Momento Mori

I’ve had a lot of reminders about mortality recently. Most importantly, my stepfather has a cancer diagnosis that is not unexpected but is nonetheless disheartening. I’m still processing this.

On the other end of the seriousness spectrum, I had the bee sting.

This, though, wasn’t enough of a reminder that I am made of perishable meat. So the universe threw a wet drainage grate in my path and brought a bike ride to an abrupt end.

I ended up with a lot of flesh wounds, none serious enough to require stitches.1 Still, when I made it home and showered the water ran red with blood and a week later I still have to keep several points bandaged.

Worse, I pulled something in my back such that it felt slightly sore until I twisted a few days later and now have spent many unable to perform basic tasks without unbearable pain.

And worse still, my head impacted hard enough to destroy my helmet through both surface abrasion2 and direct impact shattering on the left side. I don’t remember it; my perception was that I was taking a corner and the next instance a bystander was helping me up as I struggled to answer her asking if I was alright.

The flesh wounds and aching muscles are annoying but obviously temporary. More disturbing is the way my vision has remained disoriented. I feel like my eye teaming problems have changed, so that I’m unable to use only one eye without covering the other. So I routinely see double, as if I’m extremely drunk. It’s not passing, and the ways I’ve found to cope are tiring, so we’ll see what the doctors make of it.