i forgot to mention that Patrick Swayze is on Barbara Walters tonight. he is also a pancreatic cancer survivor. his tumor was inoperable, mets in the liver. he calls it "living with the beast." but he wanted to continue the TV show. A&E The Beast. his wife is talking about how incredibly tough he is. he "raged his way through the pain" because he couldn't take massive pain meds and still be working on the show. "we're all dying. it's just a question of when." see below. and his wife of 33 years, Lisa is saying, it's just one foot in front of the other. you don't know how you can do it, but you do. barbara is asking him a ridiculous question: do you have any idea of how much more time you have? side effects of new chemo is less, but susceptible to cold. been there. it comes down to quality of life, going to moment to moment. "when do you decide that the fight isn't worth the decline in quality of life?" they have created a forest, 200 year plan in 15 years. he wants to leave a legacy in that way. he wants to last until they find a cure. now dr. fisher from Stanford is on. wow. Barbara and Patrick's first interview was 20 years ago. from Ghost, he remembers that the last line is "the only thing you take with you, is the love inside, you take it with you." oops tissue alert backsies. they made an appointment for a next interview in a couple of years. it's always good to have celebrities bring attention to a disease.
remembered that walking with Ketzl works best when i simply focus on the walk, without other agenda. so tonight i didn't take my cell phone, just walked. the sky was not really clear tonight, but i can still find orion's belt.
tonight i got bluetooth headsets for jeremy and me. moving ahead on the g-phone. it's not quite so scary.
today when i got home there were two packages on the front porch. the cat food was expected. but the other one, from Amazon, was a surprise. i didn't order it. there was no gift notification inside. the box contained a CD: music in the key of hanukkah, by Erran Baron Cohen, brother of Sasha Baron Cohen of Borat etc. i had heard him interviewed on NPR a few weeks ago. i know i spoke about it briefly with someone. not sure who. also in the box: a DVD: triplets of belleville. i love that movie. tim sent me a copy years ago cuz he liked it a lot. i don't know where this came from. any clues out there in blogland?
here is the "below" referenced above.
i've been thinking recently about how we all die. as patrick swayze said, we all die, we just don't know when. it's a weird thing to try to grapple with. i know we are all supposed to "live each day as if it were your last." but do any of us do that? it is so much easier just to push along each day, doing the things that are urgent at the moment. the dishes, the laundry, the bills, getting gas in the car, helping a friend...flying to visit family, painting a picture, organizing photographs....the list goes on and on. i don't have anything really profound to say at this time, just that i am thinking about it.
remembering. tissue alert ahead of time now. it continues. the year passing by. the first year. the year of firsts. holidays, anniversaries, birthdays pass. coming on sunday is the 11th, 1/11/01 was the day that rabbi blessed the two of us in front of the open ark at the synagogue. pushed for by linda (not surprisingly). we never had an "official" wedding. i said that we didn't need one, that i felt as committed and joined to her, just with our commitment to each other. now of course i see that it was something more than i could have done (and here i said i would try to stop beating up on myself). so this sunday i will remember. i have the pictures, thanks to "our assembled loved one."
movies to see: Doubt, Gran Torino, Frost/Nixon.
