Chocolate Bunnies

Life is too short for holding grudges, for unkindness, for ill-will, for being mean. Life is just too short for - well, life's too short, and then you die.

Jim's sister, two years older than I am, has been diagnosed with a second form of blood cancer, in addition to the leukemia whose recurrence was diagnosed in November. It's not just "leukemia" - there are different types, and Jim's mom mentioned the name, but I don't remember what it was. She was cured a couple of years ago, after receiving a bone marrow transplant from Jim's stem cells. But cancer, like the cat, came back. She's far too weakened from double pneumonia (a little "oops" from her chemotherapy) for them to treat the new problem. It's not likely she has much time.

So Jim's family gathered in Houston for Easter, and I went with Jim and my daughters to see Debby. She was the one who introduced us in the first place. I used to work with her, at Sematech, in the 1990's. Cute girl, outgoing, exubuerant, lots of pretty, curly, dark hair, but she was in a lousy situation: waiting for a lease to expire, she was still living with a guy who had broken up with her, so the juxtaposition of our situation on hers is a little ironic, maybe. Short as it may be, life abounds with odd little coincidences. Jim's family has not been told we have been (to all intents and purposes) separated for years now, though obviously they've noticed I never show up for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or other family gatherings. They were surprised to see me for Easter.

Unmercifully, her brain remains clear and alert, though her physical body has become a liability. She can't speak, because she had a tracheostomy to get her through the pneumonia. Her skin is dry, flaking, blistering. She can barely use her hands: they are weak, and shake uncontrollably. She uses a suction tube frequently to remove bile from her mouth. She's in diapers. There are tubes into her nose, her throat, and her arms. But when Jim bumbles into the room, knocking over the box of surgical masks by the door and blowing into his gloves in a ridiculously futile effort to get them comfortably onto his hands, she laughs.

Her 9-year-old daughter hasn't been told that her mom won't be getting better and coming home this time. Debby asked her next younger sister to break the news. Of course, the little girl knows - people know things. This is one reason it's always better to be honest. She refuses to go to the hospital to visit, and it's not hard to understand.

Visiting is hard. It's hard to act normal, to talk cheerfully in a surgical mask and latex gloves, to someone who looks like a caricature of the someone you once went out clubbing with. But it's stupid to talk about little else besides the amusing fart noises you can make with the gloves. So I talk about the kids playing in mud puddles after the freaky Easter morning rainstorm, or about how once I was forced to sit through Oprah and Oprah brought a puppy on her show and proved herself to be, beyond question, the single most annoying human being on the face of the earth. Occasionally Debby tries to join in the conversation and I can't understand her. Cracking a joke? Asking for her blanket? Needing the nurse? Debby is frustrated.

But goodbye is the awful part. I do understand when Debby mouths, "You can go, you don't have to stay." It's late and we have to drive back to Austin. How horrible to leave her there to the nurses and to the sad little thing her life has become. No one deserves this, no one. Debby was a demanding patient from the very first, before she really got sick, tending to overstate her pain and even - to use her own phrase - "playing the leukemia card" to get her way, and the nurses know this. So now, they take their time answering the frequent summons from her call button, and are a bit brusque when they deal with her. I feel like shaking them.

We say goodbye and she cries, and Katie and I cry though we've been trying really hard to project good cheer. "I love you so much, I love you so much," she is whispering. We tell her we love her, and blow kisses - you can't touch her - and leave, stripping off our gloves and masks, to reenter the normal world outside the hospital doors where the bright afternoon sun is setting, where Debby can't go. Driving back to Austin, I glanced at the speedometer several times to find I was pegging ninety. I get to leave.

Life's too short. But knowing that isn't enough.

BFFs

My totally awesome friend Vicki called me today. I haven't seen her since before moving to Corpus in early 2004, and though we've been in sporadic touch, we haven't really kept up with each other over the past few years.

