A Cool Dark Place

I was sick all last night. Vomiting (though there isn't much there), fever, headaches. The light hurt my eyes and sound drove me insane. I lay there in my bed, waiting for the morphine to kick in before I vomited the tablets up. The doctor said that I might have to use my central line catheter to begin pushing the morphine, God, please don't have him suggest the morphine cocktail, the Deadman's cocktail. I would rather have the pain than have to drink it. Everyone I have ever known has had to drink it just before they died.

But dawn came and I felt better. I always feel good in the morning (comparatively) and I laid there in my bed, sweaty and smelly because the chemo runs out of my pores and turns my sweat sour. I lie there in the dark and begin to day dream and let my spirit relax. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. What dreams may come.

Did you ever see that movie? It's about a man whose wife dies in a car accident and he commits suicide and he travels to the underworld and sees certain truths about life and death. I hate that movie, not because it was a bad movie or because it isn't well made, but because it tells a simple and unforgivable lie. That we can redeem the dead and find happiness there. To live among the dead and recreate the life that they never had in their living days. You can't do it.

I lived for a long time with the shades of my past, the relentless and painful act of love and hate and mourning. The fact that though I love Jimmy, I hate him too because he died and no longer walks the earthly plane, the fact that I love Amber and hate her too, because she made my failure complete. All the people I loved are dead and I couldn't save them and now they haunt me, filling up my fevered brain with their phantasms.

Go away, all I want is a cool dark place.