Here is a story about how life and death are so entertwined.

It's been a full weekend.  An odd weekend.  A good weekend and a devastating one all within 48 hours.  Yesterday, for instance, we celebrated the impending birth of our son with a group of friends and family.  There was joy and laughter and the all around glow that a new baby brings into the world.  It was good.

And then there is today.  Today I received the news that my friends 13 year old daughter lost her battle with cancer.  She died.  And as I pause in the writing of this, I rub my belly and feel my little son moving around in my belly, full of life.  And it's strange. 

It's always amazed me how joy and pain can be such bedfellows.  Certainly, we spend most of our days hoping to avoid the latter, yet it seeps into our lives in the sneakiest of ways, shaping relationships and bodies and circumstances.  And and I've always held to the dictum that it is our human responsibility to rise above our own personal pains in the best and most graceful ways possible.  But how do you tell someone who has just lost that which is most precious to them that they must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and carry on?  I don't think you do unless you want them to shut the door in your face and never speak to you again. 

And so I'm sad beyond belief for my friend, yet at the same time relieved that her daughter's soul is no longer trapped within the confines of her broken body.  I'm filled with sorrow, knowing that the next months and in fact years will be spent in recovery of the past two years of fighting - I know that my friend and her husband will in fact most likely never recover from having lost a child - and yet there is hope and joy in their two children who are very much alive and will go on to live, to fulfill their dreams and to dance with pain all their own.

But this pain.  It is large.  It brings up the question of why.  Why a little girl?  Why someone so innocent and not some horrid person who squandered their life?  Why did she have to suffer so much?  Why did God look down and say, "I want her back," despite knowing what wreckage it would leave behind?  I have no answers for the slew of "Why's?"  What I do know is that we live in a horribly broken world where there are many things that are not fair and we have no way of understanding.  And I suppose this is where faith comes in.

I've been recently pulled into some squabbling in these past few weeks, the effects of which have made me very tired, sad and feeling as though people have lost sight of what is important.  Another dictum I hold to be true is that we are all in charge of our own happiness...to me, a lot of that is keeping peace with those at I love.  What this event has made reinforced for me is that it is never worth not telling those that you love what is bothering you in a kind and loving manner, asking for forgiveness when necessary, trying to see their side of the story and telling them that you love them.  It disrespects those that wish they just had one more day with the person that they've lost.  So let's all do those we love a solid and communicate, shall we?

Marc and I are naming our son Dylan Thomas after the poet who left behind such a beautiful body of work when he went on to drink himself to death at the Chelsea Hotel.  One might say that our son has no where to go but up from there with that legacy behind him.  But the reason Marc and I chose the name is that we each were struck by a poem of his long before we knew one another.  For Marc it was, "Do Not Go Gently Into that Goodnight" and for me it was, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" which I will copy here.  This poem has always struck me as being about the lust of life, of love, of adversity and hunger as well as hope and joy and that mad surreality of the world in which it all takes place.  Life will succeed no matter what is done to stop it.  This is to Jensen, who will speak beyond the grave in the souls of her parents and brother and sister who will carry her through their lives.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion. 

An adventure!

We went camping! A few weeks ago! I love camping, truly, I do. However I haven't attempted it in some time. Especially since my figure has taken on the description of "spherical." But how hard could it be? Marc had recently bought a new thermarest which was approximately 2mm thicker than my OLD thermarest which in his mind meant a restful nights sleep and in my mind meant that the bump I tried to avoid but invariably found its way under my delicate back during the course of the night might be marginally dulled. If I could drink. Which I cannot. But! Onward!

Most of my friends have reservations about my camping acumen and wonder if Marc somehow is forcing me into these particular activities. I don't know, perhaps my dependency on hot rollers, fake eyelashes and my silk housecoat makes them unconvinced that a city girl like me could possibly rough it. "Of COURSE I love it, darlings!" I say as I powder my decolletage. But it's true, I do. I was hesitant this time around, however, given the pregnancy bit. But you know, it won't be just the two of us much longer and so I thought, "Hang it all...even if I don't sleep for two nights, this is valuable togetherness time!"

We drove up to Yosemite Valley in what felt like newly-wedded bliss. The weather was beautiful, we only took the wrong road once and we arrived at camp well before dark. As we checked into the campsite, the very well meaning camp hosts said, "Please be sure to remove everything from your cars at night as we've had several bear break-ins. One just last night!" Marc smiled and nodded. My mind heard, "BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! IMMINENT DANGER! MURDER! DEATH!" I turned to Marc, plucking at his sleeve and whimpered, "Are we going to be MAULED this weekend?" And then I immediately broke out into panic-induced hives. You see, for all of the joking I do about wanting to SEE a bear, I really only want to participate in that activity if they are on the other side of a set of bars. And perhaps even some bullet proof glass. My communing with nature is very specific and organized.

But here we were in a campground that even had a bathroom. I like bathrooms! Marc set up the tent on the flattest stretch of earth he could find and I stood by with a large stick to be sure he wasn't attacked from behind by anything large and furry. This made me feel better but had him snorting into the nylon. We wandered around after that for a bit, held hands, had some dinner and then came back to camp where I made Marc escort me to the bathroom and wait outside in the event that the bears liked whatever pregnant hormone twinged scent I was emanating and decided to ferry me off into the outback for a late night snack. This wasn't the particular brand of togetherness he was looking for, but I told him to suck it.

