Pancreatic File
[BOF May 3, 2026]:
The end is
near. V is telling me that characters on Wagon Train are her sons. Television
can give us another possible world to ponder, but it is an implausible world.
I still go see V everyday at the nursing home except the days I have chemo. I
fear the chemo is no longer effective. This makes V and I have about the same
timeline.
I got bad news
last November. The chemo helped for a while, but now it looks like palliative
care.
The question
is “Now what?” Everything is accessible – memories, possible worlds, the actual
world, and there is perfect knowledge as it characterizes the S 5 Modal System.
She said, “You
can see the world through the eye of the needle.” She was a seamstress most of
her life. The needle was her livelihood. And she was my grandmother who rubbed
my forehead to fearless sleep. She spooned me cod liver oil, and her garden
greens were loved and abounded.
At the Triple
L
Snow drifts
down
Settling in
crotches of the birch
Temperate drop
as the cab enters the compound
I found my way
to Mr. Schuler’s office.
It was an
austere room.
He peered over
his glasses and motioned me to sit down.
This is a
memory, when I was sick, but not as sick as I am today.
Mr. Schuler is
not a literary figure; he was a colonel in the air force.
“I don’t think
you will be here very long,” he said, “you can think your way through
problems.”
Then he asked
me if I had a will.
After the
interview he called Roy to take me to my room in one of the cottages.
When I got
there, I saw three small beds in the same room.
There was a
clicking noise, sounded like Morse Code. But it was just the heater trying to
come on.
It was a cold
January with the biggest snow in 20 years, and the cab did not make it all the
way to the compound when I arrived. I lugged my suitcase the rest of the way,
weakly, as I was in the mental hospital for three months.
At the
cottage, I heard noises from another room. I peeked into it. Three televisions
were going simultaneously, and three motley fellows were engrossed in
television life. They did not even see me.
Then I backed
up and went by the alcove. There was a jigsaw puzzle in progress by some insomniac.
I decided to
lie down. Soon I was asleep and dreamed that I was Dr. Zhivago in the coldest
of Soviet winters.
Stan Burris
woke me when he came into the room. He was dressed in a dirty corduroy overcoat
and boots. He is the reason I am at Triple L.
I thought Stan
was a spy from Canada when we were in the hospital.
He told me
that this compound was a great place to roam in because of the land size. And
it was peaceful. He did not tell me by peaceful, it means “half-dead.”
I thought he
was my friend. He needed support only. And it took me another twenty years to
realize that what he said about being a baby in an orphanage and was not held
the first six months made him cold. Not in temperature but in lack of empathy.
I will be
stuck with him for another twenty years. That was how difficult it was for the
mentally ill to find a friend and companion. We are ghosts that live in
isolated Gulags all over this beautiful land of America.
