not quite back to the land of the living yet

 

This is one of Christopher Hitchens' references.  I looked it up and had to share it with you.  It doesn't pull any punches.

Aubade   BY Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   

Till then I see what’s really always there:   

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   

Making all thought impossible but how   

And where and when I shall myself die.   

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse   

—The good not done, the love not given, time   

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   

That slows each impulse down to indecision.   

Most things may never happen: this one will,   

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without   

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave   

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,   

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

 

Philip Larkin, "Aubade" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin.  Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)

 

aubade  noun    a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning.

ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from French, from Spanish albada, from alba ‘dawn’.

in the beginning was the word

This is a lick and a promise.....anon, anon

Picked up a few more words in my reading:

squamous adjective: covered with or characterized by scales: a squamous black hide. . Anatomy relating to, consisting of, or denoting a layer of epithelium that consists of very thin flattened cells: squamous cell carcinoma.  • [ attrib. ] Anatomy denoting the flat portion of the temporal bone which forms part of the side of the skull.   ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin squamosus, from squama ‘scale’.

imbricate   chiefly Zoology & Botany  verb  with obj. ] (usu. as adj.imbricated)  arrange (scales, sepals, plates, etc.) so that they overlap like roof tiles: these moulds have spherical bodies composed of imbricated triangular plates.  • [ no obj. ] (usu. as adj.imbricating) overlap: a coating of imbricating scales.   adjective:  (of scales, sepals, plates, etc.) having adjacent edges overlapping. Compare with valvate.   DERIVATIVES   imbrication  noun     ORIGIN early 17th cent. (in the sense ‘shaped like a pantile’): from Latin imbricat-,‘covered with roof tiles’, from the verb imbricare, from imbrex, imbric- ‘roof tile’ (from imber ‘shower of rain’).

nebulizer  (also nebuliser)  noun:  a device for producing a fine spray of liquid, used for example for inhaling a medicinal drug. he needs to use a nebulizer to get drugs and oxygen to his lungs.   DERIVATIVES   nebulize verb   ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Latin nebula ‘mist’ + -izer (see -ize) .

oncology noun [ mass noun ] Medicine  the study and treatment of tumours.  DERIVATIVES  oncological adjective oncologist noun

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH

ontology noun [ mass noun  the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.  DERIVATIVES  ontological  adjective ontologically  adverb,  ontologist noun    ORIGIN early 18th cent.: from modern Latin ontologia, from Greek ōn, ont- ‘being’ + -logy.

necrosis  noun [ mass noun ] Medicine  the death of most or all of the cells in an organ or tissue due to disease, injury, or failure of the blood supply.  DERIVATIVES  necrotic |-ˈkrɒtɪk| adjective  ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: modern Latin, from Greek nekrōsis (see necro-,-osis) .

neuropathy noun [ mass noun ] Medicine  disease or dysfunction of one or more peripheral nerves, typically causing numbness or weakness.   DERIVATIVES    neuropathic adjective

You will not be surprised to find out what I have been reading lately - actually, re-reading:  MORTALiTY  by Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), author, columnist, social critic and a famous atheist - who wrote this last book as he recorded his reactions, both physical and mental/emotional to his terminal illness (esophegeal cancer).  I read it for the fourth time and I think I may have looked up some of the medical terms before but they don't seem to stick.  They take some learning; so does death.

A writer friend of mine just opted for an assisted death. She was suffering from a sudden and surprising diagnosis of a lethal, swift cancer with a brief, painful prognosis.

Hitchens cites several works that I still want to follow up.  He quotes an entire poem by WWI poet Wilfred Owen  (1893-1918), "Dulce et Decorum Est", describing reactions to a gas attack - "obscene as cancer".  Hitch (as he is called) defines death as a "firm deportation...across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady".  

I'll be back in the land of the living tomorrow.