The Company You Keep

Me and Leni
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The Photo

This is another photo from Kaori, a picture of me with Leni, Kelly and Jean's cat, on my lap. This photo has nothing whatsoever to do with the following.

Dinner, Ruth, Ellen

I had dinner with some friends tonight. Those friends included Ellen, whom I met a few years ago at the studio, and her partner Ruth.

Within the past year, Ellen was, during a "routine" hysterectomy, diagnosed with cancer. I'm not sure what kind of cancer (I should know this, but when someone puts the word "cancer" and a friend's name in the same sentence, The Brain just kind of blanks out, disbelieving). I'm thinking it's a kind of highly-metastatic lymphoma. Maybe.

The cancer had already extensively metastasized by the time the doctors found it, had spread through her pelvic organs and to her brain and, I think, to her lungs. She's already outlived the three month mark that is the usual life-expectancy for someone in her predicament. She is going for the one year mark, doing all kinds of intensive chemotherapy even while she plans her own funeral.

Ellen wants to be buried somewhere where she'll become worm food. She doesn't want to be embalmed, doesn't want one of the concrete capsules commonly used to contain coffins. She wants to end up as organic as possible. She says she wants to rot. Ruth says there'll be a wake and we'll all get drunk. Ellen says I'll have to think of a bawdy story to tell about her and I tell her that we have time to plan.

In January, Ellen and Ruth will take a trip to Mexico, to Cozumel, to sit by the sea and eat real Mexican food and drink real Mexican tequila. It's been a few years since they've done it. How better to celebrate reaching the year mark?

She and Ruth have been together for fourteen years. Ellen is about fifty. Ruth almost ten years older.

Why am I writing this all down? I guess to express my gratitude for the time I have and have had on this planet. I truly am grateful, even on the days when I have to grasp for things to be grateful for, for my friends, for this time, for this life. I've got a kind of freedom that many people only dream about. And I'm grateful. I've got the kind of friendships that many people wish for. And I'm grateful. I truly, truly am grateful.

Ellen is, too, I think. She recognizes it. She's bolstered by it. I'm glad to be part of it.