little prairie and crawling sideways

went to Saskatoon last weekend for a wedding and two birthdays.

i truly hate having to watch the most beautiful men in my life succumb to cancer. for only the second time in thirteen years, pretty good odds when you think of it, two every thirteen, an odds of 0.15, though i also know personally four people with the disease right now. so slow and painful - so undignified to those who surely deserve better.

in this month's Walrus Magazine - incidentally, my subscription to which should have run out several months ago, not that i'm complaining - is a last essay by Bill Cameron, _Chasing The Crab_. a "journey into Cancerland" which he finished only several weeks before he died. he writes:
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I had written about death - some contrived device about a big jar or pot moving downward past the eyeline, cutting off the view, turning life to black. I don't think it's that. Maybe it is simply a dispersal of molecules at the end of the day. My identity, my marvellous life with its broadcasting triumphs, my writing, my family, my taste for music, my modest gourmet cooking, my treacheries and defeats: will all this vanish instantly? To be recycled as ions or mustard seeds? Wasn't it all worth a little more than that? Or am I to be greeted by some peal of cosmic laughter on the other side of the famous white light? "What a fool, to be afraid that that was all there was." And straight to hell for lack of imagination.
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do you think he's dying? i asked my father. a question i asked him a little over thirteen years ago when another sweet, lovely, beautiful man was fading in the crab's grip.

this time he said, well we're all dying, just at different speeds. an answer to infuriate me, albeit, really, the best answer he could have given. ions and mustard seeds.