FacingCancer

Bad Times

2009-11-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

I’m not doing well.

Believe me, that’s a sentence I hoped never to write. However, I’ve no choice, unless I wish to kick the truth aside.

Not doing well. That’s why it has been so long since my last entry in this blog. I now spend almost all my time in bed, so tired I can hardly walk, weak, uninterested in any food other than chocolate ice cream.

I want to write. Not just this blog. I have a novel to rewrite and, of more importance, my memoir. I try to write. But I can’t really. My memory is fouled by chemotherapy. Not just my memory of dates and names but my memory of spelling, of dates, of real happenings in my life.
As bad as I feel, as skinny as I am thanks to chemo, there’s still hope that I’ll get past the treatments and have a year or so to feel better and write and maybe head up to Virginia or someplace with Lynne. I hope that happens.

Now, though, I need to stop writing. I’m too tired.

The Times Seem to be Changing

2009-10-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

I’m embarrassed. Almost a full month ago, I said my plan was to write this blog more often, even if it meant writing shorter blog-entries.

I haven’t.

I guess I should not have said anything.

The problem is that I’ve been feeling terrible for the past few weeks. It’s all been due to the cancer and the chemo. My weight fell down to about 115 pounds and I’ve been exhausted all day, every day. I’ve had no appetite and some transient pain. As a consequence, I’ve had no real desire to write. Anything.

My typical day started about 5:20 when I woke, had coffee, took pills, shaved and dressed then went to a 7 a.m. A.A. meeting that ends at 8. Typically, I drove home (about a mile) and almost immediately hopped into bed so I could fall asleep. Most of the days I’ve been spending in bed, sleeping or reading. I usually got up at about 5 p.m., ate something for dinner, then watched T.V. with Lynne until about 8:30 when I went to bed.

The last two days have been different. I’ve had no chemo in about three weeks. Instead, I started taking chemo pills yesterday. I’ve felt pretty good. For two days. Yesterday, I was able to have breakfast with Mark Ford, a true friend. The eggs were good but Mark looked sad every time he looked at me. Still, the most recent days have been the best I’ve had in months. God willing, I may be able to start writing again.

I hope so.

Lynne

2009-09-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to change my approach to this blog. My new plan is to write shorter entries when I’m able.

In the past few months, as my cancer has grown stronger and I’ve grown significantly weaker, I’ve written less and less. Now my hope is that I’ll be able to write brief entries much more often.

Anyway.

Yesterday was Wednesday, Lynne’s birthday. As a rule, we’ve celebrated her birthdays in large ways. There have been lots of gifts, some classy flowers, and dinner in some restaurant she enjoys.

Not this year. She ordered her birthday presents online, with my blessing. And we weren’t able – as we always do – to have an evening meal at a restaurant. Instead, she cooked spaghetti.

I ordered her some flowers which were delivered late in the day. She loved the flowers and a letter I wrote on the computer telling her how important she is to me and how wonderful our life together has been.

I have a terrible feeling that this is the last of her birthdays we’ll share. I don’t like that but I figured it was going to happen this year or next.

My Oldest Son

2009-09-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

Roughly 28 years ago, on a Summer morning, I kissed my sons Dylan and Eamon good bye as they slept in their little beds in a home I shared with the woman who was my second wife. They didn’t wake and that was fine with me. I was, I knew, on my way to the county sheriff’s office, jail, and eventually prison. I also knew my wife – Cathy – would divorce me and do what she could to make sure that she and my sons would never have to be part of my life again.

I kissed the two kids goodbye and almost ran a mile or so from our house to a bar on a big highway passing through New Port Richey, a joint only a half-mile or so from the county sheriff’s office. I didn’t have a great deal of money but I did have enough to get drunk and that’s exactly what I wanted.

For the next three hours, I sat in the bar drinking vodka and grapefruit juice, my favorite early morning kicker. I smoked and joked and listened to the juke box and tried to pick up an old Cuban woman and drank and drank and drank. Finally, I ran out of money. I sat there for a moment wishing I had the guts to kill myself and then, knowing I had no real choice to do anything different, I left the bar and walked to the sheriff’s office.

I was drunk enough that I stumbled and fell in the parking area outside the office. Some officer knelt over me, thinking I might have been hurt, and then saw to it that I was immediately locked in a holding cell. From there, after three days of terrible withdrawal, I was shipped to the county jail in Dade City and, eventually, the state prison system. All because of little crimes I committed when I was drunk.

What crimes?

How about this? I forged five checks for a total of $30…all cashed at a bar where I spent a lot of time drinking. Anyway, this cost me a five-year sentence – that worked out to right at two-and-a-half behind bars.

