A seagull shit on my car today. I know it was a seagull because it left a massive splooch which covered a good part of the driver's side. The little birds which nest in the overhanging trees usually leave tiny deposits. The flying rat must have aimed for a broadside. Bomber crews could learn a lot from seagulls.

My property is a graveyard for old cars which I think might be valuable someday, like the comics which FieldingBandolier regrets losing, like Indian Reservations which harbour ancient vehicles which, if you try to buy them, are "not for sale. I'm gonna get it running someday", and who's to say they won't, or that the derelicts won't increase in value, like stocks, by virtue of sitting for decades out of reach of wrecking yards?

All through our great circle tour of Alberta and B.C. I saw graveyards. Old Indian graveyards. Old church graveyards. Old auto graveyards. I've seen most of this stuff before, but it impacts me differently today. I'm aware of my mortality, and the mortality of those about whom I care deeply.

The tumor excised from my son's right lung a week ago was malignant. We got the news today. It was migration from the tumor on his arm, not regular lung cancer (he's never smoked). But we already knew that already. What else could it be?

The good news is that he's recovered, up and about, phoned from Calgary today to brag about buying a half-sack of beer for $3.99 as opposed to the $8.00 I pay here. Arthroscopic surgery is a big improvement over chest cutting, and free-market capitalism cheaper for consumers than government-controlled markets and "sin taxes" for products which damage. The bad news is that he will have to undergo another round of chemotherapy.

I liked the old graveyards, though, especially the old car and truck repositories. Every little town has some. I stopped to inspect a few along the way. Ancient vehicles dating from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s. I didn't ask if any were for sale. I knew they wouldn't be.

Too much history; too much loss and prescience of loss.

Thanks for sharing that.

Best wishes for your son's recovery.

I can relate, Doc. Our daughter is recovering from a breast cancer mastectomy and was concerned about a relapse due to a suspicious MRI. A subsequent PET scan proved the alarm to be false. It's awful when it goes after your kid.

Correction: the false positive was a CAT scan not an MRI.

DrNo:

Tough question to ask; but, is your son gonna be ok?

... [reservation, for you "city" folk] on my way to, any where, really, once I get off the island. I've taken to driving the long way around Lummi Point on Lummi Shore Road; I see more bald eagles that way.

There are several vehicle graveyards with some pretty nice old cars in them on Lummi Shore. Well, the cars will be nice once they're fixed.

The Lummi Nation Cemetery is over that way as well. I haven't driven on to the grounds yet. Maybe I will next time I venture on to the mainland.

The church here on the island has a graveyard. The grounds are impeccably kept. It has a soft, peaceful air to it.

I hate that your son has cancer. I hope and pray those Canadian doctors and Canadian beers straighten that out. Damn quick.

Peace & Blessings to you & yours.

Oh, Dr. No..there's that lovely poignant writingof yours with the great imagery that evokes just the right touch of mood.

So sorry to learn about your son's illness. Sounds very hopeful though, but know it's hard.

Chemo is a long slog. He and you will make it.

Your post reminded me of all there is to be grateful for and what really matters ..

thanks for that. and best wishes to you and yours.

~LAM

Joseph Campbell once said you can tell what is most important in a piece of great literature by turning to the exact middle.

I agree with him while reading your post.

There is nothing like a threat to our children to put life and death in great relief, the absurd and the ridiculous and the wholly unfair.

I'd like to add your son to my daily prayers - and I'd also like to keep reading about your visits to, and through, graveyards. Of cars and whatever else.

...whether of Cars or People. A melancholy but not unpleasant response. I don't mean, of course, the highly organized auto dismantlers with their computer databases of usable parts, or the highly organized, modern commercial human cemeteries either -- not that these are totally without certain charms.

I am talking mostly about the old, community or family graveyards, often overgrown with weeds and generally showing signs of neglect. I remember as a boy, wandering around through the farmlands of rural Washington, coming across the remains of an old Ford Model T that clearly had just been abandoned when it broke down and was no longer worth fixing. I would make up stories about that car, about it having come west with a family of Okies, of the tragedies and joys they might have experienced.

I remember my brother and I found a small, abandoned family graveyard in the woods near the river on my uncle's farm. The gravestones were turned over by the roots of the trees that had grown up around them, and the stones were mostly covered in moss, but when we scraped away the moss there was names and dates carved in to the simple stone slabs. Several children who died young, a woman, probably the mother, who died around age 40. All in the late 1800's.

