Death is but a Door

There have been a few changes since the last time I posted. Namely, the man I’m dating was diagnosed with a heart condition. And if there is ever a bad kind of heart condition, this one would be it - congestive heart failure. Now, this doesn’t mean he’s gonna croak today or tomorrow. It’s a chronic condition and if the patient doesn’t take the steps to manage said condition it will get worse and the patient will die from it. Eventually. I’m no stranger to chronic health conditions. My late husband, Kristopher, had ulcerative colitis when I met him. He managed his condition as well as modern medicine allowed. He died in 2020 at the age of 45 from colon cancer. My grandmother was a diabetic and she managed her diabetes as well as a single mom of five kids could back in the fifties and sixties. She died shortly after her 50th birthday. When I heard the congestive heart failure diagnosis, I will admit, my first thought was, “ROUND TWO!” The doctors’ appointments, the medications, the lifestyle changes, everything will have to be managed, coordinated and implemented. Upbeat, “you’re gonna beat this” energy 24/7 while on the inside I’m dying slowly from managing two households so he can focus on putting the lifestyle changes into his routine. I got weepy and started filling my head with self-pity and that ol’ abandonment trigger popped up. Everyone I love leaves me, everyone I love I push away, I’m a piece of shit.

You know, the usual steaming pile of horse shit that we all tell ourselves.

Then I thought about my own heart condition - an arrhythmia. My heart beats wonky. It can lead to atrial fibrillation, which is essentially the same thing as congestive heart failure - a lot of medical mumbo “we don’t know what the hell we’re looking at so we’ll use big words to make us look smart” but one tends to bring the other to the party. The thing is, I’m managing my condition through being active, eating as healthy as I can (and some days it’s frigging hard), managing my stress (which is the woo-woo route I’m taking) and medicating through holistic means - meaning I could be considered a “kitchen witch” with all the tinctures, teas, herbs and spices I use on a daily basis to keep my blood flowing and heart pumping. Some days are good, some days are bad. I still smoke for anxiety (still working on that one through the woo-woos) and on good days, I can go 4 or 5 hours without a cigarette at work, around all the crabby and chaotic people and be right as rain. On bad days, I usually smoke like a chimney if I can’t get myself grounded (winter was a bitch). NONE of what I do is easy. In fact, it’s damned hard - you can only eat so much chicken before you start craving red meat. Like, you see a calf by itself in a pasture and you’re contemplating how fast you have to run to get a chomp out of it before it’s momma comes barreling up your ass kind of craving. But I eat the chicken. There are days I stare at my rowing machine and say, “I despise you” because my rib hurts due to the fact I took a corner too sharp at work and impaled myself on the counter. But I row anyway. There are days I stare longingly at a piece of bread or the dried noodles on top of my fridge and start talking dirty to them - carbs are just sugar dressed in drag and sugar is the number one culprit of inflammation (which doesn’t help my condition). I don’t eat the bread or noodles, instead reaching for lettuce. I get my sugar in my coffee, which, I shouldn’t be drinking so much of because the caffeine. Caffeine can cause the heart to beat wonky, but if I drink enough water to drown a whale, I’m ok. And I fucking HATE drinking plain water. But I drink the water. The point is, no one but me is responsible for the changes to my lifestyle I had to make to manage my condition - especially since I’m not going down the modern medicine route until it is absolutely necessary. Only I am responsible. I am responsible for how I manage my stress - if you see me outside of a gas station barefoot on a patch of grass, I’m grounding myself. Don’t interrupt. If you see me with eyes closed, inhaling and exhaling with my hands moving around looking silly, don’t interrupt. I’m centering myself because someone said something that thoroughly pissed me off and I’m trying not to lose my shit. If you happen to see me at a crossroads late at night burying something, keep on walking. It’s just an egg cleanse with a return to sender and if you don’t want any of that shit on you, you best mind your own business.

This is how I manage my condition. It’s my responsibility. Just like it’s his responsibility to manage his own. I told him I wasn’t going to nag him about the smoking, what he’s eating, or how often he’s exercising. I’m not his mother, and while he really shouldn’t consider french fries as a veggie, I’m not going to monitor what he’s eating. It’s hard enough monitoring myself. He’s a grown man and he can make his own decisions. There. I got through that hurdle.

Only to be faced with another. I literally spent four months watching my husband wait to die. It didn’t help that COVID had happened and everything was locked down, but spending time outside in the fresh air and taking a walk around the yard - of which I suggested multiple times - wasn’t on his agenda. Spending time with his family cooking, or watching television with us - again, of which I suggested multiple times - wasn’t what he wanted to do. Playing Minecraft or some other computer game with us wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to play on his phone and be on his computer during the times he was awake. Instead of talking with me when we went to sleep at night, he would watch videos on the SIMS from YouTubers he enjoyed while playing on his phone. More than once he fell asleep holding it and I would take it off of his chest and lay it on his nightstand. My husband gave up LIFE when COVID shut everything down. And that is what pained me the most. Watching him wait to die. Now, I believe every person who gets news that they will die from whatever diagnosis they’ve just gotten has a very valid right to live the rest of their days how they choose. My late husband did just that; except when it became clear he wasn’t winning his war with cancer, he became bitter and resentful - from what, he never said, but I knew him well enough to know. And I paid the price the week he passed - he was violent and armed. I had to duck a cane getting swung at my head more than once, hear the man I love call me a fucking bitch with such hatred - even to this day it puts an ache in my heart remembering it. He was angry he squandered the time he had left on his video games instead of living life and he took it out on me. When my boyfriend told me he didn’t want me to have to go through another loss like I had with my late husband; I told him how he wanted to live his life was up to him, but I wasn’t about to watch another man I love sit around and wait to die.