Anyway. I figured for years, many years, that I’d never see my sons again. Cathy divorced me and I didn’t blame her. I still wasn’t much of a prize. She moved west to a place I don’t know and lived in a way I have no reason to understand. Once, though, one time after my time in prison, I was able to meet Dylan and Eamon again. It wasn’t much of a visit. Just two hours with two little boys who really had no reason to give a damn. That was a long time ago.

Then, about four years ago, things started to change. Eamon, my younger son, wanted to know me. We met and spent time together. He got married and since then I’ve grown to know his wife and, now, their little son, my grandson, the cutest kid ever born.
We see each other when we can. We love each other and we say it. I love his wife, Jennifer, and their baby boy, Ayden. But I haven’t seen Dylan, my first child, even once, for one moment, in a string of more than 20 years.

A couple of years ago we began sending rare e-mails. Eventually, he called and we spoke briefly. We grew slowly closer, not real close, but closer.

Sunday, I got to see him, his wife and his beautiful daughter, Chloe. My ex-wife Cathy was there too, along with her husband and Eamon's wife and child. This wasn't really expected. We were together for an afternoon. We talked a bit and had a couple of pictures taken. Before he left, I got to embrace him. I told him I love him and he didn’t answer but that’s okay. At least I saw him and talked with him and held him. I was with my first son. After all these years. Isn’t that something?

Bad News

2009-09-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

The last time I contributed to this blog, I felt pretty good. I was convinced I’d be able to start writing regularly, creating needed chapters for my two in-the-works books and writing pages I want to leave for my grandson and granddaughter.

Too bad. I can barely write at all.

For about 35 years before I grew sick, I spent basically every day writing. After a history as a newspaper reporter and editor and a long time as a magazine editor, I found an opportunity to write at home. I worked mornings creating marketing copy for one of the nation’s champion direct mail companies. Every afternoon, after a rest, I’d turn my full attention to working on one of the non-fiction books I found attractive. I’ve written without anything like breaks longer than just a few days. I produced thousands of words of direct marketing copy ever day along with at least one thousand words for whatever book I was working on.

No more.

This blog copy has already taken four days. I’m not going to give up. I try to work on my books. I plan to add to my blog at least every two weeks. Wish me luck.

Back to Work

2009-08-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

I feel okay today.

Now, there’s a statement I honestly feared I’d never make again. But I do. Feel good, or at least pretty good.

Just two days ago, I honestly thought I would never feel worse. I was tired, shaky, nauseous, breathless and too weak to walk…the way I’d pretty much felt for the last couple of months, only worse. I figured it went with the territory.

My wife drove me to the VA for my regularly scheduled chemotherapy session.
It didn’t work out. As soon as a nurse took my vital signs, I was hurried to the ER. My blood pressure was 70/42. That’s low.

I’m not going to go into the diagnosis except to say that low blood pressure was partly a result of the cardio surgery I had a couple of weeks ago and partly caused by the fact that I was taking medicine that had been prescribed a year ago to lower my blood pressure. I wasn’t drinking enough liquids.

Anyway, I spent the day in the ER, on my back on a stretcher-bed with an IV something stuck in my chemotherapy port. By the late afternoon, I felt pretty good, able to walk. Yesterday was good and so is today.

Over the last few weeks – since my mother died – I’ve not been able to write much of anything. Oh, a lot of that inability stemmed from my physical condition but a lot of it was a reaction to my mom’s death. It just seemed that I couldn’t get my thoughts off my mother, largely because I hadn’t been able to visit her before her passing.

Stretched out in the hospital two days ago, though, I had something of a breakthrough. I realized, that my mother would be appreciative of my sadness, appreciative that I missed her and was going to keep missing her. She would have been enraged, though, if I allowed that perfectly natural sorrow to stand between myself and the writing I still want to do before my own death. "Stop it!" she’d say. "Get back to the computer. Show me you loved me by writing a good book."

My mother was proud of me. I know that. She was happy and proud and thankful that I’d fought my way from a terribly sick and sad and drunken life to a decent life. A life that included her and also includes a wife and my grown up children and my grandchildren. A life that includes some success as an author. A life filled with friends I’ve made since I took my last drink. But she wants me to finish the writing I started two years ago because she knows that’s what will make this period of my life make some kind of sense.

Mom, Again

2009-08-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I wrote anything at all. I was sicker than usual for a time and ultimately had to undergo vascular surgery at the VA hospital in Miami. I was – and still am – so weak I can barely walk.

Not long after the surgery, my mother died.

I wasn’t surprised. She was 92 years old. She’d been ill and weak. I do wish I’d not been sick so I could have made my way up to Clearwater on Florida’s West Coast to see her one more time before she slipped away. But it didn’t work out that way.

