making choices because we can

pensive, on a juice cleanseIt's another day in our long, long death-watch.

The news this morning was the same as yesterday, that we're counting in hours now. My baby sister has hours left, at most a day.

But since Carla has defied all of the medical wisdom to date, has stubbornly and repeatedly illuminated at every turn the limits of our understanding of the miracle and mystery of the human body, who knows? We could be at this a long, long time.

But really, I doubt it. 

I doubt it if only because I want so much for her to be at peace, for her poor wracked body to stop fighting, for her eyes to finally be closed and her spirit and molecules returned to their source.  

That feels like a terrible thing to say about your sister, right, to wish for her death, but since I have to tell the truth, that's what I'm saying. I wish for her passage to speed up, for her 6-year-old daughter to be released from having to see her mother's body waste away in the next room, her unseeing eyes wide-open.  It's just so horrible in so many ways.

I applaud my sister's fight, but also wish, wish, wish for peace for her child, for the cruel nightmare to be at its end.

* * * * *

Yesterday was another hard, weird day.  My brother-in-law called, which is rare, since as I've written before, we generally communicate by text.  Every day I go through this difficult exercise of trying to figure out what to say in the text that I send him in the morning, angling for information.  Always pussy-footing around, walking on egg-shells in order to maintain the connection.   

On the call, I let him talk, forced myself to focus, bring my mind back to what he was saying, instead of plotting how my call to my parents to relay the information was going to go.  Instead of analyzing the religious frame he puts around all of his words. Instead of marveling at the tighrope-operation of maintaining center and calm while balancing two opposing and 100% true thoughts in my head simultaneously.

I got off the call with him and made my other calls, then walked back inside into the office and sat down at my desk, and nothing, not one thing, mattered.  I was sad, sure, but in a way I couldn't feel anything except tired, bone-tired.

But I can't complain, though, really, because being bone-tired is so much better than dying. Being bone-tired is much better than being dead.

* * * * *

This morning I started this three-day juice cleanse. As I'm considering the 6 pretty glass bottles of juice I get to drink every day, it's never far from my mind that Carla hasn't eaten for close to 2 months, except maybe a sugar-free popsicle or two 5 weeks ago. It's not lost on me that my sister's body is consuming itself in her fight to stay alive and I, selfish alive person, am choosing, choosing not to eat for a couple of days. 

I suppose all us humans have this (god-given, my brother-in-law would say) ability to have simultaneous contradictory thoughts, to varying degrees of refinement. It's something that I think I've gotten a lot better at, honed over these so-many years of my sister's dying.  I scorn my brother-in-law's beliefs and yet I deeply appreciate all that his beliefs have helped him do for my sister.  I disagree with many of his choices and yet I can't fault him for any of those choices.  It's a beautiful day, and my sister is dying. My sister is dying, and I am alive.

For me right now, the juice cleanse is a choice to live fully and deliberately, to feel, to step outside my habits and rote behaviors, to take care of this body I am borrowing so that it lasts me a good, long time.

Consuming only juice for three days is, for me, maybe weirdly, a celebration of choice, really, of having choices and making choices because I can. Of balancing two opposing thoughts -- death and life. One day, like Carla, I may run out of choices. But for now, today and every subsequent day, I'm going to keep choosing. 

Because I can.