Then it came time to sleep, so I settled into my bag on my 5mm thick thermarest that was also as wide as my hips and proceeded to try to negotiate the bump that indeed was present under my lower back all while Marc drifted off into slumber land as soon as his head hit the pillow. People often ask me, "Why? Why would you sleep on the ground like that when there are perfectly good hotels nearby?" And I really don't have an answer for them other than, "It's part of the experience." "Of what? Having no sleep and an aching body the next day?" In my 20's I would have said something inarguable like, "Psh!" and moved on to the next subject. On this particular night while I tossed and turned and consistently fell OFF of my thermarest and into the gap between Marc and me, I wondered if the Ahwahnee Hotel had late check-in and how far of a walk it would be.

But then I thought of the bears. The bears that were likely lurking along the perimeter of the camp thinking, "Which of these easily clawed through tents should I go for this evening?" And then you wonder what jackass decided that nylon was a great material to make a shelter out of and then your mind just spins and spins and spins at which point you really have to go to the bathroom but you've decided to hold it until dawn as being mutilated on the way to the loo in the middle of the night isn't at all dignified. So you lay on your thin mattress very quietly until you're just about to drift off but are startled awake by a noise from OUTSIDE, but realize it was just the wind. This wakes up Marc who is all, "What? Where? You still up?" and then looks at me like, Perhaps we should make good of this moment, us both being awake! Let's have a party! But that's the last thing on your mind and so you go back to the spinning mind and the sore body and somewhere just before dawn, you fall into a fitful sleep which lasts for about two hours.

This is what I consider a good night!

But then that morning Marc made me breakfast and coffee and broke down the tent and let me sit in the sun while he cleaned up everything and only made me roll up the stupid thermarests which should come in a pregnancy size - meaning next time we're hauling an air mattress in with us. And then we took a long hike which ended some eleventeen million miles later at the top of Nevada Falls where we sat for a very long time on a warm rock, eating lunch and feeling pretty good about ourselves for having slogged all of that way without even whining once.

And I finally had a better answer when that following week as I stretched and tried to work out the kinks in my back as to why I subjected myself to such discomfort and pain. Because I get to spend time with my husband who considers sleeping on the ground preferable to a weekend at the Ritz. And because by doing so I'm rewarded with a happy spouse AND get to see things that not everyone is privy to. Though I have to say, that if we came with a thicker mattress and a maul proof tent, I might be more filled with glee at the prospect. I'm sure you can buy one of those, right?

The pain. It's in my arse.

I've been feeling a bit off lately. My right hip, specifically, has felt like something other than a hip. Like a hot poker, perhaps, or a porcupine. Something that you wouldn't want lodged in your body. Something uncomfortable. The important thing is hip, pain, ouch.

The hip has been a nuisance over the years and has at time morphed into the Hip of Many Horrors. It began some 8 years ago in the Throes of Love, or dating Marc. We were climbing and I was in a chimney some million feet up off of the ground. Not the type of chimney that might produce the smoke from a charming fire, but a chimney like this:

What this photo doesn't convey is that one can get stuck in these things, which my right shoe DID. This was most untimely, as I was trying to go UP and my shoe was happy to stay there and not finish our ascent. So after some choice, unprintable words and Marc pulling the rope up several times (checking my progress and wondering what was taking me so long as he was hungry and I had the snacks) and my screaming up at him, "FOR GODS SAKE STOP GIVING ME A WEDGIE! I AM STUCK!" I went with the old tactic of Yanking Really Hard and freed my foot and tore some muscles that I don't think cottoned to the tearing so much. Meaning the hip never really healed properly as when one is in the Throes of Love, one does not admit to one's boyfriend that one is in terrifying pain. One soliders on! And I did! I finished that climb and descended it and walked back to the car carrying climbing gear and every time Marc turned around and said, "Are you CRYING?" I would blink profusely and comment that I had dust in my eye. But really, I was trying very hard not to weep and continued to do so for what seemed like weeks after wards. My hip finally got wise to the fact that in my early 20's I didn't believe in such things as giving oneself time to Rest and Heal, so it patched itself up as best as it could. And so now once in a while my right hip just inexplicably stops working and I collapse in a heap for no real reason and can also tell you when it's going to rain. It's all very dramatic.

But lately it's been more than an occasional trip to the floor. While on down there, I don't just say, "Whoopsie!" and get up. There is some writhing and some clutching and gasping involved. It's been hurting in a way that I can only describe as pain that gives me the right to complain. A lot. And I try not to do that as an achy hip is optimal on the scale of Things One Could Endure. I'm not, for instance, going through chemotherapy, or having someone point a gun at my head. It's a joint! Silly joint! Stop hurting! But it won't.

This morning I kept evaluating my hip from the discomfort of my bed. Did it hurt? Was I imagining things? Is it really sore or just sore from my poking it? I got out of bed and immediately fell down, so I ascertained from carpet level that perhaps it was time to visit someone who would know more about these things than I did.

There was some poking and prodding at the doctors. And of course, I felt very superior when I told him that the pain stemmed from an old climbing injury - I am a badass! Look at my war wounds from doing a sport that not many attempt! Instead of being impressed, he intimated that perhaps I ought to take up an activity that I was better AT, one that didn't leave me maimed and falling on the floor at irregular intervals. Psh.

SO! It would appear that it is pregnancy related and that I have a raging case of sciatica!

Really?

That is not exciting at all. I was hoping for something with more umph than "Your son is sitting on a nerve and since you have old damage there, you're going to suffer discomfort for the next three months!"

The solution is ice and massage. Two things I can get on board with. Well, the ice more for when there is a margarita involved, but if it brings me some sweet, sweet relief, then I will walk around with a cold pack secured to my right buttock with pleasure.

So if you come over to our house and find yourself being served a warm drink, and should you go over to the fridge to solve this problem and find me swatting your hand away from the ice machine and screaming NO ICE FOR YOU! This is why.

It's either ice in my pants or a permanent hobble. Good fun.