life
I've been working on a few posts, essays really, to put up here soon - most of them reflections on Russia, or my time here. These thoughts were put on hold though by the news that my friend's father passed away the morning of August 4, after a battle with lung cancer that seemed all too short.
She left Moscow this spring when she learned of his diagnosis, so that she could be with her family and help him through what everyone hoped would be successful treatment. He had come through surgery and was doing chemotherapy, but something went wrong. She did get married this summer, and her father was able to be there for that, sometime I'm sure they both cherished.
In many ways, the past four years have seemed like a killing field, and not just because of wider world events, although that is certainly true.
Almost exactly four years ago I left Russia to be with my grandmother, who was by then losing her battle to cancer. Of all the places I've travelled to, and of all the things I've done in seen in my life so far, witnessing her struggle and being there with her when she died is by far the defining moment of my life to date.
In 2002 a friend and colleague lost her mother to lung cancer. Not long after, in early 2003 another dear friend learned that her mother had a very serious form of brain cancer. She has, so far defied all expectations and has already lived much longer than anyone expected.
Cancer is something strange to me, this spectre that haunts me. Its claimed more than its fair share of my family members, and it is long, painful and gruesome. Fir the most part, you can't avoid it, if it already knows its coming to get you (Unless you FUCKING SMOKE, in which case you SHOULD STOP RIGHT NOW). But on the bright side (ha!) it gives you time to say goodbye and make peace with yourself and your life, and it gives those around you time to come to terms with surrendering a loved one to death. I have a friend who lost a brother in an accident many years ago, and I still remember the shock that I felt, because I couldn't even imagine what my friend was feeling, to know that suddenly, that was it, that his brother was dead.
What am I getting at here, talking about death in a post I decided to name "life"?
I spend a lot of time reading about, hearing about, and seeing reports of terrorists killing innocent civilians all over the world, soldiers dying in Iraq for reasons we've lost track of, people starving in Mali because of a drought, some kid dying in a car crash because someone was drunk. Death happens, it's unavoidable - anyone who is not a child knows this somewhere deep down inside. We all die, the people we love die. And to those left behind, it will always be unnecessary, without cause or reason, and too soon.
I just hate the fact that life in this world is cheap to so many people, when it's obvious, when you look around you that every life means something to somebody.
