Death is not a hunter unbeknownst to its prey

[trenchkamen]

Fuck this weather. This is ludicrous.

I realized something strange while talking to Granddad the other night. He was telling me how one of his friends had, long story short, gone delirious with fever and driven herself out to the middle of the forest in a small town in Wisconsin. A search party of 200+ people finally found her before nightfall. He said that she was incredibly lucky that she had been found. I said that she probably would have been found dead.

I felt odd immediately after saying this, but Granddad said, "Yes, she very well could have," without missing a beat. And I realized why I felt odd. Granddad is 86. For all that he still lives alone and practices law, he lives constantly surrounded by memento mori. My grandmother died from breast cancer when I was one year old. Most of his friends are dead. Death is a daily and very real possibility for him, for all that he is in good health now.

There's an interesting tendency not to speak of death around the elderly. I'm not prone to observing social graces, but even I felt slightly awkward discussing mortality with my grandfather. It's not remote to them--not a joke, not a distant specter, but immediate even in the way that those who have lost people in their young lives are not aware.

I finally defeated Izanami-no-Okami and re-started a new cycle in Persona 4, even though I really should move on to something else. Really I should. Started reading The Left Hand of Darkness from the THEM library.

I have a huge cold sore on my lower lip, and the roof of my mouth is covered in lesions. I've had herpes simplex labialis (like the lips on my face, not the ones between my legs--labia literally means "lips" in Latin) since I can remember--well before pre-school, in any case. So this has happened a lot, my whole life. It never gets any more pleasant. I wonder why my immune system took a hit.

Comments

[hiraku536.livejournal.com]

I think there was a point in time when I was in 4th grade when I wonder what it's like to die (ie. pain, no breathing. missing out in all sorts of things in the world, etc).

But, lately, well, not that I welcome it, but... I'm kinda okay. (No, not really)

And, you should move on to something else after Persona 4: Start praying for a rainy day. I'll try to meet you on the other side or something.

And, cold sore :( I've seen commercial about this ointment that seems to make people w/ cold sore feel better. Maybe you can check that out @ CVS or Walgreens.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

I'm skeptical of all of those ointments because, for the most part, they have yet to work well on me.

[joeshadows.livejournal.com]

A poet once said, "time is the fire in which we burn."

Of course, I plan on living forever through the glories of sufficiently progressing technology. You hear me, bio-scientist lady? ;P

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Mm-hm.

[fanbeatsman.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much of the awkwardness is shared by the elderly person you're speaking to, in situations like that - I mean, I've felt that kind of "oh shit probably shouldn't have brought that topic up" when talking to my gf's grandad, but that's rooted in my perspective as someone who is terrified of death and has *touch wood* very little experience of it (I've never had a close family member die). Does it upset a man who was a GP for most of his life, who's seen his wife die recently, who's been living with terminal cancer that the doctors all thought was going to kill him years ago, to hear about death? Or does it just upset me to think about it? Idk.

What do you think of The Left Hand of Darkness, so far? I read it as part of a general binge on Le Guin's stuff, and didn't really get why it's the one held up as the classic - although interesting, it felt dated and kind of like it was only the first step in her thinking on the subject, to me.

Sympathies re. the mouth pain :/ I suffer really badly from mouth ulcers, always have, and when they descend on me the pain just puts my whole face on edge. Hope everything clears up soon.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

I also get ulcers. We call them canker sores here; I'm certain they're the same thing.

I'm like one chapter in, and so far, it's rather dry.

[hildico.livejournal.com]

The Left Hand of Darkness is easily one of my favorite sci-fi books, if not one of my favorite books, ever. I certainly hope you enjoy it.

Hope your cold sore heals up soon. I feel your pain :(

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

:/

[zoe-sama.livejournal.com]

It's different from person to person, but if your grandfather has come to peace with death, then it shouldn't be too bad to talk with him about it. Of course, there are many that haven't, so it's really touch and go. Since I lost my fiance, I noticed that I developed quite a peaceful outlook on death, and had the subconscious feeling of immortality held by youth shattered. I ponder death everyday, in that sort of way that I know an accident could happen and I could go any minute. I don't sit and dwell on it--it's just sort of an underlying knowledge.

In short, awareness to death and the reaction to that awareness is different in everyone, so you never know how people are going to cope with it. I wonder if the uncertainty to the reaction is what causes the odd feeling more so than death itself. I am glad your grandfather is in good health though. When my grandfather was bedridden with cancer, he couldn't help but obsess about it constantly.

Hope the cold sore buggers off and your immune system perks up. Maybe it's freaking out from monsoon season. So foreign.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Thank you.