Life, death and love: keep on breathing

It’s been a long time since I wrote. It’s not from a lack of something happening, on the contrary. Too much has happened, too much at the same time, way too much. So when we get a big meal to digest, we need to sit, time to digest. So I sat, I digested for a long winter the new events that are unfolding in my life. Death in the form of the lung cancer of my dad, love in the form of separation from a husband, 6 years passed, it all fell apart in one instant and I found myself back in my home land after 25 years of exil, back at ground zero to witness the ravages of cancer at my parents house. What happened? What did I do to get to this place?

Cancer, oh the cancer. I watch my dad go from a man full of life, whiskey and cigars to a shadow of a man with no hair, lying in bed suffering his own personal hell, throwing his lungs aways. The bags of morphine and other pain killers pill up, a pill a day, 20 pills a day, the chemio, the loss of appetite, the specialists, doctor after doctors, then the rayons, and the chemio again. Morphine screams of pain, the house become a death bed, I make jokes to keep death aways, but she is there, lingering, stopping time. And there is nothing I can do to take away the pain, so I sit, we eat together, I hear you throw up the egg that you could swallow down, and we watch the evening movie. A long death meditation, the pain, the sadness, the fear, the hate, the love, it all gets mixed up together in morphine dreams. The image of dad gets transformed as he goes back to fetal stage in front of my eyes, junkie days and it’s legal, even prescribed by the pharmaceutical industries. More drugs they say, keep them alive at any cost, business is business and we need to sell more dope. A sick body is good for dope pushers, better keep them sick. I want to scream to the doctors to live you the fuck alone, but, you believe in the treatments, the nurses and the daily shots become your routine, and there is nothing I can do, I have to respect your choices. Life goes on as they say, yeah life goes on dad, we all make our choices. I wanted to be there for you dad, I wanted to hold you in my arms mam, and we shed a tear together as the winter passed.

Marriage, divorce, yes, no, yes, no, hate, love, anger, love, hate, I don’t know what any of it means anymore. Too much at once, I digest, why did you have to live me alone dealing with all this? Fucking love and it’s complications. “All I can give is pain” you used to say. I heard the “I don’t want any relations” mantras for many years, and yet I married you anyhows. Dreams, fantasy, I wanted to believe, a woman in love I was, blind totally blind. I gave it all and you finally left when you felt like it. I have to respect your choices. Along with you, you took it all and I got left with nothing but a head full of memories from once upon a time. A continent away, there is no way I can do anything, and hell, where you come from woman are men’s properties to be used as pleased by the men. “A wife is like your dog, at some point you get used to it” they say over there on top of the world where women have no rights or almost none. Maya maya maya you sing along, illusions oh sweet illusions. After all, “women have no brains” why should they have rights, they are here to serve men, it’s written in the holy books, it must be true. Blame blame, I blamed myself, I blamed you, but really blame is just a passing thing. At some point, we got to look at things in front, and deal with what’s left after the dreams have fallen apart. The broken pieces of the puzzle have to be put back together, an old image is dead, a new image is born. Life goes on my love, yeah life goes on.

The winter passed, the heart break passed, death takes it’s sweet time to knock at the door. Friends became more precious than ever, through the hard times I see who can listen and who can’t. Fun times are always easy, the real test comes when shit hits the fans. Love, hate, death, suffering, rebirth, responsibility, duty to self or others, so many emotional states got crossed on this broken boat that became my life. Death of the dad, the husband doing the “it’s your problem” classic, psychologists would certainly see a connection, and I am sure there is one. Oh how Freudian can we really get before we start to see the light again? I looked deep inside, saw my own mistakes, saw your mistakes, the good and the bad, the worth and the best, and I still love you. I saw monsters and we hanged out, together we sat and we talked, the monsters were me, my mind and I, the emotions and what makes us move. Love at the highest, at the point where it’s so high that it means absolutely nothing anymore. What to do with this love is the only question that remains. Love love, swallows everything, become pointless, with no object to fall on. Love so what you gonna do about it? Love love love, like a blind blooming flower simply is, just an empty word in the dictionary of our illusions. The duty, the rest and the being nice, the being there, the sharing and listening, that’s another story, the real choices, the human being behind the fancy theories, that’s what we remember in the end. I leave love to the poets who like to speak about metaphysics and other best sellers nihilistic freedoms, reality for me is enough to handle, one day at a time, the best I can do is all I can do. Actions will be what remains.

And “the show must go on”, life goes on, the Queens sing on the radio as I drive singing along. Flowers come out of the ground, I did my egg long enough, it’s time to move again. Slowly, I start some workaway projects, the body moves again, nature feeds my soul again, wonderful people are out there, life wakes up and it feels good. There is no choice my friend, the show must go on. The dreams get replaced by new dreams, and the lessons are learned. It’s not the first time that I die and get reborn, the pages turn, and the fact that we can turn them is more frightful than anything else. Impermanence, oh impermanence of it all. How many lives in one life, I wonder and still have no answers. Enough lives I had already, I’ll keep this one for now and make the best of it. I was in love, I am in love, and I will keep on loving as difficult as it might be, I am a lover and a lover I will remain. Lalala lady sings the blues.

As far as we can look for answers, there will never be any answers to the whys, the hows, there is only time that passes and choices to make and assume their consequences. And if I have no idea what is next, as I never knew what was next,  I know that well…life goes on. Death will come knock at the door soon, soon dad will go the other side, his tax came, it was called cancer. Slowly life goes on, got to make a new home, got to make a new business, new travels will come soon again I know. If  I gave it all, it’s because I am like that, I don’t do things half heartedly, I give it all when I do something. Love as a game, sometimes we loose and other times we win, a lottery of hearts, a game to which we have to become wise, a game we choose to play or not. One thing is for sure, nothing is for sure. Always watch for your back, never be too nice, too sweet or else they will eat you. I was too nice, I got eaten alive, swallowed and digested, I come out again, this time with more thorns to protect myself against life that can sometimes be so cruel. It’s my time to take my time, to do as I please, to serve no one but myself. The slow process of death has done it’s effects, the love life and death game became all blurred for a while in the foggy winter of my mind. But the sun is coming out of the clouds again, I need to do my thing, I choose life again, until one day, when we meet again for a cup of tea…life goes on ...keep on breathing and remember that I love you;)