My brother Patrick told me about her death. She told him, he said, she was ready to go. His daughter, Maura, told me my mother had said the same thing. My mother said she was tired. She said she wanted to be with my father who died about a decade ago. "No more," she said. Then she stopped eating and stopped taking her meds.

I can understand. I really can.

It’s easy for me to imagine my mom on her deathbed, quiet, unmoving, her eyes closed. For a time after her death, that’s the way I thought of her. Then I stopped. Now, when I think of her, I remember the last time I saw her, a couple of months ago. We sat at the table in her family room, talking about politics and my work and laughing a lot. She told stories about family in Ireland and friends in Chicago.

The last night I was with her, ready to drive home very early in the morning, we embraced. She kissed my cheek and I kissed hers. We told each other to be safe. "I love you, Mom," I said. She said the same to me. When we pulled apart, I could see her eyes were wet with tears. She smiled and nodded her head. I knew what she was saying with that smile and nod. That’s what I’ll remember.

Mom and Me

2009-07-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

My mother is in rehab now. She had surgery about a week ago and is already up, walking (with help), and dealing with her granddaughter’s death about as well as can be expected.

I call her on the phone a couple of times a day. I wish I could get up there, but I’m too sick from the chemo. Yesterday, when I called and asked for mom, a nurse told me she was in the beauty parlor. For reasons that have nothing at all to do with beauty, that was the best news I’d had in while.

# # #

Not surprisingly, I’ve been getting some psychiatric and psychological help for about a year now. It was recommended by one of my chemotherapy nurses after I spent a long chemo session talking about my feelings.

The psychiatrist, whom I really like and admire, doesn’t have me stretch out on a couch or anything like that. We talk for a bit and he makes comments, but he’s really more involved in prescribing drugs than in anything like psychotherapy, and that’s okay with me.

I was in therapy once, for one session. The doctor made a big deal out of telling me I could tell him anything at all and it wouldn’t bother him, and that sounded good to me. So I told him something. I don’t remember what it was (this was about 40 years ago) but it must have been pretty bad because when I looked at the shrink his face was twisted with disgust.

So much for that.

This may come as a surprise to most who know me, but I’m not crazy, or not really crazy. I don’t want to take my own life or harm anybody else, I don’t hear voices, and I have no ideas at all that I am Napoleon or Captain Hook or Al Capone.

I guess that means I don’t really need to see a shrink. What I do need is help dealing with the things are happening in my life, to me and – even more – to people I love. I am sad and sometimes scared. I’m angry. I can’t sleep without aid. I have no energy to speak of. My memory is full of troublesome holes. But I’m not crazy.

That’s where Linda comes in. I call her my therapist though the VA gives her some other title.
She and I have a good relationship. I see her at least twice a month and I am able to tell her the truth without worrying about her judgments. We like each other. She’s helped me accept the truth and know that my feelings are to be expected and are justified.

I saw her last week and when I told her about my mother’s hospitalization and my niece’s suicide she didn’t hide her reaction or retain her professional detachment. She blurted a short sentence that you might expect to hear from a carpenter after he hammers his thumb.

I started to weep, something I’ve been doing a lot of in the last few days. She simply let me cry. And that was okay. I told her what I was feeling and she nodded and she said, "Of course you’re sad and frightened and angry. You should be."

She also told me I needed to focus more on myself. I know the truth of that. I have to take care of myself.

I’m not trying to sound like a candidate for sainthood. But she’s right. I haven’t been thinking about myself…at least not as much as I usually do. "Be nice to yourself," Linda said.

To be honest, right now there aren’t many ways I can be nice to myself. I’ve no appetite to speak of. I don't drink anymore. I can’t go sailing or walking. My libido has left town.

But I can read.

So I went online and ordered two of Garrison Keillor’s books – the only ones I didn’t already have in the stack by my bed.

The books arrived yesterday and I’ve already devoured one. It was wonderful to spend time in Lake Woebegon instead of in my own head.

The Worst Year Ever

2009-07-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

I’m going to say it started 12 months ago. That might not be correct. It may have been 13 months or maybe just 51 weeks or so. To keep things simple, I put the beginning at a year ago. I mean the beginning of the worst year ever.

I have cancer, of course. Terminal cancer. And I’ve had it longer than a year. About two-and-a-half years would be correct. It’s not surprising that the cancer is much worse now that I’ve been ill as long as I have. I get chemotherapy pretty regularly and it’s as bad as you’ve heard. That, too, has gotten worse in the last year.

Then there’s my brother, my older brother, Kevin. He had a stroke this last year. A one-time football player and a long-distance bike rider, he’s now stuck in a wheel chair, barely able to stand, unable to use his right arm. His dental practice? Kaput. My kid brother had cancer, now in remission. Lynne was ill, in and out of hospital several times. And now my mother's in the hospital with a broken hip and some strange mental condition that makes it impossible for her to clearly verbalize her thoughts.

