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Feb. 25th, 2007 12:25 amShe wore a pink, fuzzy, close-fitting cap to hide her mostly-bald head. It matched her Victoria's Secret sweatshirt, an old one, and her personality. She was neither immediately gracious or forebearing; in fact, she was in quite a bad mood when I arrived to interview her this afternoon, having misplaced her anxiety medication. She got on to her husband, her two sisters, and I stayed well away to avoid any danger of same.
After a twenty-minute search, she unearthed her medication in the place she'd left it yesterday - just as everyone had predicted. Finally, placated and relieved, she sighed as she moved around her dining room looking for things to show me, apologizing intermittently to her family for the outburst. Everyone murmured "pshaws" and generally forgave her.
What're you gonna do with a woman who has a month or two left to live? Get angry and hold a grudge?
She is a frightening future mirror of myself, aside from our politics and her choice to have a child. Twelve years older, she's a Rat like myself, born in the same month in which my grandfather died almost thirty years ago, also of melanoma cancer. She too is a journalist; at one time she edited the same paper I came along almost 12 years later to edit, long after her departure (and that of the paper's reputation). We've both written extensively about agriculture and interviewed some pretty interesting celebrities (though *I* can't claim Springsteen or Michael Jackson - then again, I have Stephanapolous and Sorkin). Her attitude is unabashedly arrogant about her own work, and seeing how much she's produced and for what publications, hers is not unwarranted.
It took an hour and a half for me to get around to asking about her impending death. I didn't feel sorry for her - curiously, it seems like she's lived a pretty full life, even at 47. There are people who die at 90 who don't do half of what she's done. She didn't feel sorry for herself, and we didn't dwell overlong on the matter. It's what she is; there's a real possibility she'll be dead by the time I publish whatever I'm going to write about her. And if not, I have to find a way to include it without letting that fact overshadow the rest of the story.
It's odd getting a hug from a young person you know probably won't be alive in a few weeks. It's not like an elderly grandparent, whom you accept can go at any time. I think I expect a healthy old person to die before a terminally-ill middle-aged woman - it's irrational, but it just IS.
After a twenty-minute search, she unearthed her medication in the place she'd left it yesterday - just as everyone had predicted. Finally, placated and relieved, she sighed as she moved around her dining room looking for things to show me, apologizing intermittently to her family for the outburst. Everyone murmured "pshaws" and generally forgave her.
What're you gonna do with a woman who has a month or two left to live? Get angry and hold a grudge?
She is a frightening future mirror of myself, aside from our politics and her choice to have a child. Twelve years older, she's a Rat like myself, born in the same month in which my grandfather died almost thirty years ago, also of melanoma cancer. She too is a journalist; at one time she edited the same paper I came along almost 12 years later to edit, long after her departure (and that of the paper's reputation). We've both written extensively about agriculture and interviewed some pretty interesting celebrities (though *I* can't claim Springsteen or Michael Jackson - then again, I have Stephanapolous and Sorkin). Her attitude is unabashedly arrogant about her own work, and seeing how much she's produced and for what publications, hers is not unwarranted.
It took an hour and a half for me to get around to asking about her impending death. I didn't feel sorry for her - curiously, it seems like she's lived a pretty full life, even at 47. There are people who die at 90 who don't do half of what she's done. She didn't feel sorry for herself, and we didn't dwell overlong on the matter. It's what she is; there's a real possibility she'll be dead by the time I publish whatever I'm going to write about her. And if not, I have to find a way to include it without letting that fact overshadow the rest of the story.
It's odd getting a hug from a young person you know probably won't be alive in a few weeks. It's not like an elderly grandparent, whom you accept can go at any time. I think I expect a healthy old person to die before a terminally-ill middle-aged woman - it's irrational, but it just IS.
