life is a careless—sometimes exquisite—smear on the window

Happy Birthday, Annida Christofi Clark!!!

In DC Land, we’ve had an unnaturally warm winter thus far (nary a snowflake to be seen), but this morning was quite crisp. I went outside in my winter coat and scarf to fill the bird feeder and found…little pink flowers blooming below the feeder, tricked into thinking spring has arrived. It damn near broke my heart.

I’ve learned that my uncle/godfather’s brain cancer has taken an unexpected turn for the worse. A misdiagnosis had him thinking that the cancer was holding steady and he was doing just fine. Not long afterwards, another specialist realized, duh, there’s a thumbprint-sized shadow on his scan, indicating that the cancer has grown and spread to the opposite side of his brain. In the course of a few short weeks he went from “You’re doing great—see you in a year!” to “You’ve only got four months to live.” Chemo won’t do anything. They can’t operate because the tumor is too entrenched in his brain. Radiation will extend his life by 1-2 months, so he’s going to undergo radiation five days a week for the next five weeks. He got this news before Christmas, but waited until yesterday to tell my dad, so he wouldn’t spoil his holiday.

He’s a very good man, a very respected man; he deserves better than this. He’s a widower (cancer claimed my aunt/godmother in 1995), a father of two, a grandfather of three. He’s only 70—still so young. Less than six months ago he helped to nurse his aunt through losing battle with cancer, and now he’s in her shoes.

This is a tragedy on many levels, but what astounds me, aside from the gross negligence of his misdiagnosis, is the fact that, in this day and age, we still don’t have a cure for cancer. I’m not claiming I could do a more efficient job of finding a cure (science is not my strong suit)—I just have to wonder where this research is leading. I mean, yes, strides are clearly being made. For example, there is now an HPV vaccine, which, in a sense, doubles as a cervical cancer vaccine. And people are leading longer, better lives with HIV and cancer, both of which used to be automatic death sentences. But we still don’t have a cure. Every year brings about smaller and more powerful technology, both for good (medicine) and for evil (warfare, terrorism). Okay, great, you can now watch videos on your iPod, surf YouTube and look at Google Earth satellite shots of your neighborhood on your Razr/Blackberry/Treo/whatever, use your 10.5 megapixel camera to take startling crisp photos, and study every pore on every face on your big-screen HDTV-equipped plasma television. Cool, neat, but here’s the thing: although there’s medicine for male impotence, there’s no medicine to eradicate ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, AIDS. Where’s the fucking sense in that? Where are our priorities? Do we really need smarter bombs? Smaller cell phones? Cloned animals?

I guess I’m just shocked that we are capable of traveling in space but not capable of curing a disease that has been around forever. That we can map the humane genome and pull DNA from a flake of skin and create artificial intelligence but can’t figure out how to stop our cells from betraying us.

Anyway, this whole situation with my uncle is reminding me about how abrupt life can be. I want to beg my parents and grandfather to fill out one of those All About Me autobiography books. It’s just sad to think that loved ones could die and leave behind so many mysteries. I know all the big events of their lives—Papa’s war stories, for example—but I don’t know the little things. What were the names of their prom dates? What were their favorite subjects in high school? What’s the most rebellious thing they did? I just think it would be a shame for them to leave without me knowing them through and through.


song heard most recently before posting:
Dogs—Damien Rice