My mind has been going to different places recently, on account of two bits of information that I am trying to process.
The first bit is that my little sister has been working as a nurse for the past 30 years, and during that time she has never had a vacation longer than two weeks (and rarely even that long).
The second bit is that my best friend from college has breast cancer, has now had a mastectomy, and the cancer is in her lymph nodes.
They aren't the same kinds of information, but I learned them within a week of each other, so they're wrapped up in my mind. Actually, I've known about the cancer since November, but back then it was that stage zero type and she was just going to have a lumpectomy. The results of the lumpectomy turned it into something a lot worse.
The news about my sister shouldn't have been news -- if she'd had some long vacation during the last 30 years I would have known about it, so I knew she hadn't -- and yet I didn't know. I hadn't really thought about it. When I think about what I've been doing for the last 30 years it seems like one long vacation! I've had lots of summers off, I took a trip around the world (30 years ago), I've had years and years of only part-time intermittent sort of work -- like I have now. During the 10 years that I worked for the government, I was OK with getting up and going to work every day -- it had a nice rhythm to it and I didn't feel deprived of free time. Plus, I could save up my vacation time and take more than 2 weeks off now and then. Plus, it was only 10 years, and the other 20 years I've spent lollygagging around. OK, not really, but it feels like it. I've had a lot of time to enjoy myself and my hobbies and my children. OK, some of that wasn't actually enjoyment, more like survival. But still.
Thirty years of work, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out. That's a life! "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives" -- I think that's the quote.
Karen, my old roommate has had that sort of life too, I believe. There may have been some longer vacations in there, and for a little while she was unemployed, but mostly she's just worked for the past 30 years -- as a lawyer, in her case. I don't think she is unhappy about that, though she would have liked to take time off when her kids were small. But it's just been her life. And now here comes cancer. She mentioned in her letter that she had to take two weeks off for the mastectomy, but she had gone in to do some paperwork on the most recent weekend. That's life. Work life.
I shouldn't say this is it, for her, because of course breast cancer is very treatable. But as she says, both her parents died of cancer -- and her father was only 61 when he died. Karen is 56, 57 in a few months. I am counting on her going into remission and living many more years, because if she doesn't I will lose my dearest friend and there will be no one left on earth who understands me the way she does. So there. And also I can't bear to think of her young-adult kids losing her. But whether she does or doesn't do well with treatment, it's not up to me. Her doctors will do their best and then we will see. They say (I read up on this) that your attitude really has no effect on cancer survival rate, so I will not worry about trying to be positive, except in letters to her, and even then I will not be fake. I will just be me. Which is to say, not very positive. But I will try not to say things that would make her depressed. Surely I can manage that. Also I sent her some See's candy -- a pretty tin of chocolate and a bag of jelly beans. The things we do.
The other day I had a flash of feeling about death, a different perspective on it than I usually have. I'm not sure if I can put it into words. I thought something like this: when you die, your turn is over, and that's the end of all your goals and plans and to-do lists, just boom, done. Not a tragedy, but it is the end. Next in line, please.
I want a longer turn and I want Karen to have a longer turn too. But I understand, maybe, that one's turn is finite. That was your life; OK, next. Thirty years of no vacation longer than two weeks; thirty years of lollygagging around. Either way, that's your life. Next.
Anyway, it's been something to think about.
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