Hopes

I’m tired. It’s chemo and it’s cancer. These days, I wake up every morning when my alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. For many years – more than a dozen – I needed no alarm. In the old days, I always woke right at 3 a.m. I made a pot of coffee and started working on the freelance work I did to pay our rent and put food on the table.

Nowadays, I’m lucky if I have enough energy to work for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

Though I’m tired, I simply can’t sleep all day every day, so I spend a lot of time looking at a big, flat-screen television that’s about eight feet from my pillows. Sometimes, I watch shows I’ve already seen a few times. Those are always some version of "Law and Order" or one of the shows about Dr. House and his crew.

Sometimes, now, I’ll watch the Cubs play ball. I’ve been a Cub’s fan for more than four decades. My Cub cheers started in 1967, when I was a student at Chicago’s Art Institute, living just two blocks from Wrigley Field.

The Cubs were slotted by just about everybody to win the National League title this year, possibly to win the World Series. Lately, they’ve been playing terribly. They’ve lost eight straight.

I have mixed feelings about the Cubs’ losing streak. Well, really about their chances this year. You see, the last time the Cubbies were in the series was 1945, the year I was born.

The last time the Cubs won the whole shooting match was 1908. Just over a century ago.

So there’s a part of me hoping the team gets on the right track this year and wins all the games it needs to win to be the champs of the world.

There’s another part of me, though.

That part has promised me, myself, that I can’t die until the Cubs win the whole shooting match.

To be frank, that part of me has felt pretty good as the Cubs lost. If they don’t win the series, maybe, just maybe, there will be something inside me that will hold my cancer off, at least for another year.

We’ll see, right?

(After I wrote this, the Cubs won two games against the Pirates. I have mixed feelings. I guess all I can do is see what happens, right?)

Memories

I had chemotherapy on Monday.

I planned to write this on Tuesday. I couldn’t.

Now, it's late Wedesday, so here goes.

As always, my doctor was a lot like Dr. House in the television show. Heavier and older, but every bit as succinct. His news was only so-so. I may be able to write twelve months worth of blogs, or six months or so. Maybe less, if something happens he doesn’t foresee. He just can’t promise.

The nurses in the oncology department were kind as they usually are. The treatment was quick and not too rough. I felt pretty nauseous by the time I made it home, and tired, but not too nasty. That’ll come later.

I had an e-mail waiting from Mickey, my older son’s wife. A wonderful e-mail including a bunch of photos of Chloe, my beautiful, five-year-old granddaughter, and Dylan, the son I haven’t seen in twenty-something years.

I believe that sentence needs to be explained (if possible).

Years ago, when I was an active alcoholic, I treated my wife of the time, Catherine, terribly in every way imaginable. I loved her, and she loved me, but my love was drowned by booze and hers was understandably eradicated by my actions.

For a time, briefly, we had a few on-and-off passable years. I was sober enough to father two sons. Dylan and Eamon.

Because of my actions, illegal and dismaying, I spent some time behind county and finally state bars not long after Eamon was born and Dylan was three. Behind bars, I received little mail. My father wrote to me once a month, but wouldn’t use my name, only my prisoner number. The biggest letter I ever got was a formal divorce from Cathy. I don’t blame her at all. Not a bit. I think of her fondly, remember her as a young woman undeserving of any pain, badly hurt by a sick man.

Anyway, because of my actions I only saw my sons together once, for half a day, after my release. We met in Clearwater. We went to one of the big fishing piers and to a mall where the boys had ice cream cones. That was it until about five years ago. Since then, I’ve seen Eamon a couple of times. He was in the service. He got out and went to work. Then he married Jennifer, as nice a girl as any that ever drew breath. They had a son, Aidyn, and I was blessed enough to hold him in my arms for a few moments.

That’s a memory that can still make me weep.

Dylan and I have spoken on the telephone a few times, sent e-mails and a few letters. His wife, Mickie, has sent me a ton of pictures of Chloe. I have six hanging over my desk along with an equal number of Aidyn.

I’m always glad to hear from my sons or their wives. Mickey and I have never spoken, however she’s sent me quite a few e-mails. The one I got yesterday was really pleasant. Enjoyable. She said Dylan and she read this blog from time to time. That made me feel good. Then she said I was an "incredible" writer. That’s the best compliment I’ve gotten in a long time.

Mickey, I love you.

For some reason, later, as I rested in my bed, the television on but without any volume, I began thinking of the days of almost sixty years ago, when was I right around Chloe’s age.

I didn’t remember much.

I remember sitting on a steam radiator in my bedroom, looking out a window at the snow falling on Chapel Avenue on Chicago’s south side.

I remember going to mass with my mother and going with her and my brothers on the elevated train to the Loop and walking into Marshall Field’s department store.

I remember my mom buying me a book when I was ill and me in bed struggling my way through Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

I couldn’t read much in those days, only some of the easiest poems. The shortest ones. Hey, I was only five.

