One Moment at a Time

I continue on my theme of finishing up 'my year' by looking backwards and forwards - I alternate between the two. I spent this afternoon with my pal Aidan who is nearly nine. We've been plotting and scheming because it's his mother's 50th birthday on Sunday. Some birthday! Her husband is dying of cancer and she doesn't feel like celebrating in the least.

We still wanted to mark it in some way though so we put our heads together and designed a simple treasure hunt. On Sunday mornings Fleur usually takes Aidan to his Tai Kwon Do class down near the local library. Aidan and I have planned that after Aidan's class, we'll start by sending her to a local shop where they make Dutch chocolate on the premises. We've got her a gift certificate so she can choose her own. From there we've sent her to her favourite local cafe run by a Portuguese guy named Joe, where we've paid for a latte for her to have with her chocolates. Next we've sent her to a flower shop partway home. Aidan paid for a single yellow calla lily. Then we'll send her home. We haven't quite decided what will happen when she gets back here. I'm still thinking about that!

Yesterday afternoon we had to write the clues and make little maps to go with them. He's never made maps before so it was a learning process. He's quite pleased with himself actually. We put the clues in envelopes and he wrote on the outside and decorated them. Then he had to budget the money to pay for it all. He's never done that before either. This really has been an education as well as a labour of love. What's so nice about it is how life-affirming it is. Aidan is vital and strong and basically happy, even in the face of his father's impending death.

Geoff's death has come slowly. It reminds me of the machines that the city engineers use to grind down the asphalt before they put a new surface on the road. Geoff has been ground down, back to the bedrock, by his process of dying. Aside from what this has meant for him, it's been a life-changing experience for me. In an odd way, it's a privilege. I don't mean that it's been fun; not at all. I mean that the three of them have allowed me to participate in their experience. I suppose that because they have, it's also my experience.

People in my life have died before now but it has always been at a distance. This is the first time that I've experienced dying on an intimate level. I'm around almost every day. I have been hearing the minutiae of their lives. I see that his dying process that he is living through is very personal. How he discovered the cancer, what it was doing to his body, how he chose to deal with the diagnosis, and the treatment he opted for, was all linked to who he is, how he sees life and how he deals with the unknown. Although I've read many books about the stages of dealing with illness and death, I'm seeing the highly individual aspects.

I have come to know more about Geoff in the last 18 months than have in all the ten years I've been living here. I'm watching him on a journey. Fleur is on her own journey. You could say that she's being tempered, like a strong sword. She is changed permanently. Aidan is changed as he grows up. Because he is so young, he lives largely in the present moment. Relative to the length of his life, a year and a half, which is what it has been so far, seems to go on forever. If I were to draw a line to represent each of their lives, Geoff's illness is at the end of his line, two-thirds of the way on Fleur's, and at the beginning of Aidan's.

As I complete my year, Geoff completes his life. We will incorporate this experience into the fabric of our lives and who knows what Geoff will have the chance to do. He will go around the corner the way they describe UFO's doing when they disappear in the night sky. They make a ninety degree turn and blip, they disappear.

I don't have any conclusions about this - just observations, as I continue to process it. He started taking morphine this week. I don't know if it's because of that, or just because of what the cancer is doing to his brain, but he seems suddenly to have lost his self-possession. Another layer of him seems to have lifted to the 'other' place. We're close to the end but we're still not at the end. It's clear to me that his death isn't a destination, even in the moment of his going. Life unfolds, one moment at a time. It's the moments that count.