Several days ago (it may have been a week or more), another image on Facebook caught my attention. The picture was a delicate white Christmas tree, lit with small white lights and adorned with what appeared to be full-sized black crows. My immediate reaction to the image, aside from finding it attractive, was the assumption that it symbolized the synthesis of innocence and wisdom. Whether that “understanding” of its symbolism has any legitimate basis is yet to be known. I found it odd, though, that I immediately attributed symbolism to the picture—usually, I come to think an object may symbolize an idea only after giving it considerable thought. In this case, though, it was instantaneous. Someone else, during a Thanksgiving Day gathering of friends, mentioned the image. If I had been more energetic at the time, I might have engaged with others who had seen the picture; I wonder whether others’ reactions were like mine?
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Mi novia and I occasionally decide, on the spur of the moment, decide to buy the meal for patrons at a restaurant table. Sometimes, it is possible to do it anonymously; sometimes not. We have no criteria for making the selection; we just do it on a whim. Yesterday, for the first time for either of us, someone bought our lunch. We had just finished my radiation therapy session at the cancer center. A soup-salad-sandwich place (Newk’s) across the street was convenient, so we stopped in. A woman who was leaving the restaurant held the door for me (a gesture I appreciated immensely, as I was having some difficulty maneuvering with my cane). Another woman and her daughter came in right behind us. While we we still looking at the menu on the wall, I noticed the two of them waiting behind us. I said, “Go ahead, we’re still deciding.” The objected, but I insisted. By the time we got to the counter, the two of them, who were finished with their order with another order-taker, stood waiting. The woman said to me, “We’d like to buy your lunch.” I think I said, “Oh, no…” but I could tell from her expression she really wanted to do it. So, I expressed gratitude for her kindness. Just then, mi novia (who apparently had not heard the conversation), started to put her credit car in the reader on the counter. The woman explained the situation. Mi novia expressed her appreciation. I thanked the woman again. Perhaps we over-did it; but we really did appreciate her kind gesture. I imagine the woman had watched the door-holder help me as I struggled with the cane and noticed my scalp and extremely fine, sparse hair (such as it is), an obvious sign of chemo treatment. I suspect she felt compassion for the shriveled geezer…or maybe she felt sorry for the plight of the poor woman accompanying me. Whatever prompted her to do it, I was moved by her action. We did not need the financial assistance, but our benefactor had no way of knowing that. She just wanted to express compassion. And in so doing, as mi novia and I discussed later, she taught (or reinforced) a lesson to her daughter.
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Today’s radiation treatment is late this afternoon. I had hoped yesterday to get a schedule for my future treatments, a timeline I could depend on, but that was not to be. My treatments are to be given daily on weekdays; but others’ may have only one or three each week or clusters of days with treatment, followed by none for a while. So, the radiologic technicians must wrestle with a variety of schedules, changes in schedules, etc., etc. They will try to set a schedule I can rely on, but I must understand that it is unlikely they can stick to it for 27 days. It is what it is.
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Fragment of Fiction, JSS
A fraction of a second after he plunged off the cliff—his shoes having barely left the rocky ledge—he regretted his irrevocable decision. The cold sea air roared past his ears, leaving his hoarse scream above him as he plummeted seaward. Through his terrified eyes, distance shrank into nothingness in the few second he was airborne. Tiny waves crashing into the rocks below him expanded in an instant into a massive explosion of unforgiving water and deadly, sharp stones. And, then, it was over. The terror, the paralyzing fear, the regret, and the reason he had decided to leap to his death; all of it suddenly disappeared. The past was gone. The future was gone. The joy. The sorrow. Dread. Hope. Memories. Dreams. All gone. His consciousness forever erased. But all those erasures were resurrected and amplified in others’ consciousness. They—along with guilt, shame, responsibility, remorse, blame, and eternal contrition—would become his legacy, memorialized in the remaining lifetimes of the people he had touched.
It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it, that the ones who choose to leave do not have to share in the eternal agony that their choices bring about? Yet all the anguish and woe that engulfed those who left may have dwarfed the residual torment experienced by their survivors. Death is a vault with no way out. The only way in is through a one-direction door, permanently sealed. We cannot measure the pain that precipitates the choice of death, nor the depth of the suffering left behind.
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We have begun watching a Spanish-language Netflix series entitled Iron Reign. You?
