How We Become Expert

You learn what you're interested in.

Suddenly, I'm freely using words like "adenocarcinoma."  I can speak fluently about things like "epithalia."

These words are interesting to me now.

I can feel deep down in my evolutionary history something saying, "Learn, because it keeps you alive."

Time does funny things when you hear that someone you love has cancer.  An afternoon seems like an eternity.  Things that are urgent to do (grade papers, answer emails) seem like so many flies battering themselves against the windows.

My dad, mom, brother, and sister are all here.  It's a large room with a little sitting room off to one side: a bit of a palace as far as hospital rooms go.  We're not sure who pulled what strings.

There's a strange rhythm to things.  We gather altogether, or in groups of two or three, around mom's bed with its little phalanx of pumps and monitors and its criss-crossing IV lines and air-hoses; or in the sitting room, breaking apart, recombining, looking for our center of gravity.

It feels like chaos.

But it isn't.

Love sits unruly and roiling and ugly at the center of things.  We feel it when we pass one another saying stupid things.

People bring food, flowers, something to say, a prayer.  This feels like a never-ending stream.

We take turns spending the night.

We take turns being strong.

We take turns crying.

We take turns being inappropriately funny

We are expert at this.

But death, or the shadow of it, concentrates all this.

I think it was Horace who said "Death plucks my sleeve and says, 'Live, for I am coming.'"