He had a cardiac incident last Monday. The doctor’s said it was his condition getting worse and they gave him more pills. My boyfriend is fit to be tied - he doesn’t want to take all the pills (yet he hasn’t started implementing any of the lifestyle changes necessary) and he’s just going through the motions at this point. Then his friend died Sunday. Pretty sure it was cardiac arrest, but nothing definitive yet. Naturally my boyfriend is upset by this - so much so that he hasn’t said much to me about it since he told me. I’ve been through the grieving process and the way men process is frigging insane - bottle it all up cuz feelings - and he’s basically shut me out. Here’s the rub, he knows I’ll try to get him to talk about it because, quite frankly, its not just the loss of his friend my boyfriend is dealing with but his own mortality and he doesn’t want to talk about it - any of it.

Most men don’t like talking about death for some reason. Even Kristopher, who knew he was going to die - I was the one who said, “Fuck that noise” - didn’t want to talk about funeral arrangements or anything. He just wanted to be cremated and buried next to his father. It took me months of “on again, off again” innocent questions about what his final wishes were. It wasn’t until my own father died two months prior to Kristopher’s death did he start opening up and letting me know what he wanted. My father? Oh, hell no! Death wasn’t spoken about unless it was in jest - like, “If you do that, I will haunt you for the rest of your life” kind of thing or, “I’ll plant tomatoes every year after you die using your ashes.” I said that last one and I did as I said - Dad killed every single tomato plant. So far he’s letting the pansies live, so we’ll see if he’s ok with hyacinths in the fall for spring bloom. My ex? Fuuuck…even higher than a kite and drunk as shit he wouldn’t even talk about death. My last wishes is for someone to take my body and dump it in the woods and let nature have me back. It’s a little on the illegal side, so my ex would have been the perfect candidate to do it since he has a shady past and knows people. His response? “Why you talkin’ ‘bout that?” Well, we were talking about funerals and cremations, so… He’s an ex for a reason.

My boyfriend is no different. He takes death - any death - hard. He accidentally hits a squirrel and he’s upset with himself the rest of the day. Most would think he’s a sissy, but he’s not. He has a great respect for life and that’s not something to diminish by toxic masculinity. When he cried when one of his dogs crossed the rainbow bridge, I think I fell in love with him. However, whenever the topic of death comes up for humans, he refuses to talk about it.

Which is what I don’t understand. How is death a topic to be feared? My philosophy on death is it’s inevitable and while one shouldn’t actively seek it out, it isn’t something to be feared. Maybe I don’t fear it as much as others is because in whichever way, death isn’t the end. My belief, held long before my uncloseted weird witchy ways were unleashed, is nothing truly dies. Everything here is energy, and energy never goes away. Like water into ice, it just changes its physical form. Kinda like in Brighter Side of Grey by Five Finger Death Punch. I guess I also don’t fear death because I believe in reincarnation - if we have unlearned lessons in this life, we’ll be coming back again. Don’t get me wrong, I never used to believe in it; but in the last few years things have happened that can’t be explained any other way. You’ll understand what I mean if you go through the same thing - especially if you feel drawn to listening to Lightning Crashes by Live for weeks on end. When it’s time for you to see the path, you’ll notice the synchronicities. They won’t be easily missed.

Anyway, the fear of death is something I simple cannot understand. It’s a natural part of life. On most of my difficult days - when my blood pressure is all over the place, I haven’t grounded in weeks, I keep dropping things and I’m probably on the brink of a spiritual psychosis - when I lay my head down on my pillow, I close my eyes thinking it’s the last time I go to sleep. But by God, I did my fucking best with less than stellar instructions and that has to count for something is what I tell myself and I let go of the expectation of opening my eyes again. It usually does count for something ‘cuz that’s when I get visions. The most fucked up one had my stuff on the front lawn with zoo animals and a kangaroo jumping over my head. Still trying to figure that one out.

Anyway, the one thing I do know for certain is death is going to come for all of us; plant, animal, electronics - everything dies sooner or later. All we can do while we are alive is to live, and living in fear of something we typically have no control over isn’t living. It’s just waiting for it to come. It’s like my fear of zombies. I fear zombies more than I fear death itself. Why? Because I am not the most quiet of people in ANY aspect of my life and I do not physically run from anything. I will most certainly bring the horde down upon whomever has me on their team and I will die because my team doesn’t trust me with weaponry of any kind due to my temper and penchant for just smacking the stupid off of someone with “Lucille.” I’d like to think I’m like Michonne from the Walking Dead, but truth be told I’m more like an extra that died within seconds of the outbreak. Since the likelihood of that happening is very slim, I’m not going to base my entire life around that fear. It’s the same with death. I cannot escape it, so why fear it? I have only asked spirit to grant me death without fear. I work at a gas station, mostly at night - if that isn’t a tall ask, I don’t know what is, but I ask it all the same. I think that’s all we can do is ask how we receive death and let it go. As I said, death is just another door that opens.

This has taken me damn near two weeks to write. I have no idea why I can’t seem to get this shit out of my head. Methinks I need to start a fire in the yard, grab a beer and meditate. This is really bugging me (and it’s really irritating that I can’t use an asterisk at the front and end of a sentence without the whole damned thing going into bold font).