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Here's something that I started thinking about way too much after I had children: death. Death, and dying. Leaving this world. Leaving my children. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that pregnancy and birth make you so keenly aware of your limited, physical self (and so the mortality of that self), maybe it's because that tiny newborn baby reminds you that life is fragile and precious. Maybe it's because you all of a sudden need a will and life insurance and actually have to sit down and think about what's going to happen with your family when you die. Because you will die, you know that, and having kids means that the knowing is all the more complicated. Most of us, however, do not and will not have to confront death so directly as others.
You might not know Lisa of Clusterfook. You might never have heard of Lisa of Clusterfook. But Lisa of Clusterfook is dying. Like, right now. Of cancer. She probably won't make it through the weekend.
Take a moment to clutch at your heart and think about what that means.
Usually we wait until someone has passed away, and then we eulogize them, and then we try to push thoughts of death away from us, as far as possible. But in doing that we narrow window of opportunity for getting to know those people, and to come to terms - so far as is even possible - with their lives and deaths. I didn't know who CancerBaby was, for example, until after she died - when a flurry of posts hit the internet, talking about the tragedy of her death. Which is why I didn't want to wait until Lisa passed away to write about her. It's worth something, I think, to extend our good wishes and our prayers to this woman and her family whille she lives, while she and they come to terms with her death. So that maybe some of that love and warmth will surround them in these last days. So that we can all reflect on what it means - what it really means - to know that life really does end, sometime. To think about how we would handle it. How we would want our families to handle it.
I don't have the answers to those questions. I can't even begin to make suggestions. I've been learning something about these things, though, from reading Lisa's blog, and thinking about what it means for a family to lose a mother. I don't know if her family will take down her blog after her death, but I hope that they don't, because not only is it a tremendous testimonial to her life, it's an extraordinary resource for anyone wondering about how they would - or how they will - handle an illness, terminal or otherwise, while raising a family. That's invaluable, it really is, because we so often don't think about we would handle such a thing. When we think about maternal health, we tend to think about partum and post-partum wellness and breastfeeding and depression and diet and exercise and the what-not. We don't tend to think so much about physical and mental health in the context of serious illness, mostly because (I think) we just don't like to think about that stuff, and because we try to convince ourselves that it couldn't happen to us.
But it could. Lisa is one of us, and it happened to her. Ovarian cancer, in her case (and I encourage you to read her primer on ovarian cancer, which she describes as a 'silent killer,' a disease that often goes undiagnosed), but it could be anything, anything, that brings us to the end. And we should - we must - we really, really must - give some thought to what we would do if. What we will do when. Because time is short, and if it runs too short? We don't want to find ourselves wasting too much of it trying to figure out how to deal. We want to spend that time living.
Like Lisa is living, finally, in her remaining hours.
(Leave good wishes at her blog, which is being tended by Karl of Secondhand Tryptophan. She's not checking in, but I'm sure her family will be comforted in some small way by the outpouring of love and support. Also, if you live in her area, her family could use some support with meals and
