07.05.05 - 11:24 p.m.

I want to come up with something, but the words are tangled and a bit worthless. I'm stuck in the ordinary, and somehow the calculus of the ordinary takes on a new dimension under these circumstances. Each day seems like a tunnel; I take the steps to get through it, and I'm glad to have the steps - the series of responsibilities, something concrete on which to focus: who will care for the animals (at parents: the neighbor kid across the street; at my house: they're going to the kennel); where is the suit my father wants (currently in his car, which I will drive to Philly tomorrow); where are his shoes (I just remembered this - let me add it to the list); how do I sweettalk the airport into letting us out of long-term parking w/dad's car without paying the maximum long-term parking fee (done done and done); how do I shape tomorrow so it works as well as today (this one needs work).

I made lists of phone numbers and tasks and body parts. In my head, driving the last leg of the trip from my parents' home to mine, in the dark, I told myself the story, over and over again, in my head. I cried every time, of course, but the story, over and over and over again, makes it real and less foreign each time. Aunt Susie went to the hospital with serious abdominal pain from a build up of ascites apparently caused by her metastatic breast cancer. They gave her morphine in the ER, which lowered her blood pressure, which caused a massive right sided stroke. They couldn't treat her as they would a normal stroke patient because of the cancer, and Susie's friends and the hospital kept calling my parents' house repeatedly over the weekend. Susie can open her eyes and move her left arm, but there's no reason to believe that she does it in much response to anything. The neurologist says that she doesn't feel much pain, that she may feel like she's sleeping, occasionally waking.

Mom asked the hospital to stop everything but palliative care today. Susie was not on a respirator, but she was on medication to maintain her blood pressure, which they've now stopped. They moved her from intensive care to the hospice floor and it's a matter of time. Now instead of six weeks or six months, I'd like another two days. I want her to know that I'm there and that I love her. I want a chance to say goodbye.

What else do I say? How startling it is - how sudden. How we didn't know. How maybe - likely? - she knew the extent of her disease and did not tell us deliberately, so that we would not worry about her. So that we wouldn't make a fuss. When she was ordinary all those bulbs - the irises and the daffodils and the hyacinths for my garden to be delivered in the fall - did she know that she was closer to dying that any of the rest of us believed? How do you do that? How do you find that place in your head and make yourself okay with it?

I think you just do. The universe doesn't open up and tell you how to die anymore than it opens up and tells you how to live and you make it up as you go along. Susie made it up. I will make it up, maybe differently, maybe the same.

My greed is diminishing. I just want one more day.