Death - lots of it.

Tonight is the last night (for a while at least) that I'll post on A Mon Avis. I've killed it, or at least have put it in a coma. For reasons why, read them there.

My co-worker's husband died this weekend. Passed away while she was unpacking her daughter at college, her daughter's first day of her first year of college. It was not sudden - he had had melanoma for a couple of years - but it was sooner than expected. Only since May did his disease really become debilitating, and ever since July it has just been getting worse and worse. It got so he couldn't even get up from the bed, lift his head to drink, or pick up the phone. He apparently never really believed he was dying. He kept telling his wife that he had another 5 months to live. Something tells me that he had to have known, that he did know, but he just didn't want to tell her he knew. Maybe he felt he was protecting her. At the end of August the doctors gave him about a month to live (doctors told my co-worker but not him, as he said he didn't want to know), and he lasted a week and a half, maybe two. He died sooner than they expected, but he is no longer in pain and he is no longer a shell of himself. This can (and does) comfort them. Doug and I will go to the wake tomorrow night and no doubt I will cry more than they will. I don't really like death.

Whenever someone dies I think of my own life. First I think of what it would be like if I were dead, and then I realize that it's silly to think like that because I wouldn't know what it would be like if I were dead. I can't reasonably consider that I'll be a spirit looking down on my family and friends from the great above. It may be possible that I'll be one of these spirits one day, but it is easier for me to believe - for whatever reason - that when I'm dead I'm dead and neither my body nor my soul/spirit will live on. Once I realize this I then move on to thinking of what I would do if my mother died, my sister, my brother, or my father died. Or if Doug died. I don't know what I'd do if Doug died. My co-worker was laughing with me on the phone tonight, making jokes about work, etc., and I think that if Doug died all I'd be able to do is cry. Maybe during the day I'd keep it together, but at night, or on the weekend when I would be home alone in the house, I think I'd have a tough time keeping sane. Yes, Doug eats whole bags of Doritos at once without sharing, and yes, he chews gum so loudly and fast that I make him spit out his gum into my bare hand while we're standing in the kitchen aisle at The Container Store because if I have to hear him make those gum noises any more I will scream. Those things bother me and at times I wonder how I stand it. But when I start to think about death, about being alone, about not being able to complain about those little things anymore, about not being able to scratch his head or hold his hand or sleep next to him, then I start to realize that to be without him would be like being without myself, and I don't know if I could do it. I want him around, I need him around, and I hope I get many, many, many more years with him. I just don't like death.