My mother’s final meal was at the cancer buffet.
Cancer happens when uncontrolled cell growth causes tumors that can invade other parts of your body. In my mother, it went from lung tissue to bone marrow and then to her brain, where it killed her.
I’m older than she was when she died. Despite recurring skin cancer, I’m not in the Cuisinart just yet despite smoking for half a century. But I’m aging, just pizza long forgotten in the back of the fridge.
Like lousy service in a slow restaurant, we face the trials of aging and its consequences. We weaken, suppress appetites, lose our balance and dry out.
Of course, to be unscientific, there are many ailments with the same sharp bite as mom’s smorgasbord. A friend recently died of leukemia. A classmate passed from HIV. My father, of Alzheimer’s. My own inability to cook up insulin is likely fatal.
We all dine at death’s buffet in some way. As we chanted as children, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinocle on your snout.”
Reflections
She’s Not Gone. But You’re Alone
‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’
Age is like the speed limit: It’s a number that’s important only when someone else says it is.
Your piece holds a quiet, devastating honesty, offering a tender, unflinching look at loss, aging, and the path you continue to walk with such grace
The metaphors you use: the buffet, the forgotten pizza, the slow restaurant; turn something unbearably heavy into something we can hold for a moment without breaking. That’s a rare gift.
I’m sorry for the losses you’ve carried, and I’m grateful you chose to share this reflection. It reminds me that mortality isn’t a single moment but a long table we all eventually sit at, each in our own time. Your words make that truth feel a little less lonely.
With love and respect.