Will to Live
Ugh. I just found a suspicious-looking mole (or rather, Sam spotted it), and now, along with cleaning the bathroom and assigning chapters on my fall syllabus this afternoon, I have to confront my own mortality.
I come from a family in which pessimism in the face of medical diagnosis is de rigueur; my mother had cancer when she was 20, and that experience led her and my dad to expect the worst at every turn. While they are not hypochondriacs, they also didn't exactly pass along a devil-may-care attitude toward symptoms, and in the days before Medline, they owned and consulted a Merck Manual, which was always good for a chilling explanation or two.
Personally, I never felt a very strong will to live before; I felt a general obligation to live a good life, a life that is . . . well, holy, if I can use that word in a non-smarmy way. I mean, I think that our lives are given to us to reflect and express gratitude for the love of God. So that shapes the purpose of our lives. But as for wanting more time, I didn't really--I felt content whether my life was short or long, with the single exception that I felt a responsibility to outlive my parents because that is what children are supposed to do for their parents.
But now, oh, how things have changed. I feel like I absolutely must live because of Allison Clare. On the remote chance that anything happened to me, Sam would be okay--sad, but okay. But who would take my Munchkin shopping and bake her birthday cakes? Or wrap her Christmas presents, and make cupcakes for her class? I now understand why all these nineteenth-century women wrote novels featuring motherless children making their way in life; it was, perhaps, an attempt to face their own mortality by imagining their children's survival without them.
To be honest, I'm not too worried about my mole as it's still very small (if unfortunately asymmetrical). But I am a tiny bit chagrined to discover how attached I have now become to my own life. This may be the beginning of a certain kind of cowardice, a loss of a certain kind of courage. Sigh.
I come from a family in which pessimism in the face of medical diagnosis is de rigueur; my mother had cancer when she was 20, and that experience led her and my dad to expect the worst at every turn. While they are not hypochondriacs, they also didn't exactly pass along a devil-may-care attitude toward symptoms, and in the days before Medline, they owned and consulted a Merck Manual, which was always good for a chilling explanation or two.
Personally, I never felt a very strong will to live before; I felt a general obligation to live a good life, a life that is . . . well, holy, if I can use that word in a non-smarmy way. I mean, I think that our lives are given to us to reflect and express gratitude for the love of God. So that shapes the purpose of our lives. But as for wanting more time, I didn't really--I felt content whether my life was short or long, with the single exception that I felt a responsibility to outlive my parents because that is what children are supposed to do for their parents.
But now, oh, how things have changed. I feel like I absolutely must live because of Allison Clare. On the remote chance that anything happened to me, Sam would be okay--sad, but okay. But who would take my Munchkin shopping and bake her birthday cakes? Or wrap her Christmas presents, and make cupcakes for her class? I now understand why all these nineteenth-century women wrote novels featuring motherless children making their way in life; it was, perhaps, an attempt to face their own mortality by imagining their children's survival without them.
To be honest, I'm not too worried about my mole as it's still very small (if unfortunately asymmetrical). But I am a tiny bit chagrined to discover how attached I have now become to my own life. This may be the beginning of a certain kind of cowardice, a loss of a certain kind of courage. Sigh.
posted by Tara | 2:03 PM
3 Comments:
I'm not at all trying to make light of your post, and I hope everything turns out to be minor and not worrying. However, when I first read this post, I thought you were talking about the animal mole, not a mark on your body. I thought you were talking about some superstitious sign--like seeing a "suspicious looking mole" was a bad omen. It wasn't until you started talking about Medline and Merck that I realized you were talking about medicine!
As you well know, my will to live was even less strong. Really, it was more fair to call it a vague death wish. So it was one of those things that I had to work out (the obligation to come back from the white light - if such a phenomenon actually exists) before I got pregnant. Since I lost my mother at 28 and felt the loss so keenly, I feel even more frantic about sticking around until at least, say, my child reaches age 35.
i hope everything checks out ok, tara, and i'm sorry that you're having to think about your mortality. but i did find your comments about all the 19th-c orphans amusing. i'll be sending good thoughts your way!
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