My brother and I would picnic there often, and would make up stories about them as well.

The farm was sold to a big corporate group more than 40 years ago, the woods is gone, and with it, certainly the graveyard, but damn, I wish I could go back to see it one more time.

Something about such graveyards that connects us with the past, with our own mortality, in a way that little else can.

Of course, the fact that l lost my virginity in an old cemetery just reinforces the bittersweet feeling I get from visiting one.

I hope he'll be ok.

I'm sympathetic to the people who hang onto old things - cars they vow to get running again, etc. Some of us have a hard time letting go of the past (we want it BACK), and look to the future with trepidation. Often with good reason.

Nothing stays the same, doc, and mortality claims us all in the end. I hope you can continue to enjoy the journey, and don't have to live in dread of the anticipated losses the future always seems to hold for us.

Best wishes, Dr No.

mmm..there really is something about Graveyards. I also think by capitalizing the word we move into the realm of human spaces, rather than commerical ones.

Your experience in rural Washington reminds me of one I had in about the 3rd grade in north Florida. My best friend's family moved out into "the country" and we were 30 miles from town. They had about 50 or so acres and we could spend the whole weekend wandering all over. We were oblivious to dangers of any kind. We found an old graveyard. Not so old as yours, but from about 1920's - tucked into a berm and a broken and vine covered fence surrounded it. There were about 7 graves we could barely read the writing but it became a favorite spot and the catalyst for many a story! As I recall we were never afraid of it - especially not the ghosts or spirits, I think we actively hoped the family still spent some time there. (Nice, from two little Catholic school girls, eh?)

I have a fondness for Graveyards that I share with my husband (thankfully!). We visit them on all of our travels - enjoyhing the quiet and the singular peak into a community that comes from witnessing how they treat their dead.

In many of the smaller towns in Europe these local Graveyards feel almost like open-air apartment complexes - the living and the dead mix so freely, they are well visited and homey in appearance. There is no sense of threat or forboding or even dread at my own mortality. Instead I am often siezed by a familiar yearning - "I want to be buried here!" sort of like how I yearn to live in various places we have visited.

Sometimes I wonder if my fondness for Graveyards is borne out of a naivete - I have not lost a child or a parent or a spouse or a sibling. So I am at least once removed from all the death that I have known. So maybe I am just fooling myself and should I be in a different situation I'd hate them. I hope not.

Another graveyard that is significant to me -- this one as an adult -- is Burr Oak Cemetery in South Chicago. It is a commercial cemetery, but an old one with significant history, as Cook County's first African-American cemetery.

Amongst the prominant "residents" are Emmet Till, the young boy whose brutal murder outraged sensibilities world wide and is often credited with kicking off the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, as well as a number of my favorite blues musicians (eg Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, etc).

Worth a visit every time I am in the Chicago area.

A few years ago we went to a Graveyard outside of Sharon, PA - there are some newer ones around down by a slope, but up near the front are the older ones.

That's where my husband's father is buried. He died in September 1944, three months before his son was born. He was a pilot for the Army. Flew the hump ove rthe Himalayas and the big bombers.

He was 26 years old. He lies next to his parents, who came to this country from what is now Slovakia.

They never got to know the son who carries their DNA, my husband. He is 63 now. And has fathered five children.

There is a legacy that still lives: love of music, mechanical and engineering brilliance, a fascination with aviation. Our son works at NASA - on the Space Shuttle.

I'm often amazed at how much is passed down without anyone realizing it.

So I think about about the jazz being played... love of music passed from one gneration to the next.

Thanks for the chance to think about this on a waning and lovely Saturday afternoon!

I've been a bit remiss in replies lately, and sometimes feel ghoulish even posting on this subject to strangers on a public forum.

But I find the exercise cathartic. I vent here. I say things which might seem maudlin if spoken. I reveal to strangers what cannot be said to intimates. I must be strong, my wife must be strong, my son must be strong.

But it is a tiny bit of relief to vent here, and Christine knows my nic and often reads my stuff.

I sometimes post trivial stuff, and that too is a release. I hope readers find my prose at least eloquent, if not always profound.

Thanks for your replies and thumbs-up, all. I'll reply to each with my usual smart-ass aplomb, when it returns.

As a cancer survivor myself, I think I can understand what you and your family are going through. My best wishes are with all of you.