My room and "living room" are so neat. I just love having my "apt." …it wouldn't be this way if it weren't for my Big C. I'd be making money somewhere and probably still live here, but as far as furniture goes. . . well, who knows? Maybe I'd have done this. I know I'd also have wanted to save and scrimp for a down payment on a house. Strange how a person's life can be so altered from that which one had desired. Health means so much, yet few are thankful for it. I remember how great it was to climb in the mountains. . . now that is all I have… memories of health long passed. I suppose I didn't truly have health since late grade school years. Cancer had been with me for a long time to have grown so large in my stomach. But of course, cancer isn't my foremost pain. . . that comes only from the death of Norm. I used to laugh far more often, for we were always joking around. It was such fun. I'm lucky to have had such a relationship at all, for few do in a lifetime.
Mar. 12, 1985… Needed to sort through my clothes. So many I can no longer wear.
Mar. 13, 1985… I wrote a letter to Jon. One of the patients who journeyed to Greece called. Max (another patient) died yesterday. I tried to calligraph a card for his mother, but couldn't seem to control the pen well today. Whenever another of the group who went to Greece dies, I wonder when I'll go,too. Almost all of the ones I knew are now dead. Some cure! It had, at the time, seemed rather promising. Some have said they didn't see why we went; if they had a loved one, they'd probably be on the first plane!
Mar. 27, 1985… It was just 65 degrees; I sat outside in shorts and a light top. A balmy spring breeze is filtering through the still-barren branches of the oak trees, and despite a slight chill in the air, the sun obliterates any shiver which might otherwise have broken upon my skin.
Mom persists in weeding, nurturing her plants, not heeding the complaints of her aching back, while Dad rakes and resets the ground- mole trap. . . "What could be more disturbing than a mole-infested lawn?" And I sit… and observe… and listen. Across the hill, a child chants a rhyme unperfected, to the hap-hazard beat of a jump rope. The adjacent hill delivers the sound of a tree-trimming crew ripping the remnants of a tree to shreds. The birds surround me with a joyful chorus, assured that soon spring shall arrive, while a fly attempts to sun itself on my knee and is foiled in its attempt. A new and unfamiliar bird joins in the chorus, while a rake scrapes the lawn in a rhythmic pattern. An incoming plane drones toward the distant airport and is gone seconds later, only a minor disruption to the day's overall serenity.
A can drops and hits the cement; the wind chimes attest to the steady flow of the soft breeze. A child hollers a rhyme. I wish she would shut up. Ah, she has! Or so the moment portends.
April 1, 1985… (April Fool's Day) I "got" Mom by telling her that I flubbed on one of the posters I was making for the Salad Luncheon publicity. I finally finished reading "The Rosary" a candy-sweet idealistic-love romance.
Mom has begun to clean my upstairs; it's so good of her to do it. I get so tired; I guess I have to give in, sometimes.
April 2, 1985… A good day! Wow! I wrote a lot!
April 3, 1985… Mom is doing all the typing for me; I'm so weak,
I really don't feel like doing much.