Every so often, you go through
spells of pondering mortality, a little more than you should, and it is then
attached to insomnia, which doesn’t need any help.
And regularly, everybody needs a reminder of other people’s
mortality. The human body, I’ve been saying for years, will do what it wants,
which is often not what doctors say, predict, or expect. We all know of medical
miracles still bouncing around, and poster children for proper health gone in a
second.
The body operates on its own terms.
That’s what my brother’s body went
and did. A few years ago, he had a stroke, and was living in an assisted-care
facility back home in Pa. As per usual, he went forward and backward. Couldn’t
really speak, but still could express himself. Things were where they were.
Then my sister called a couple
weeks. Uh oh. A form of cancer had emerged on his bladder, I think. No, he wasn’t
in perfect shape when he had the stroke, but he wasn’t a big drinker by any
stretch, and had gone back and forth as a smoker. There was chemo, and
something else, and initially, it looked like the plan was to go with ‘something
else,’ but all that would do was give him about six months or so.
As it turns out, he had decided against
that. He was still normal, despite the inevitability. My sister said to plan a
Christmas trip, because it looked like he’d still be pretty good and have a few
months left. When the phone rang this afternoon …
