Pain is useful in most situations. Touch a hot plate and pain sets the reflexive cascade of withdrawal from the source before your mind can comprehend what is happening. Sprain or break an ankle and you will not walk on the affected area to avoid pain. Allows for healing.
Swell a gallbladder and you will seek medical attention before it becomes gangrene. So pain is important in our lives.
What about the pain in cancer? Cancer spreads and compresses your normal tissues and stops your organs from functioning properly, nerves are irritated and pain, often horrible pain ensues.
Could pain be the key to letting the cancer patient know that it is time to die? The soul's home for its entire earthly existence has become hostile and unable to support life any further. Our desire to hang in there is instinctual and hard to shake unless the pain gives one the resolve and the realization that you must move on and that staying in your earthly shell is no longer a viable option. The soul eventually takes the hint and off we go.
When my sister drew her last breath her best friend and I were at her bedside watching and as she took the cosmic trip out of her body she vocalized a distinct "whew!" with her last exhalation.
Other observations and random thoughts. Many with cancer get hyper-clotting disorders and are prone to developing clots that can cause sudden death by closing off the blood supply from the heart to the lungs. Is this a relatively painless out in which the cancer patient could avoid the painful suffering of the final agony or just a freaky coincidence? I believe in the former.
When I was about 10 yrs old I feared death almost to a psychosis. My father, who was perhaps one of the brightest 1000 people ever born, allayed my fears when I confided in him my concerns.
"Daddy, I am afraid to die."
"Why?"
"I just am."
"Well, my boy, there is nothing to really be afraid of and I will explain it to you."
"OK."
"Try and think back to what it was like before you were born. What do you remember?"
"Well, I do not remember anything at all."
"Were you in pain? Hungry? Sad? Frightened?"
"No, daddy."
"Well, you see, there is nothing to worry about."
I was lucky I could ask my father about any number of subjects and he was so well read he would voice an opinion. Later in life I asked him why the years fly by when we get older and as children time was painfully slow when awaiting Christmas gifts for example.
"Time", he said, "is relative to the observer. By this I mean if you live from year one to year two, you have increased your time in this life by 100%. This same year to a 20 yr old is 5% and only 2% of a 50 yr old's time experience. Therefore time seems to speed up as you age."
It is as simple as that.
The Letter: Wednesday, 29 January 1992
Dear Jacky,
I have to tell you about the French Count I met, you already know this probably--met him at Stirling's who then owned Errol Flynn's old house in the hills, a neat little place, and Stirling's sister in law at the time was there and she had a date with the count and we were all having brunch and the count told his story:
He was in medical school in Paris, as a young man when came word his father was dead and that his inheritance was his. He and his brother shared a considerable fortune, and the Count dropped his books and took off his white coat and said goodbye to his envious fellow med students and began traveling--following his nose as it were.
He soon found himself in the forests of Siam as happy only a young multi-millionaire can be and he began seeing on his walks through the forest a beautiful native girl flitting among the trees and innocent of a stitch of clothing--totally naked.
This aroused his interest and by sign language and gifts of this and that (probably Mars Bars and Baby Ruths and such, If I had my guess) he made friends with this nubile vision of loveliness.
One thing lead to another. It just so happened that she was scheduled for a special sacred ceremony then part of that particular region's religion in which the priests crowned her queen of the May or something--it was the Strawberry Festival, in other words. And she was IT that year. But when they examined her they discovered that the Festival Queen who was supposed to be a VIRGIN was very pregnant.
It did not take them long to zero in on the Count and he was summarily sentenced to death by beheading. Proof he was not beheaded was there in Stirling's breakfast room on that sunny California morning. The French Embassy rescued him somehow. And no, he did not marry the girl or give the baby a name or anything noble like that. He just made tracks out of Dodge and NEVER went back.
After that he looked for a place to invest his money and lit upon very safe and profitable sugar plantations in Cuba. Stashed his money there and lived very, very comfortably for many years--with an income of in the neighborhood (back then) of more than $40,000 a month. He did not lack for a thing.
Then the blow fell by the name of Fidel. No more income. He repaired to Italy to his brother's villa and they discussed his problem. They had a contract drawn up giving the brother half of the Count's interest in the confiscated lands in Cuba in return for an income of $10,000 a month.
This considerably clipped the Count's wings. He could not frequent the casinos as before. He had to get rid of his houses and several of his cars and yachts and cut the salaries of all his mistresses, some of whom, of course, went on to greener and golder pastures--but--life was not as bad as all that. After all when one has at an early age been sentenced to death in the jungles of Siam, life on ten grand a month can have some savor left--if one is careful.
The next blow fell, though he did not at the time recognize it as a blow.
His brother died. Well, that was sad. But the first month came as months will, and the check(a la William M., if you will) did not appear. And so on--and finally the Count went to Italy and looked up the grieving widow, his sister-in-law, and said, about our contract the plantations in Cuba:
"Ah," said she, (I am sure she is D.'s double only older) "I don't need any sugar plantations--you may have back all my interests in them. Goodbye!"
She said this "Goodbye" with such a musical lilt I am sure it rings in his ear even today when (if he is still living) he subsists on $300 per month from "friends" and lives in Panama. I hope none of our bombs or bullets hit him. He was an elegant man.
Is that a good story? It is a true story. A real story. A lesson for all to attend. Never mind the nigger in the woodpile-- watch out for the WOMAN!
He had by the way been a buddy of Errol Flynn's and had been to that house many times before and had stayed there, but not necessarily for the brunches...
I will survive, I will. And you will always be my son. Nothing can change that--fortunately, unfortunately, however you may look at it--that deal is long since set. I am proud of you and happy for you and thought the story of the Count might amuse you.
As ever the Old Foo,
Dad
22, March 2011
Dear Dad,
I am amused by the story of the Count. I will be very careful in my dealings with women. I sure do like the way they look and smell. Is that just the hormones?
Give my best to the Count if you run into him again in your travels.
Love,
your son
Jacky
Jack D. Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
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