Speaking of shitful accumulations

My father, cancer, he has it.

I'm not very worried about the cancer itself (except OF COURSE I'm fucking worried) because it was caught very early, and it's a very common, treatable, slow-growing one in men his age. I am worried about where he is - in Canada, and in a rural part of Canada. On both counts, medical care is not all it could or should be. Public universal health care on the Australian, British, or Canadian model looks good on paper - looks best on paper - but my experience is definitely that when it comes to anything even a little complicated or in terms to access to specialists, outcomes and doctor quality are better in European countries with mandatory insurance schemes. Maybe less political footballing. I don't know why.

So I wish he was here, or in France - I would feel a lot more confident in whatever treatment plan gets came up with for him. Anyways. He's not. So, no use fretting about it. By the end of the month we'll have a clearer idea of how serious it is, and how it will be treated.

But the big takeaway, so far, as we wait, is this sort of slap across the face that there's not so much time left. He's probably fine - this carcinoma is probably just a symptom of his being in his late 70s - just a symptom of him being of an age where, if we're lucky, we have ten really good years and then - fuck, just fuck, fuck, fuck.

And yes, I know, I'm lucky to still have him, and my mother, still in such good health, as so many people lose their parents so much earlier. But that doesn't make me feel better, frankly. Just worse for those other people who lost their parents so early. I won't be ready when he goes - when they go. I will not be ready at all. The idea of being ready is absurd. How could people who lose their parents young bear it? Surely something in them must just die out of sheer self-protection? I don't know.

The new tyrannosaurus

Well . . . how are you doing this week? I'm in the middle of some questions of myself, and creativity, and mortality, and things . . . but they are not bad. I know it doesn't sound frightfully cheerful. But I've always been a pretty gloomy person and I see no reason to panic or worry over or try to change being a little gloomy now that I've actually got some things to be gloomy about from time to time.

Just to add to the cacophony of mourning voices out there - David Bowie - he's one of my favourite pop musicians, and about 15 of his songs occupy my top 30, if I have one. But his talent wasn't boundless, and he knew it. And he decided to be David Bowie anyways. I can say and acknowledge until the cows stumble home trying to mask their rummy breath that the work is more important than the result, but somehow it took David Bowie dying a couple of days after his millionth album came out, with this massive body of occasionally brilliant work behind him, for me to understand it. That is a profound gift to give people. Almost as good a gift as the music itself. Maybe better. It's quite a thing to get a Buddhist levelling-up handed to you like that from a man you've never met.

And I feel like a slightly better mother these days because I bought Godzilla a new tyrannosaurus that he can cuddle in bed, and he fell asleep with it as soon as he opened the package.