What You Don't Know

Sometimes it really is better to leave well enough alone. Sometimes one shouldn't submit to one's curiosity. Even when it's well meaning, even when you care about the person. What you don't know cannot hurt you. Isn't that ever so true? Of course sometimes events conspire to inform you about things you'd rather not know, and then you have no true control; you sit there, you listen, you emote, you regret, you have compassion.

The table linens, the bed linens, the towels have all been laundered. The physical remnants of her visit have been expunged so to speak. But the deep black hollow within our psyches yet remains. There is nothing, it seems, we can possibly do to alleviate the dire condition this old friend finds herself in. She is no longer to be thought of as being among the walking wounded; she now resembles the rambling dead.

How could we know? And if we did, there would have been no avoiding it. But now knowing it's hard to accept. We grieve for her, and we are helpless. She is helpless against her need. She simply cannot see, is now incapable of examining the facts, the evidence, reaching conclusions. She exists to exist. Occasionally there is a gleam of her inner self that once was, then she submits to the truth that now is.

Her body is failing her. She still has an appetite and she eats what is placed before her. It is an automatic response. Her body functions in its mechanical way. But it is doing its utmost to communicate with her, to inform her, to tell her that it is reaching the end of its ability to help her survive. Her mind, her memory, her intelligence have been too severely compromised. Mind/body, the person we now see is a bare reflection of that whom we knew.

Two-week comas preceded by stroke-like symptoms have a genesis. Doctors, neurologists have no knowledge of a life's stressors and the sensitive nature of a sensible, caring, proficient, aware and good natured human being. They treat symptoms, hoping to be able to identify a causative, render a diagnosis. In this instance there were several diagnoses, neither of which were fully explicable.

The daily ingestion of drugs are meant to forestall too-frequent further seizures. They have a habit of causing other problems. Sleep is elusive, back and neck pain constant. The face is haggard, drawn, yet bloated. Eyes are slit and they receive images, but it's obvious nothing quite registers.

The cellphone blackberry rings incessantly. The response is clipped and clear, the professional swings into automatic function. Problem-solving is swift and deliberate, then the body slumps back and with it the poor head.

We know what it is that is killing you inexorably, and now swiftly. You know it too. You speak about it in all its critical details, describe the pain it gives you, your inability to understand the nature of other human beings whose shortsightedness, greed and egotism compels them to behaviours unacceptable to any thinking person.

If you weren't so well compensated in salary and benefits, if you were not so reliant upon the health care insurance, the years of retirement investment in your position you would consider saving your life.

There is still the potential for choice. Soon there won't be.