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An Expiration Date

  An Expiration Date  As some of you may be aware, I have been dealing with ‘shortness of breath’ issues since 2015. Finally, in this past year, it was properly diagnosed as COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). My particular diagnosis deals more with chronic bronchitis than with emphysema. At my last breathing test and pulmonologist appointment, my disease was re-staged. I now have stage 3 (severe) COPD, which carries with it something of an expiration date. I now have a 1 in 2 chance of surviving 5 years. And that does not consider my already damaged heart, which this particular disease is known to be very unfriendly to. The symptoms are unpleasant, make life increasingly difficult, and will culminate in my inability to breathe without mechanical assistance (ventilator), assistance which I intend to politely decline. When that day comes, I will hopefully have already signed up for hospice care and a dignified end of life. So, what is all this like? How do I feel about t
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The Installation of Hope

The Installation of Hope   When my beloved Susan was alive and still working with the clients in her psychotherapy practice, she used to talk about her job as being about ‘the installation of hope’. I was always taken with the wisdom of that expression. It was what she did. Her clients were largely people afflicted with varying degrees of traumatic brain injury, whose lives had been disrupted and, in some cases, nearly destroyed. She helped them give voice to their frustrations, she helped them cope, and most importantly, helped them to believe that their lives could improve. It was miraculous to bear witness to this process. As human beings we are wired to hope. If we were not, given the vicissitudes of life, most of us would probably jump off a cliff at the first opportunity, and yet we do not. We persist. We hope. We hope our lives will improve. We hope that our children's’ lives will be better than ours. I would submit that one of the main responsibilities of our leadersh
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A Quiet End - A short, short story

  A Quiet End   Author’s note: I thought that I would hit you with a short, short story this time on the blog. I wrote it a number of years ago, and it has been through numerous edits. I warn you; it is somewhat grim and brooding, which as you all well know, fits perfectly with my personality. I welcome your positive or negative feedback. Criticism is welcome. A Quiet End A Short Story by Matt Cantillon                   The old woman sat smoking a cigarette in her TV room. She was surrounded by hundreds of books, dozens of medicine bottles, empty soda cans and full ashtrays. She hurt. Her knees and ankles, her gut, her arthritic hands all throbbed in an unsettling and painful dissonance. For the hundredth time that day she silently wished that she were dead.                 The room in which she sat was a small den at the back of her condominium. It contained a love seat and rocking chair, two TV trays and several bookshelves crammed with books. Also, of course, there
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  Service   I heard an interesting and resonant expression yesterday on NPR. The expression was “We should work in service to one another for a better world”. And indeed, if we kept in mind at all times that we are a society, as opposed to a group of individuals, I do believe we’d have a better world. What do we owe one another? That is an interesting and integral question. I was raised and educated to believe that my life is all about service to others, and while it took some time, some maturity, some loss, and some suffering to lend some heft to that belief, I believe I have probably done a passable job of adhering to that moral imperative. We live in a society that places a strong emphasis on individual rights as opposed to the good of society, and often those two concepts end up in stark conflict. Just where is the line between an individual’s right to live as she wishes, and what is good for society in general? We find ourselves dealing with a public health crisis of epi
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The Two of Me

  The Two of Me               I often wonder if there aren’t two of me. The ‘inside’ me and the ‘outward me’. The latter functions properly, meeting all his obligations, taking care of customers and staying in touch with friends and family. It is part and parcel of a commitment I made after my beloved wife died over 6 years ago. The ‘outward’ me tries very hard to maintain a cheerful demeanor, a positive attitude and the rudiments of a normal life. The past year as well as the foreseeable future, being swathed in pandemic and economic uncertainty, as well as a considerable amount of political uncertainty, have wrought for me a life of solitude, a loss of tactile human contact, and a stark realization that my inner life is vastly different than the life that I project to the world. In my inner life, my attachment to mortality is tenuous and disinterested at best. I feel as though I am pacing a cage waiting for an end that I wish would come. My ‘real’ life ended on November 28, 201
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Grievance and Insurrection

  Grievance and Insurrection   At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide. ABRAHAM LINCOLN   On November 3, 2020, the American people went in historic numbers to their polling places, or in some cases, cast their ballots and mailed them to the appropriate authorities. Many Americans, myself included, carried with them concerns about the Trump administration’s ineptitude, self-enrichment, egregious corruption, as well as its failure to manage the largest public health crisis in over 100 years. Prior to the election, Donald Trump had asserted that if he lost the election, it would be because the election was stolen from him. A significant number of his supporters and right-wing media supported this contention. The ballots were co
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