The bus was cancelled and the train is late. Delayed because of wet conditions. Is that even a thing? Extra caution I guess. I am anxious to get back to the hospital, it surely will be noon by the time I get there. They told us if she doesn’t eat, it won’t be more than a month. Does dextrose count? Any calories will help prolong the inevitable. Give us more time. 

I’m trying to pull myself out of the inertia of denial. It’s not easy. Slap on the face with a wet washcloth might help. Or more coffee, not the crap self-brew and stabilised oil-based creamer at the motel. I never sleep well in these motels, they never have duvets and you can’t open the windows for fresh air. Except at The Rodeway Inn at the beach in Sunset, the neighbourhood in SF that was closest to the last hospital. There was something more hopeful about that last stay, between the hilltop micro-climate of the hospital and the reassuring neighbourhoods of Sunset, the bustling, anchoring Asian immigrant communities that had been there for generations, bordered at the north by Golden Gate Park and the west by the Ocean Highway and the sea. There is no place more magical in SF than here, I think. It is as though it exists in another dimension, a small, quiet, forgotten, sea side town. I could spend eternity here. I would like to think that I might exist in a parallel life here. Maybe I’ve never had children, or had them earlier, maybe they are already grown and moved out and I miss them. Maybe I surf, write, run in the park. Maybe I married someone else, more like me, and maybe I destroyed him, too. 

I turned on the TV this morning in the motel, and, as things usually go here on these visits, the random program that is on is about immortality, and this coincidence doesn’t really feel coincidental at all. Things here always seem to have some sort of divine timing, or clues that point back to something parallel in my own life, my own thoughts, my own worries. Meaning seems to be infused everywhere. Is it the magical mysticism of California, or maybe the marijuana? Before I thought it was the latter. Now, sober, I wonder if it’s just being aware of it. Tiny miracles, everyday, everywhere, if you are just a little bit more attentive. When I open the door to get more towels from housekeeping, I see my neighbour. She’s wearing a Poetic Justice hoodie. Just like my mom’s shirt, I think, but don’t say anything about it to her, I just smile slightly. I don’t have to share everything now that I’m sober. I can have a private thought. Maybe I don’t need to share now that I don’t feel so quite alone in myself, more present in my body, more at ease. What a nice thought to have.

The program that is on TV is one of those typical History Channel dramatisations that love to draw links that aren’t really there, spinning a slow story from a few tidbits of info, with lots or repetitions and funny background music, incidental, it’s called. It’s striking, as I don’t watch broadcast tv otherwise, that these shows seem to just made to go in between commercials, so that the low level advertisers can come out of the woodwork to pay for the channels. Such a waste of time, I think, but I leave it on as I am alone, and lonely, and I, too, am thinking about the afterlife these days. I feel I must pull myself away from these thoughts though, and think about now, of life and living. Getting a bad prognosis is terrible, but it’s the honest truth, and there is a strange thankfulness that comes with knowing that the end is near. It helps you to shift your focus. To prepare, differently. It is not giving up hope, it’s just facing things. It is hard but necessary, and a dark fucking blessing to know the truth.

So I think about living these last moments, impatiently waiting for the next fucking train to come. Three minutes more delayed? For fucks sake, I say under my breath and get a look from the mom sitting next to me on the bench. Oh sorry, I say, realising that everyone around me can, in fact, understand what I’m saying. I’m not in France anymore, whoops. I’m back at home, in this strange land of California, where people go to die. I mean, clearly, that’s not what California is but it is that to me. Dad died here, many years ago, at the same time of year. Maybe she will greet him on the 9th of February, the same day he left. Maybe there is some sort of portal this time of year, once the festivities are over, one can leave quietly before things, before life, before the year, picks up again. So I wait impatiently for the train, not knowing when that last moment might be, and not wanting to miss it.