Intimate Interactions

Usually the acquiring and losing of skills and abilities is compressed towards learning when you’re younger and losing when you’re older. In some ways, chronic illness and loss of ability is like aging in super speed with your body fighting back to retain what it can. While we often think of people as how they lived, not how they died; so too do I see among the loss and death of things in chronic illness the vivacity and life that carries us through it. It may seem confusing to have life and fun so intermingled with death and loss; it can be hard with chronically ill folks as some might describe, “watch them die slowly” but in truth you’re also watching them live. In some ways the triumph of life and joy and fun over great adversity is a hallmark of the human condition and an essential part of our nature that has led from the first cell that existed on the planet through its descendants, each reaching sexual maturity, reproducing, and protecting their offspring long enough for them to reach sexual maturity. T