This is something that I never write about. In fact, it is something that I rarely ever talk about. I don't believe in God. I don't know what the fuck I do believe in but it definitely isn't God. American Christianity bothers me more than I care to write about and I'm not even going to try because things like Religion, Politics and Art just seem to be things that I am incapable of discussing.

However, God seems to come up in my life far too often. This is most likely because I constantly seem to be losing people in my life and it seems that where ever there is talk of death, there is equal talk of God. I honestly just don't think about it all that often. I don't even think about the fact that I don't believe in God.

The hospice social worker came to talk with me and my father this afternoon. For anyone who doesn't know, hospice is for people who are terminal, for people who want to die at home and who want to do it in the most comfortable and peaceful way possible. I'm all for this. I watched my mother drag out what was left of her life through operation after operation, to the point where, even if she had lived, it would have been a miserable existence. Instead, she could have gone home. She could have come to terms with the fact that she was going to die. The doctors told her that she was terminal 6 months before she actually died. They told her that there wasn't anything else that could be done, that she only had a couple of months left.

I don't blame her for not accepting this prognosis. It is human instinct to survive. She and my father found a hospital in Washington, D.C. that took on "last hope" patients. They performed experimental surgeries and treatments. She was so bad off that she had to take an ambulance to the airport in Atlanta and get on the airplane with a nurse and a morphine drip. And then she proceeded to go through another 4 months of pain and fear and hospitals, only to die anyway. I always feel guilty just having opinions on these situations because I am 25 and have never ever been in pain or sicker than having the flu so how can I possibly know what is best for a person whose abdomen is riddled with cancer?

Anyway, my point is that I'm glad that my Dad doesn't want to go through something like what my mother did. He knows that he is going to die. He knows that he has lived a long and amazing life and he wants to spend the last weeks of it with his family and in his home. Although it is difficult for those of us, mainly me, that have to spend so much time caring for him, I think that, overall, it is easier on everyone. The ups and downs of my mother's illness were just gut wrenching. Every few weeks it got very serious and the doctors would tell us that she only had a matter of days. Then they would turn around and radiate this or remove that and suddenly things were looking brighter. But to go through those false hopes over and over for months on end is absolutely draining for everyone involved and in the end, I don't think anyone is ever satisfied. There are those who think that more could have been done and there are those who think that less should have been done.

Well, I started this post talking about God and maybe if I write a bit more I'll get back to that subject. Today the hospice worker sat there, telling us about the hospice program, about how it's about committing to dying. For instance, while under hospice, if something goes wrong with the patient (i.e. they start to go into cardiac arrest) you do not call 911. Instead, you call the hospice caregiver and they come to stay with you while the patient dies. My whole problem with today is that instead of saying dying or dies the social worker kept saying when God decides it's your time. That just drives me fucking crazy. I just don't think that there is some great god up there, randomly or even not so randomly making these decisions. It just doesn't make any fucking sense. The only thing about people saying shit like that makes sense is that it is comforting to them.

It seemed to be the only thing that people could think of to say to me after my mother died. Well, sweetie, it was just her time. God needed her. Why couldn't anyone just say the truth? That it's fucking bullshit that she died. That she was too young and her illness was too awful and that it just sucks that she died. Why do we always have to come up with excuses for everything?

By not believing in God, I don't feel that I'm lacking anything in my life. I have no idea what happens to people when they die. I don't know where they are or if they still have any connection to those that are still alive. Sometimes these unanswered questions are frustrating to me because I miss the people in my life that I have lost. But overall, I don't feel a terrible need to know anything for certain. And even though I haven't convinced myself that there is some kind of heaven or alternate realm that we go to after this life, I am not afraid of dying. I don't want to die because I haven't been to Africa yet and I haven't had kids yet and I haven't met people that I know I'll meet one day but I'm not afraid of what will happen when I do die.

I can't imagine that there is anything that will ever make me turn around on all of this and become like a born-again Christian. I really can't see that ever happening. Maybe one day, I'll have a better sense of something that is bigger than my self-centered existence. I probably still harbor a lot of juvenile resentment and anger right now about the deaths in my life and that's okay, I think. I imagine that I'll sort it out one day. But for now, for now... For now, I don't want to believe that I am about to lose my father because God has decided that it is time.
11:40:08 PM     comment []