I just looked the book up on line. I’d like to lie and say I remember some of the poems, but I don’t. Maybe I did before the chemo started. Anyway, I do remember my mom giving me the book and me in bed turning pages. It’s one of my favorite memories.

What else do I remember? I remember getting lost on a foggy day when I had to walk home alone from the first grade at Our Lady of Peace School. I remember having to go to the bathroom and walking up to knock on the front door of a bungalow. A lady answered my knock.

"I’m lost," I said. "I’m lost and I have to poop."

She saved me and after I pooped she walked me home, about a quarter of a block from her house.

Those are the kind of things I remember. Not much more. I have pictures given to me by my mom, pictures of me walking with my father, of me dressed in a white suit to receive my first communion, of me in a uniform to assist a priest during mass. I don’t remember those events, those days.

There are later years, many later years, I don’t remember at all. That’s a blessing, I think.

I hope my grandson and granddaughter do better than I do in terms of memory. Of course, in the old days, my days, pictures were taken with a little square camera. The black and white pics were only slightly larger than postage stamps. Nowadays, pictures end up on computers. Thousands of pictures that should tell clear stories for decades. When Aidyn and Chloe see themselves in color pictures big as a computer screen they’ll probably remember more that I do.

I really, truly hope that all their memories are better than mine.

Food

I’ve been receiving chemotherapy for almost three years now. This means I get chemical mixes shot into an "injection port" stuck beneath my outer skin about three inches below my right clavicle every so often.

One of the side-effects of the last couple of the chemicals I received – at least in my case – has been an almost complete loss of appetite. For about six months, food I knew to be good, food I had cooked for years, suddenly tasted bad or strange or just nasty. Spaghetti…roast beef…cheeseburgers…cheese and crackers…salmon…bacon and eggs…almost everything I’d long enjoyed simply tasted like garbage.

I was given medicine to build my appetite. It didn’t work. I tried eating things I’d never liked or never tried before, hoping something would be edible. It wasn’t.

The one thing that remained wonderful to me was chocolate. So I drank chocolate nutritional drinks and chocolate milk shakes. I ate candy and cake and chocolate donuts. I believe, truly, if it hadn’t been for chocolate, I probably would have croaked already.

Still, my eating was bad enough that I lost weight. Always slim, I dropped down to about 140 pounds.

Then, about two months ago, things got worse. I wanted nothing to eat. Exhausted, I spent most of my time in bed. I had to force myself to chew food and take drinks that almost always turned me nauseous. I dropped down to lower than 125 pounds.

Suddenly, though, things started to change just a few days ago.

It’s been almost three weeks since my last chemo. I guess that improved my outlook and my appetite. Suddenly, I wanted to eat. Peanut butter and banana and marshmallow sandwiches and eggs and chili and bowls of cereal and (of course) ice cream and sundaes and energy drinks. I ate more already this morning than I usually ate in a full day. I have more strength, more desire to stay out of bed, even a desire to walk. Not only that, but I’ve gained about three pounds in the last three days.

Not bad, hunh?

Now, I’m planning on making a nice dinner for Lynne and myself to enjoy tomorrow. It will be Sunday, so that’s the right thing to do. Maybe a standing rib-roast with roasted spuds and fresh asparagus. Maybe fresh flounder I cook a special way with onion and lemon. Maybe lamb chops. I love those. Maybe duck or chicken. Who knows?

I may as well eat whatever I want tomorrow. It’s been a long, long time since I really looked forward to a meal.

Then, Monday morning, very early, I have chemotherapy again. After a three week break.

Damn. I know I’ll puke before I leave the hospital. I know I won’t want to eat. I have to thank God, though, for the last few days. I hope I can repeat them about three weeks from now.

Mother's Day

This Moher's Day stuff is a day or so early, I know. Not much, but enough to know that it will be on line just in time for my brothers to read it and wish they’d thought of it. My mom won’t read it. She has a computer that she used two or three times about two years ago when it was brand new. Now it’s under her desk, behind the typewriter with which she writes letters. That she bought used about 50 years ago.

I do want to talk about Mom, though.

I think I’ve already said here that she and I have a very special relationship, and we do.

I was adopted as a baby. I was a premature, very sick baby, only about three pounds at birth. My biological mother died in that childbirth. As far as I’m concerned, my biological mother was a wonderful, beautiful, good woman. My dad – whoever he was – was probably in the military as World War II came to an end. Maybe he died doing something heroic.

That’s what I choose to believe.

The people who adopted me – my mom and dad – really thought I’d die. That’s how tiny I was, how sick. But they took me anyway, to give me some love.

My dad is dead now, has been for a long time. I loved him. I love him. But he and I were never really close.

My mom and I were – and are.

Many of my happiest memories are of my mother. I thought she was beautiful and loved it when she’d hold my hand as we walked together. I remember the way she looked when we went to mass as a family and remember her giving me books and telling me, from the time I was a little boy, that I could become a writer if I wanted to.

