is knocking on the door, what are you supposed to do?  Get a deadbolt?  We are all going to get a bolt of death.  So, now my door is always open.

It's timeless, this revelatory power of mortality.  I do think that in America we could do a better job of working this truth into the act.  A British friend showed me a wedding invitation from some couple in Vermont.  Guests were invited to hike to a mountaintop and join the couple in 'celebrating wellness'.  It's a good idea to take care of the human body.  But it's also a good idea to change the oil in my car.  Neither experience should be elevated to the status of religion.  There's no life purpose in wellness.

Some would argue there's no life purpose, full stop.  Perhaps.  But in those floor-dropping moments in which I acknowledge mortality and the limited time Marlou and I have together, we are too engaged to think about meaning or meaninglessness.  If Sartre knocks on the door, along with Elijah, he can come in too.  But he has to take off his shoes and wait until we're done watching HBO.  There's too much on our plates to worry about the significance of things.  Or our insignificance.  What passes between us feels very significant.  In fact, it seems this is all there is.  This is what matters, our connection.

One thing learned in the sum of floor-dropping exchanges around matters of mortality, has to do with my emotional perspective.  Life often seems crushingly sad.  And yet Marlou and I still have plenty of laughs.  Deep laughter, floorless laughter.  Not the nervous evasive kind.  Soul humor.  These moments spring from all the rest.  In many ways, they are the most educational.  Perhaps my childhood had very long stretches of hopelessness.  Sadness is a comfortable default for me.  A remarkable defense, but that's what it is.  One of the endless ways of avoiding the bittersweet transience of the moment.  A technique for sidestepping loss, the fact that precious things of life can be taken away.