Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.
I want to grieve. Ana wants to talk about Hannah’s new love, Vizsla. “He is nearly as talented as Hannah with surgery. Together they did the best that could be done”
Ana knows my grief for her in this illness and that grief is tainted with a need to blame. And I want to blame Vizsla. He is the only new thing in my life that I don’t like. Now Ana is offering no fear, only her clear-headed medical advice. She sounds more like physician than patient.
“Laz, there are some things we don’t know the cause for. People have pondered this one forever. It’s named after the crab because in times when medicine was done by metaphor this looked like a crab. That was what Hannah and Vizsla saw in the surgery. When the blade was put to it, it had the tentacles of a sea creature. At least we know what it is. The medical book says it is an imbalance of the black bile.[Footnote] We can’t blame Vizsla, or evil, or devils, or God. And anyway, blaming doesn’t make it better.”
“Is this something you will have to learn to live with?” That was my most hopeful question.
“No, Laz.”
My tears are contagious. Now we are both sobbing together.
“This bad news is really not a secret from our children and those we love. They probably have a guess. But now it is a faceable fact.”
Ana says, “When the children come to see me off, we will need to be the strength for them, Laz. We will seem resolute and fearless, together, now.”
“How can I do that?”
“Laz, I need you to see me off into my death without losing sight of all of our beautiful life. You have to do that. You can do that, I know.”
“I can only do whatever can be done that you won’t lose sight of life. I would just keep you forever and ever if I could. But Ana, I have no advice at all to offer of the life beyond the death. In my strange way of earthly life and life again, I’ve never been beyond death. I don’t know if there are angels there. Maybe it is the same spiritual oneness with one another in the big universe of love we already know. Ana, we will always know one another as we do now in the spirit of our love.”
“Let’s keep that our promise, Laz.”
“I always savor the love.”
[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism retrieved 7-17-24
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 