Fragments

Glibly and brisk: “It’s when I get to forget about all of this, it’s when I get to feel alive! I get recharged. I’m not the center of attention for awhile…I appreciate how everyone is concerned about me, really I am. But just being among people – a team – and getting to feel equal with them for this time. That’s when I get to feel normal.” But there is nothing normal about it; she is telling this to the local small town paper that is asking all these questions because she cannot avoid being special. And this is all she wants to convey: she wants the normalcy, she wants to be polite too and give them the time they want of her. But it is funny that she is required to do this when her time is known and short. She sums up all the things that are not required of her because of her cancer: she cannot recall the last time she had to write a check, wash a dish or stand in a pharmacy line. There is always someone handy who wants to do these things – family, friends, people she has met since this happened who possess an unhealthy interest in tragedy. So, she has to answer the questions or occasionally represent to the rest of the world every thing that is not normal to them - and she doesn’t have to do all the things that she would love to be doing because this is the time in her life where she should be embracing independence but cannot. She tries to apply a percentage to both, guesses it is a wash – perhaps we are all taxed the same with things we don’t want to do. If only what was left from that were a joy.

No, the rest is maintaining an outlook. A positive one. Not for herself, but for the world who has graced her with its microscope. So they can commend her attitude, so they can say that they wouldn’t handle things nearly as well if they were in her position? She gets a lot of that, and thinks really – you don’t have much of a choice. Kirk and James and she would trade off pithy sayings that she could share with the press, their tender for the world’s superabundance of pity ready to be bartered. When you’ve been short-shifted in life, smart-assed and quick-witted boys are the best relief; they are the cigarette you have to sneak away from the others to have. This is what is keeping her going - not the petitions to ‘never give up’ or the women’s Kayaking Team she gets to take part in between treatments, or the well-wishers and supporters who shower her with good – approaching condescending, in her mind – intentions. When Kirk and James come to visit, she forgets about all the real problems and they all engage in a metaphysical rebellion. Which is what she really needs. It’s what she feels she has coming to her.