Dance and Death

Thursday's dance class went pretty well. Remembering what I was going to do for my warm up was kind of rough, but I knew the rest of my class pretty well since I used material from the summer. I want to do some new stuff this week, though, and that's going to take some thought and work.

The movement phrase I taught was somewhat interesting. It ended up being longer than I thought, so it took a while to teach and practice. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing, but Whit says that's how it always feels at the beginning of the process of creating a piece. Since it's research week for the kids at school, I hope to have some extra time and mental energy to fool around in the living room with dance stuff.

It's been a weird weekend. My Great Aunt Mona is on her deathbed with lung cancer. She's staying at my Aunt Lauren's (Mom's cousin's) house down the road from us. My mom came in yesterday to spend time over there (she's very close to this particular cousin and Aunt) and Leif and I brought quiche and bread over there last night. When we got there, Lauren's husband George's brother (who's a monk) was saying Catholic mass over Aunt Mona and Mom, Lauren, Lauren's sister, and George were standing around the bed. Leif and I kind of joined in and I said some of the Catholic prayers with them that I knew by heart and took communion and wine because participating seemed like the gracious thing to do. We all stood around crying and blowing our noses. Aunt Mona looked to be asleep with her mouth kind of open, but she wasn't, and she had a fever, so she had cool rags on her forehead and neck. She stirred every once in awhile and coughed a bit. (The pretty, gay black guy, who is one of her hospice nurses, told us a few hours later that her fever had gone away.) I don't know if that's the last time I'm going to see her or not. I thought it would freak me out, but it didn't--it was just really sad. She's a really extraordinary nice, funny, and cool person to be around and I wish she wasn't dying right now. But she is.

Then we went in the other room, ate dinner, drank wine, talked to the hospice nurses and sat around half watching TV. Mom slept over at our house and went back over there this morning. Dad's coming in today (he was preparing for a big trial all day yesterday) and Whit might come, too.

When we got home, Leif and I were talking about the reading we've done over the years about the Eastern way of looking at death. It kind of clicked while I was saying those prayers that death is benign and peaceful and not something to fight against (because it isn't possible) and it's the close family members who suffer the most in the process. I don't believe in an afterlife, though, so I still feel a lot of anxiety about the finality of it.

Today we are going to my dad's parents house to eat lunch and visit because my Paw Paw has been having trouble breathing and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him. I probably won't be grading papers or thinking about dances today. The weather's been overcast all weekend, and I feel exhausted. Aunt Mona's been declining rapidly for a month now--I can't even imagine how tired Aunt Lauren must be.