what is dead put its arm round you also

The themes for today are death and god.

First thing this morning, I overheard a coworker asking another to sign a card for someone we used to work with whose mother died. For those of you who don't know me, the words "mother died," have special significance, because, yeah, you guessed it, my mother died.

Look, I realize that everyone who is lucky enough not to die young is burdened with the loss of the woman who brought them into this world, and I doubt it is ever a pleasant experience, even if your mother was a junkie hooker who beat you with extension cords and died peacefully in her sleep after winning the lottery and fucking Clive Owen. But some ways that mothers die are worse than others ("and some girls mothers are bigger than other girls mothers"). Mine blew her brains out. So in most death-of-a-relative face-offs, I win. But my coworker's Mom died of cancer. CANCER. Cancer always wins.

Goodbye Sweet Ms. H

And speaking of cancer. I received an e-mail from a friend today informing the world that her sweet little doggie died on Sunday. She had cancer, too. And it was fast. She first told us about her pup's diagnosis only a few months ago at most. And I saw her a few weeks ago and the worst Ms. H had was a little cough. Cancer!

There's a reason that there is a saying that something grows "like a cancer." Because cancer grows fast, and unlike the pride you have when you measure your kid (unless she suffers from giantism) against the door frame and mark the progress she is making with a pencil, the date, and her name, or the joy you feel when you're 85 and you still know of one sure fire way to make wrinkles disappear, no one except the most sociopathic genetic researcher feels pride or joy when they see cancer grow. Cancer is, for lack of a better word, evil.

When I was 15, I looked around at my friends and did this tally. Of the girls I counted as my closest friends, all but one had lost her mother to breast cancer. My mother was still alive then, and I thought, "why am I so lucky?" My morose little brain thought something like this, "I have never experienced pain or loss, and so I will probably die young." That was my idea of balance. I felt that I deserved some pain and loss because I recognized that it was endemic to being human.

I feel like stopping now and eating the meal my husband is cooking, and looking at him and into him and reaching out for him, holding his arm/his skin/his body and holding it tighter (burning the experience of having him in my life onto me like a brand that can never be washed away by death, mine or his, or anyones) and if I could, consuming him, the moment, this house we're in, our pets, our friends, and all of the life we get to have because I want the pleasant feelings that come with a shot in the arm or a bag of tater tots and a chocolate shake. And it makes me understand communion and what Jesus might have been trying to satisfy for his friends as he ate with them for a final time and told them to eat and drink him. Which brings me to god, the second theme of this post.

By the way, the title of this post is a quote, from a poem written by Paul Celan. It's called Zahle die Mandeln, and I think you should read it. Come on, click here, I've made it easy for you and it's even in English.