Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Saturday schedule: Lunch with family friends, Brattle, Dinner with Lindi’s family. Given that schedule, you wouldn’t think that Saturday was a day abounding in morbidity.

It all started out with this whole lunch business. My dad’s college classmate’s son was on his college visiting tour and surprise, Harvard was a mandatory stop. So from Harvard Square, we departed to a restaurant, where my dad proceeded to order the exact same dishes we ate the last time we were there. Anyways, the conversation turned into that college classmate gossip, and we started talking about people dying of cancer—more specifically his college classmates who died of cancer.

Speaking of dying of cancer, that’s also the exact topic of the film showing at the Brattle: Look Both Ways—a slyly observed Australian film heavy on accents and light on plot. At least the guy didn’t die in the end, or I don’t think so but I probably blinked and missed half the flash montage. There’s also something about train accidents, unwanted pregnancies, and the whole shebang. I actually like it, though I tend to tolerate movies better in theatres than at home.

Meh, and more dying of cancer. So Lindi’s family came and visited with their old neighbors, who now live in Acton. I vaguely remember my parents telling me about the husband dying after they opened a Chinese store in Acton. At the time, it didn’t jog any memories because I was probably in one of those self-absorbed hazes. But yesterday, the family came to my house (minus the dead husband), and I remembered. I remembered the wife and the two daughters, one of whose name is Sarah. I remembered the guy’s name. Shit, that guy came to our house before. I’ve even talked to him.

It’s a strange feeling to realize that someone you once knew is dead, even if it’s someone I only acknowledged peripherally. I’ve been lucky enough to not know that many dead people—the only other one I can think of now is my fourth-grade teacher who died of, again, cancer.

The fundamental tenets of egocentrism would explain why I always think of myself when I hear cancer. Funny enough, I once went through this episode when I convinced myself that I had cancer and had only a few months left to live. I vowed to keep my “cancer” a secret until the day I died, and they would open my body to find it ravaged by disease. I also made up elaborate plans of self-surgery that usually ended up as inadvertent suicide. And then there was that slight more merited episode when I was convinced I had skin cancer. The frightening odds are that I probably will die of cancer one day. Back to more summer-appropriate dalliances.