When I met Vicki, I was 22 and she was 39. She doesn't have kids, but has a particular warmth to her that I always found maternal. She's extremely smart, tremendously funny, good-humored, perceptive, and very, very kind. She was a mentor to me, as well as a great friend. She was a temp working in the document storage room at Sematech, and I was brought in on a six-week temp assignment to help out.

The weeks grew to months. Vicki got hired on as a permanent employee, and (after almost two years!) I did too. We had the big storage room all to ourselves, with only the most infrequent visits from management. Well, we knew our job well; it wasn't rocket science, but anyway Vicki has a very strong work ethic. We worked really well as a team, so everything got done. We always had KUT playing on the radio in our work room. It was a fun place to be; other people at the company often came to hang out and visit, including such folks as Debby, the sister of someone I would eventually marry; and Mary, the wife of Robert, who would someday be my lead worker (and who has come to be a good friend in his own right) at the organization where I work now.

Eric was 17 months old when I began working there and got to know Vicki, so she was a little thunderstruck today to hear that he's about to turn 18 (years). I got pregnant with Katie just after starting that job.

She reminded me today of Salvador. How could I forget Salvador?! Working among boxes and boxes of technical documents, and occasionally doing bulk mailouts, we sometimes had to transport multiple boxes to the mailroom. We had a dolly for the purpose. Well - what else would we name a dolly? He was called Salvador, of course. The sweet thing is, apparently he, complete with his nametag, is still in use.

We also had a publicity photo of the dearly-missed CEO, Bill Spencer, which I had cut out and placed on a brightly colored background. I had various different costumes and props for him for different times of year - like a paper doll, you know. He had a Santa hat, an Uncle Sam costume, a pot of gold, etc. For Easter I had a big decorated egg with holes cut out for his eyes. I had totally forgotten about that.

I worked in that area for a while after Vicki had moved on to another department. Requesting a document, she once made fun of a former coworker who had asked for a technical document, volunteered to come pick it up, then heard where in the building we were and asked to have it delivered instead. Vicki came to the room to pick up her document, threw herself onto the floor, and clawed her way along the carpet with her fingernails. "So far!" she gasped, "so very, very far!"

One of the marks of a true friend is that, even after not talking to them for years, you find that the flow and spark of conversation is just as free and spontaneous and fun as it was when you hung out together every day. It was like that with Vicki today: checking up, laughing, on one another's latest developments; me asking after her work and her husband (he's such a cool guy!); her asking after Daddy and Joyce; kids, friends, work, life. And we will get together very soon.

Happy Easter; here's to the dear and wonderful friends who bless us and make our lives so well worth living!

Getting all Eastered Up

When you get right down to it, isn't every Friday good?

I mean, assuming you like your home life better than your job, which (I realize) is hardly a given. But sleeping until you are not tired anymore is generally better than the alternative, isn't it? Whoever came up with the 8-5 workday, anyhow? If I ever meet that bastard, I'll kick him right in the 'nads.

The French don't have to work from 8 am-5 pm every day. They have full-time 35-hour workweeks AND get to drink wine at lunchtime, right there in their corporate cafeterias. Can we do that? No! Not that we'd want to. If they served wine at lunch in our office cafeteria, it would probably have winemakers' toenails in it. Certainly the scrambled eggs contain a high concentration of eggshells. I'm pretty sure this is in compliance with applicable state law.

Of course, the French have to say things like "Sacrebleu!" and "Ooh la la!" which is why people tend not to take them seriously. Look at Pepe LePew, for example - though, to be fair, he really is quite a great romantic figure; passionate, expressive, and devoted, if you don't mind the fact he smells like overripe Roquefort. Then again, most of the women he meets probably don't shave their pits. So why not?

But I digress. It's Good Friday! Many of us don't have to go to work. The kids get off from school. Traffic is light. The spectre of cholesterol poisoning adds a rakish note of peril to our otherwise staid lives, and chocolate may put in a welcome appearance. But stay away from the licorice jellybeans! They are the creation of Satan!

Sleep an extra hour for me tomorrow, if you can.