Mom

I returned not long ago from another trip to see my mother up in Clearwater. This one – the second in a couple of weeks – was for three full days. While I was at my mom's house, I was joined by my older brother, Kevin, but he only stayed for one day and night.

He had a stroke about a year and a half ago and, to put it simply, he’s not doing very well. An athlete for most of his life, he’s now stuck, unable to walk without help, unable to hold a thought or a fork.

He’s miserable and letting the misery get in the way of any efforts he might make to improve his lot. So, after just a day, he decided to go home where, I guess, he can be miserable in peace.

Enough about him. I love him, but I didn’t go up to Clearwater to help him. I went up to help myself.

You see, since Lynne has gotten ill I’ve not been doing well myself. I wake at the same time every day, go to my fellowship meeting, go to Publix, come home, work for an hour or so, then go to bed. In the afternoon, I get up for a couple of hours, then go back to bed. At night, I watch television for too many hours, take my drugs and pass out.

I haven't had a lot of positive days recently. I needed an uplift.

I tell you the trip up to see my mother was wonderful. Or at least the very last day, when mom and I were alone.

In fact, it was one of the very best days I have enjoyed for a long, long time.

We hung out together, talked and laughed, went out for a late lunch, talked some more. We remembered stuff that happened when I was a kid, a little kid. We talked about the way I brushed her hair in the evening so she could relax and about the way we’d hold hands when we walked to Roman Catholic mass early in the morning and how, too, she found money, somehow, to buy me a book every week or so and told me I could be a writer it that’s what I wanted.

The best memory for me was of Saturday afternoons, many, when - as a little kid - I’d sit on the floor beneath an ironing board my mom lowered from a little door in the kitchen. For a couple of hours, then, as my mother ironed my dad’s dress shirts and the uniform shirts my brothers and I wore to Catholic school, we’d listen together to opera broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

She doesn’t often listen to opera these days. Her hearing is just too bad. Still, once in a while I’ll put a Pavarotti CD on her little player and turn it up as loud as it can go so she can hear at least little bits and pieces. Like me, she loves Nessun Dorma, from Puccini’s Turandot.

The worst part of the visit was Tuesday night when we said goodbye. My mother knows I’m not doing well. As we hugged we both wept. The last time we cried together – that I remember – was many years ago, early one morning just after she got a phone call that her father was dead. My dad was already at work and my mom came to my room to tell me. I was eleven years old, then. I was old enough to know that Imy mother needed someone to comfort her and I did, too.

When my mother and I hugged on that Tuesday night, I realized how little things have changed

* * *

I’m having troubles with my memory these days. A little while ago, I wanted to write the word "gutter." Why isn’t really important. What’s important is that I couldn’t remember the word "gutter." I could imagine a gutter. Could remember playing in the ones in Chicago when I was a little kid in a gang that seemed to love gutters. I could almost smell a gutter. I just couldn't think of the damn word.

Okay, I know that everybody forgets little things from time to time. But mine seems more serious than that because it’s much more frequent and involves things I should never forget. A day or so ago, I couldn’t remember my best friend’s wife’s name. Yesterday, I talked to a woman I’ve known for 20 years and – in the middle of our conversation – I called her by the wrong name. In a conversation with Lynne, when I got ready to call her by name, my mind went blank.

The experts tell me this is the result of the chemotherapy and the drugs I’m taking. At first, it made me very angry. Then I realized that if I simply chilled out the word I was looking for would reappear.

It’s kind of a problem when I’m writing but I’ve figured a way to deal with it. When I reach a spot in anything I’m writing and can’t find a specific word I believe should be part of the manuscript, I simply type a vile word that starts with "s" and ends with "t". I do that because I figure I’ll never use that word in either my memoir or novel. Then, later, I do an automatic search and replace the nasty words with the missing words that have been magically restored to my memory.

Oh, yes, I was going to use a word that begins with "f" and ends with "k" but figured there were too many copies of that word in both the memoir and the novel.

Chow

I’ve been writing and rewriting my memoir for about a year now. Its working title is "Low Bottom Alky." That’s what I was, for a long time, before I got the help I needed – physical and spiritual – to turn my life around.

Yesterday, I was looking at the manuscript and came across a paragraph in which I talked about my mother’s poor cooking skills when I was a boy.

She really wasn’t a good cook. It wasn’t until later, though, that I realized that she was severely limited by the fact that – in our house – there just wasn’t a lot of money to spend on food. Oh, my old man made a pretty good living and my mother worked as a teacher after I got in the third grade. Still, money was made to be saved, not spent on fancy food.

I’ve often said that if I were somehow transported back in time 55 years or so to my family’s dining room when we were eating dinner, I would know what day of the week it was as soon as I saw what was being served.

Roast beef on Sunday. Left-overs on Monday. Liver on Tuesday. Meat balls and tomato gravy with potatoes on Wednesday. Chicken (legs and wings) on Thursday. Fish sticks and macaroni and cheese on Friday. Pork chops or steak (one sirloin for the family) on Saturday.

Cooking meals like those didn’t really give my mother much opportunity to show her expertise. In fact, while I saw she wasn’t a good cook, she did (and still does) make a standing rib-roast worth killing for.

Anyway, food was never real important to me when I was growing up.

Over the years, though, I became a pretty good cook. I make a cheeseburger better than any found in any restaurant and several fish recipes I’m proud to serve guests. I bake bread, sometimes, can make an outstanding strawberry pie, and know how to make a decent standing rib and passable Yorkshire Pudding.

Now, though, I find myself not enjoying food at all. Living alone – with Lynne in the hospital – I have little impetus to cook or even to eat. I walk in the grocery store and look at meat and vegetables and fresh bread and it all looks boring. Of course, the chemotherapy hasn’t done a great deal to improve my appetite.

Suddenly, I’m losing weight. I’ve lost about 12 pounds in the last three weeks. That’s not a good sign for anybody other than a desperate dieter. It’s certainly not good for a cancer patient.

The nurse who was giving me my chemotherapy shook her head when she saw my weight a few days ago. She told me I had to eat more. She said it made no real difference what I ate because I needed to take in calories. She talked about steak, chicken, energy drinks made with ice cream. Cake and cookies. Donuts. Whatever.

Finally, she asked the oncologist to prescribe a new medicine she said might help me regain my appetite. As she spoke, I made believe I believed her. I didn’t really, because most of the drugs I’m taking seem not to live up to their reputations.

Anyway, I’ve been taking the new drug for about three days. And guess what? I’m eating. Not a lot. That probably won’t happen. But I’m eating a couple of decent meals a day, and some sweets. I’ll probably either gain some weight back or at least stop losing.

After it started working, I did some quick research on line. The medicine is something called megestrol acetate. It’s a hormone typically prescribed to women suffering from breast or uterine cancer and to dogs (bitches) to treat false pregnancy.

I’m tempted to ask the nurse if I’m getting the right medicine but figure I’ll keep quiet. What the hell, if wearing a dress made me feel better, I would. So I sure am not going to worry about taking medicine typically given to women or even to bitches.