death feels close. and, weird coincidence

Fairly stressed & depressed and... went w/my mom to the consult with the pulmonologist today. He's going to do a bronchoscopy and biopsy the nodule in her lung while doing so. That will be Monday at 6:30am. I have a final exam at 10am so one of my older sisters will come stay at the hospital w/my mom when I have to leave around 9:15am. They say they will be able to tell us that day if it is cancer; I guess the results come back faster for cancer than, say, bacterial infections. Meanwhile, I keep telling myself that this weekend, I'll get to my father's 14 & 1/2 month old grave to put in & light the 8 day candle I bought, like, more than a month ago. Sigh.

I keep pushing back and pushing back the thought "what if it's cancer?" about my mom's lung nodule... but every once in a while, it escapes the back of my brain and steps in front of all my other thoughts and shouts "LOOK AT ME" so I have to and I don't want to but if I don't, it just looms like a huge weight, pressing down on my thoughts, my spirit, and squishing my posture. It just feels like the weight of impending death. Keeping vigil. I'm so tired of vigilance. I can barely be vigilant enough for myself. If I have to do it again with my mom, so soon after my father, I don't know if I can take it. And here I am, whining about how it is affecting me, when I know my mother is terribly worried and depressed and anxious... and still she goes to work, although that's good; it keeps her mind off things.

I should be finishing my posterboards for my presentation tomorrow at clinical (at the hospital... wtf!? why can't we do them at school instead of dragging it all to the hospital, where we don't even have lockers for our stuff, and we're lucky if we even get a fuckin' coat hook? grrrr. whatever.)
But I'm not. I finished the handouts for my classmates & teacher; did my clinical prep & pathophys docs; now it's just a matter of rubber-cementing stuff to the posterboard. Then getting up at like 5am. Oh, and acting like none of this affects me, acting like I'm fine.

She put the house in her name and mine. My mom's been threatening to do that for the last few years... but never did. 'Til now; she finally did it at the bank, for real, on Friday. That, more than anything else, tells me how worried she is, how much she's already gone to the Bad Cancer Place in her mind.

Ruminating is not a good thing, but I've been doing it myself. Mortality feels so close. My father is gone; my mother is at risk; and what about me? If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, what exactly would I have to show for my life? A bunch of fanfic? Not even original fic? For some reason that seems so... insignificant. And that's not counting all the failed relationships, major life mistakes, etc. in my past which make a lot of my life seem like... a real waste sometimes.

The weird thing I noticed in my mini life-review is that the Headstones broke up the same month that I got laid off from my job: September 2003. And apparently they toured and recorded together for 12 years... which is how long I was at that job (at two different departments). I thought that was a weird coincidence or parallel or something.

In an odd way, it gives me hope. Life clearly wasn't over for Hugh after the Headstones broke up -- he's moved on and up it seems. And I'll take inspiration anywhere I can get it; I'm too old not to. So, corny as it sounds, I thought, Hey, if Hugh could move onward and upward after the demise of the Headstones in Sep. '03, maybe I can move on and up from my lay-off in Sep. '03. (That won't fix the pointless relationships and bad personal mistakes I made, but at least the lay-off gave me the opportunity to re-invent myself in a new field.) I mean, that's why I've done all this -- impoverished myself, gone back to school, cut down my social life to once a month (if that) outings.

And things like this always tell you who your real friends are. One would think that M---, who I've known since freshman year of high school, would be the hands-down better friend to me, because we've had so much face time with each other in the last 20+ years. And R---, who I don't see all that much, and with whom I never spent the same amount of time (face time or otherwise), would seem to be not quite as good a friend as M---.

But last night, R--- called me specifically to tell me he & his grandma have been praying for my mom, and he called last night because he remembered that the consultation about the biopsy was going to be today. Then my other line rang, and it was M---. When I called him back later, he went on and on about his life, how the husband-hunting bitches (his words) in his realty office revolt and disgust him, and how much he enjoys turning them off with his sick sense of humor (yeah, he's 39 going on 8...)... and he didn't say a thing about the consult with my mother about the biopsy of her lung nodule. Not until I mentioned that R--- had called me to wish my mother and me well and to tell me that he & his gram had been praying for us. I don't even pray; I'm not sure God exists; but it's the thought that counts, and R--- and his gram really do believe.

And there was this long pause on the phone and then M--- awkwardly said, "Oh, uh, yeah. How is that going?"

Yes, he took about 1% of his time to actually think about me, his friend of -- shit, 25 fucking years! -- and consider how I was doing and how my mother was doing -- the woman who told him to register at UIC when his parents were like "What do you need college for?", my mother, the woman who told him, "You should go on that exchange program!", and so he did, and lived in Vienna for a year (after which he came back with a superiority complex he has not lost since then).

Well, after last night's phone conversations, I just sort of said to myself, Yeah. M---, who I thought was my best friend... not so much. R---, who I always considered a friend, but not as close a friend as M---... turns out to really be a friend. I hate to compare, but when the difference is so stark and obvious, it's hard not to. And M---'s attitude has been really wearing on me the last year or so. One can only take so much of that superficial, bullshit superiority complex before it gets old, real fast.

But back to how TV and music and art and film can inspire one... Such as that BTVS Season 6 episode As You Were... where Riley returns to Sunnydale with his new wife, and Buffy gets the UC Sunnydale re-application rejection letter. And Riley finds her in the arms of evil (in bed with Spike... who didn't turn out to be so evil after all). And she's overwhelmed by her patheticness and humiliation in comparison with Riley's new life and new wife.

And Riley says to her "Wheel never stops turning, Buffy. You're up, you're down -- but it never changes who you are."

So. Yeah. Guess the wheel turned. And I'm down right now. (Or moving downward... I guess I might not be at the lowest point yet; there's always that possibility...!)

But if it never stops turning... and I'm still me...

Yeah. Sooner or later, there'd have to be an up. Just gotta stick it out 'til that comes.