Just Ask

If you ask the "universe" often times it answers, or at least helps you figure out what the answers are. I put two and two together last night. Well, actually this morning.

I had a series of dreams last night that I remembered this morning. I don't always remember dreams, but these seem to have intentionally stuck in my brain at least enough to finally make the connections happen. I dreamed about the house I grew up in. In the dream someone had walled over the front door of the house. Where the door should have been there was just stucco. Literally I could no longer go inside. And I can't. The house belongs to someone else now which is an idea I'm still getting used to. I wonder if they're happy there? I wonder if they survived the ARM crunch? I wonder if they love how the sun comes in the living room windows in the afternoon?

I also dreamed about the car I used to own which is now also gone. Gone from my life. So many things are gone.

I found out last week, Christmas Eve that my cousin is being treated for rectal cancer. She's undergoing chemo and radiation. She's fighting for her life. She and I share the same middle name. Why in the hell both our mothers had to fucking do that to us mystifies me to this day. What the hell were they thinking? It was my grandmother's middle name, but you know, it's not like there was much more to it than that. Great grandmother named her daughter after a silent screen actress so our middle name was someones last name. And no, I'm not publicly saying which one because then the whole freaking world would know my middle name and quite frankly it's stupid. No white kid from Pacoima should have that as a middle name. Let alone some white kid from Pacoima who's mother was born and raised in Oklahoma. Long story, but trust me on this.

Anyway, when I heard about Teri I was stunned, saddened but not surprised. Her son has been battling POEM's disease for a couple years now. How terribly hard for all of them. I can't imagine what that is like.

I wasn't surprised because rectal cancer is a digestive cancer. People with untreated Celiac Disease are prone to digestive cancers. Some numbers give them a 50% higher risk than the average population. With treatment, which is a gluten free diet, the numbers go down significantly, returning to normal after a year or so.

I carry a Celiac gene, that's pretty obvious. Which one and in what combination I don't yet know. It's possible I inherited a double gene. I'm pretty sure my mother had Celiacs. I would not be surprised if my father did too. I finally ordered a gene test to try and find out. While it no longer matters to me which gene or genes I have, I'm hoping I can use it to convince my siblings, at the very least my siblings, to get tested for Celiacs. My mother's entire family should be tested, but most people don't want to know. My siblings don't want to know. My sister is truly mystified as to where I could have gotten this "rogue gene". The odds are good she carries the same gene. but she'd rather pretend I'm some how extraordinary.

And that's why silence scares me. In theory I'm in a better place now because I'm gluten free. But the years, decades, maybe a lifetime of eating gluten have already taken a toll on my body. I know that, I experience that every day. I regret not knowing, and I'm angry at doctors who never had a clue. But what can you do? You can't go back and relive your life. This is the life you're handed, the one you're meant to live.


It may have already shortened my life, and the lives of people I love. And I get angry all over again at the way whole grain products have been pushed down our throats by a government trying to artificially support it's farmers. I see that stupid food pyramid and all I see is blatant commercialism in the guise of healthy living. Whole grains kill.


The silence I now fear is mortality. Teri's battle brought that home to me to live.


I wonder if anyone ever dies thinking "I did it all, everything I wanted and I have no regrets"? I've never known anyone who died who felt that way. It's not the dying I fear I don't think. Either there is something after this physical life or there isn't. Either way works. It's this nagging sense that perhaps I'm not doing it right; living that is. It's not even about regrets. I want some guarantee that I did what I was supposed to do here; some nod from some God that says I'm on schedule and headed in the right direction.


Does knowing about the silence stop the fear? I don't know yet. Time will tell. I need to figure out what to do with all this. How do I guarantee that when I die I do so thinking I covered all the bases I was supposed to cover? How do you do that?