Mortem

I'm becoming terrified by how long I've been sick.  It won't go away.  On top of that, I have re-injured my back terribly and horribly.  My knee is stiff and short.  I have not been able to sleep.  It will all pass or I will expire one.  It is the waiting that is awful.  Sharp pains and terribly dull sickness.

I lie in be at night sleepless thinking about people I know who are dead or dying (one way or another).  I have a friend whose wife passed.  He is sick himself, and now, alone. . . .  It is like that for all partners, I guess.  One goes before the other.  It is shit.  And there alone in the bed myself, thinking about death and dying, I can find no solace in any of it.  Nothing adds up.  It is all just a terrible waste and blankness.

I spoke with a friend yesterday whose mother is dying.  Hospice has started the morphine.  You know what that means.  He is given to depression and is chemically treated for it.  We talked about things for a while yesterday.  I was saying what I have just said here, and he responded violently.

"Legacy?!?!  You can't think about legacy.  You have to think short term, man, like what you want for lunch or the next time you are going to go gambling.  That's all you have."

He is a writer who hasn't published anything for a good long while.

When the pain and illness is gone, I'll cheer up, surely, but this darkness I've been going through will stay with me, too.  I don't know if I want to make pictures any more.  I certainly have given up the series.  I have pushed myself to the limits physically and spiritually there.  I want a more subdued life now.  I've spent my evenings with books and tea.  I'm not sure the books are a good idea at this juncture, though.  Last night, I started binge watching "House of Thrones" because I pay for HBO and there is nothing else on right now.  People tell me it is good, but it looks like an R rated version of The Hobbit to me.  People like that sort of things, I think.