This is an out of character thread involving my own personal feelings about something that's kind of bringing me down. This girl I know, she's 33, is dying of liver and kidney failure. The reason is the alcohol she always drank. Beer beer beer etc... No hard booze actually, just beer. A total textbook Jekyl and Hyde drunk too. Sober, she's nice, can carry on conversations, has insights which are useful and valid. Drunk, she's a complete psychopath who destroys everything (actually usually just people) and acts as if the world owed her something, throwing ashtrays is a drunken sport, just plain all-around b-i-t-c-h. So anyways her liver is about 10% right now and its lead to kidney failure so she's been on dialysis like 4 times a week or something and she's lost so much weight (she's about 100 pounds on a good day) and apparently has a swollen stomach or something I think due to her being unable to urinate or something. To be honest I didn't hear much of what her mother said because the situation started to take on the air of a dream and things actually were foggy for a moment.
She said a month ago, at the start, that she doesn't want visitors. Now, near the end, I guess she looks so horrible and still doesn't want anyone to visit her, though she knows she's dying, and a coma apparently is a few days away. So her mother said.
My Dilemna
I can understand her initial "I don't want anyone to visit me", since it's normal to want to build a wall over a tragedy like this. But after awhile I figure I myself would want, in the end, to see people, old friends and so forth, one final time. The proverbial clean slate clean conscience thing. So I don't know how much of it is her being in some form of denial, and how much is pure honest truth that she doesn't want anyone to see her before she dies. Do I take what I feel is the right road and go to visit her in the hospital anyways, or do I go along with her wishes and for the rest of my own life never know if she was really serious or not, that I should have gone to see her anyways? This is so shitty because overall she's nice and is simply a slave to alcohol. Don't drink a lot folks since it's more lethal that other drugs. Alcohol should be more controlled I think. And here's an example. The Liquor stores here, at the checkout lines, have shelves of all kinds of Superbeer and the 9% shite, you know, to get buzzed quicker with a better bang for your buck. Bottles of them for like $4 or so, and coincidentally, it's the same amount as the average take homeless bums make from half a days work looking for empty bottles to return. Liquor is government controlled here, no private sales. At two stores now I've commented on the superbeer crap and how it's wrong to sell that shit to the ones they know will buy it. They're more enabling that anyone since they have the moral duty to cover that angle. I know the need the revenue and I also know no one is forcing the bums and the destitute to buy the beer, but if it doesn't feel right or seem right, and it's involving a moral issue, it probably isn't right. That's my story for now. The God damned bottle. The liquid inside, just liquid. The things people do. Buy a plot of farming land--->plant some barley and hops------->pray for rain and moisture----->watch crop grow---->cut down crop--->sell to company----->company cooks it and places into bottles--->Product goes to store---->Drunkard falling over himself killing himself slowly. Did you guess? I hate alcohol and it's ill effects. I drink once in a blue moon as they say...anyways...dilemnas...
Her mother telling me the burial and cremation details hit home.