I remember the late, late night when she learned her dad – my grandfather – had died. My father was working and my mom came to my room and woke me. She was sitting on the floor crying so I got out of bed and hugged her and cried with her and then, later, we went to the kitchen and drank some hot milk and just kind of looked at each other.

I remember her being angry from time to time. I don’t remember her ever hitting me. I do remember her making me stand in a corner for a time and remember my father’s punishments.

Whew.

I remember sitting on the floor in the kitchen on Saturdays, listening to the opera broadcast from New York as she did the weekly ironing. I remember sitting on her lap.

She’s 94 now, a retired teacher/librarian. She – whom I remember as being almost 6-feet tall – is tiny. A little bent over. Pretty deaf. And she uses a cane. She also drives, solo, to mass and shopping and to restaurants.

My wife thinks my mom, Mary, should not be allowed to drive. She’s too old. I told Lynne to go up to Clearwater and take my mother’s car keys. I’ll wait here.

My mom reads voraciously. The New York Times and the big New York Review of Books and a couple of other newspapers and more than a dozen magazines and every book she’s interested in. Not novels. Nonfiction. Good stuff.

I talk to my mother every evening at 6 p.m. I make sure she’s okay and we talk about the Times crossword puzzle and we talk about politics and our family and all kinds of things. She tells me what she did and I maybe tell her what I did.

We sound a lot alike, my mother and I. We laugh at the same jokes, find the same political actions disgusting, feel the same way about people we know, like the same food, even curse with a lot of the same words.

We can sit together and not say a damn thing and both know we’re having fun.

Sometimes, when I’m having a tough time, I edit my comments. I can tell how sad she is that I’m sick and I don’t want her to know everything.

I hope she has a good Mother’s Day and wish I had the strength to drive up there. But I don’t and she understands. Lynne and I sent her a beautiful scarf and a book I know she wanted and she already opened the gifts because she never waits these days. She loves the gifts.

Thinking of her as I lay in bed earlier today, I thought how good it would be if she dies before I do. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever admitted in a life that’s been filled, for years, with some terrible actions and reactions. But it’s true.

And guess what. I believe my mother hopes the same thing.

Liberal

Liberal
I’ve been a liberal all my life.

I am liberal because that’s the way I was brought up. My dad was a working man and a union official. My mom – the daughter of a working man and union president – worked as a teacher and belonged to the teacher’s union. All my uncles and aunts were liberal. Most were unionized.

My mother – still alive – is more liberal now than ever. My brothers are liberal. Their wives are liberal. Our children are liberal.

I really like President Obama. I feel as good and positive about America’s leader as I did when John Kennedy was elected. Better than I have since then.

It’s been a long time. I was in the Air Force, stationed in Japan, Just 18 years old, when JFK was shot. I’d spent the night in Tokyo, heard of his death on a radio, and knew I had to head back to the base. I took an elevated train from the city to my base in Tachikawa and on the trip every Japanese man and woman who saw me bowed low and said how sorry they were.

Amazing. I remember weeping and flags at half mast and watching the funeral on television and rerun after rerun of the killing in Dallas.

I’d not voted for JFK. I was too young. But I sure loved his style and what he stood for. Rights for American people whose rights were being denied. Opportunities for all Americans. Increased support for arts and cultural activities. Of course I loved his Irishness and his Catholicism and his wife, Jacky.

I didn’t really think much about political action I could do until I got out of the service in the midst of the war in Vietnam. I fell for Robert Kennedy, was one of the ex-servicemen who marched in huge anti-war parades in Chicago. I turned into a hippie with a chest full of anti-war pins and hair past my shoulders. I demonstrated against the war and for equal rights for everybody. I started voting and voted liberal.

For years after the two Kennedy brothers were killed and Dr. Martin Luther King, it wasn’t much pleasure to be a liberal. I know there were a couple of democrats in the White House, Carter and Clinton. In fact, though, most of the power was exerted – often illegally – by Nixon and Ford and Reagan and Bush and Bush.

I wasn’t terribly active most of the time. But I did follow politics and I did vote every time I could.

Voting for Obama was one of the high points of my life. I’m glad my cancer hadn’t killed me and that I was up to casting my vote. I watch him every day and basically think damn near every move he makes is ideal. Of course he makes mistakes. Everybody does. I’m willing to place a big bet that he’ll not start an illegal war. I bet he will do something to make the tax system a bit more sensible and try to get health care for people like me and educate children and all the other stuff he talks about.

My cancer seems stronger these days and I feel weaker. I still hope I live long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series (this year) and Notre Dame win a major bowl game (early next year). I’m not sure I’ll be able to. I’m aiming at some closer targets, now.

I’d really like to see Obama name a winner to the Supreme Court. I think it would be great if he named a woman. And especially great if the woman was Latin. But I really want a liberal. A young one. Maybe we’ll be able to regain a court that makes some sense.

I’m not really going to be overjoyed when I’m in my death bed but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if the court was moving in the right direction.