ann
I knew Ann ever since I can remember… according to mom, the first word I figured out how to say was ‘meow,’ and I knew that Ann was the lady with the cats. Ann and Ty were probably my favorite couple out of my mom’s friends (right behind Tom and Michelle, who won by default for owning a SNES) because they were nice patient people, and had some dogs and cats. I’ve always liked animals. It was weird when Ann and Ty split up, though it makes sense now that I know a little more about it. It was weird when Ann died, too, and it makes sense in a horrible sort of way.
Mom got a call from Ann, who said she’d been having trouble breathing – a trip to the hospital was in order, and while we waited to hear back on how she was doing, we went to grab dinner. The next morning, Mom called to tell me that Ann was gone. Just like that. Something weird with her lungs, her circulation, she couldn’t breath, and that was it. It’s fun to anthropomorphize health problems, talk about battling cancer or whatever, but let’s face it, sometimes you don’t die because you give up – you die because your brain doesn’t have any oxygen to work with, and shuts down, whether you like it or not.
Opiate of the masses indeed, sometimes you just want to put aside your problems and get high for a while – and in a world where it’s hard to look anywhere without seeing evidence of entropy, religion’s promise of an escape to the mortal prisons we’re born into sounds pretty nice. Strange to think how easily I slip into ‘dear god’ -type thoughts – prayers to an imaginary friend that I don’t even play with anymore. But death is horrible, and I guess if it makes people a little crazy, that’s understandable.
As much as I hate it, the mortality blog is going to see more entries like this before the last one – when I’ve gone the same way. I wonder who’ll write the last post? Will it be my brother? Some future children? A friend, or a lover? Will death come too suddenly for me to write down my passwords, so no one will ever breach the digital spaces where I’ve stored the bits of myself that I’d rather keep private for the time being?
Finally, earlier this year (or was it the last?) Ann had another hospital visit – her heart actually stopped for a while, but they got it going again. If ‘borrowed time’ existed, maybe she was living on it. I wonder what it was like, at the end?