This was exactly how far I’d written in this blog/journal entry a couple of days ago when my phone rang. It was my niece, my kid brother's daughter, calling from Clearwater. At first I thought she was calling about my mother. She wasn’t. She called to tell me that another of my nieces, Monica, had visited my mom for several hours, left my mother’s room to go to mom’s house, where she, Monica, was staying. Everything seemed fine. It wasn’t. For some reason I guess we’ll never know, Monica – an attorney, a beautiful young woman, smart and funny, much loved by her family – went into my mother’s bathroom and hanged herself.

What can I say or write? I feel terrible for my big brother, Kevin, and for Monica’s mother Mary Anne and her stepmother, Roz. I feel terrible for Monica’s brothers and sisters and cousins. I tremble at the thought of what this horrible news will do to my mother and am only writing this because I know she has no access to this blog.

I want to curse. I try to pray and I can’t except to tell my Higher Power that I’ve had enough, the family has had enough, leave us alone, please!

I talked to a priest yesterday, Father Bob. He went to Jesuit High School in Tampa with me and now serves at my mother’s parish. He said that his belief was that when someone took her own life, she was saying: "God, I’m in so much pain and trouble I simply can’t take it any more. I’m turning it over to you." That terrible last act, then, becomes a sort of prayer. Maybe someday that thought will really help. I can see how it could. For now, it doesn’t. I’m sad, terribly sad, and confused and frightened and angry that my niece, that wonderful girl I held on my lap and loved and whom my mom loved almost beyond belief, would do this miserable thing apparently without thought or care of what it could do to my mother, her grandmother and the rest of her family.

What I thought was the worst year of my life when I started this blog, became, in an instant, immeasurably worse.

I like to act as if I discover lessons in the situations I face. Lessons that teach me, and perhaps you, something about life or death or love or family or something worth thinking about. There’s no lesson here. None. None at all.

MJ and DI

2009-07-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

My mother got out of the hospital last Friday (June 26), went home and broke her hip on Saturday. She somehow survived Sunday but was back in the hospital on Monday. She had surgery today (July 1) and somehow expects to be walking within a week.

At least that’s the news I got from my mother and my brother up in Clearwater. I never heard of anything like that, but, hey, it sounds good to me.

I had chemo this morning. It wasn’t bad but early in the drive home my tight lower lip went completely numb. It only took an instant for the lip to go from being normal to tingling, as if I’d been given a big pain-killer shot in a dentist’s office.

I know I should have turned back to the hospital, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go home.

I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. It worked out though. Not long after I walked into the apartment, the lip felt fine.

So far, so good. Mom seems to be okay and I’m here.

Meanwhile, I wish everybody would stop talking about Michael Jackson, his money, his DNA, his drug habit, and everything else.

I feel bad for Farrah Fawcett Major’s loved ones and followers. Thanks to The King of Pop, her passing has hardly been noticed.

The same thing happened to Mother Theresa (now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta) after her death in 1997. Diana, the Princess of Wales, died just a few days earlier and news of her passing in a brutal auto accident in Paris put the Roman Catholic nun at the back of most newspapers.

I don't know why, but this stuff bothers me. In a way, though, I enjoy it. It takes my mind off me and my mom for a bit and gives me something new to complain about.

Mom, Again

2009-06-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

My mother is home from the hospital. The doctors wanted her to stay a few more days, but she vetoed that idea and checked herself out on Friday. It seems she has three very small growths in the left hemisphere of her brain.

The growths, it seems, are little, nasty offspring of a larger, older cancer somewhere in my mother’s body. The experts don’t know where that older, primary cancer is lurking.

This sounds strange, I know, but it seems it is not rare for cancer cells to be found of undetermined origin. The doctors might, they say, find out if Mom was willing to undergo a lot of tests. She’s not and I understand completely.

She’ll be getting some outpatient, radiology treatment for the next couple of weeks and then, as much as is possible, go back to the routine life of a 92-year-old woman.

I just spoke with her on the phone. Her speech is still a bit confused and confusing, but better than it was. She’s in bed, tired, she said, but okay.

A lot of people who don’t know Mary Doherty have been praying for her. Friends in the fellowship. Women I know at the grocery store. A barber I visited on Thursday. Lynne’s many friends. Worshipers at three churches, maybe four.

The prayers seem to be working.

Here’s what I mean:

My mother is still able to do the New York Times crossword puzzle, an activity she truly loves. She has a tough time talking – making all the words she actually says match the words she’s thinking when she speaks – but there seems to be no cleft between her thinking and writing.

That may be a miracle.

That’s all I’m going to write about my mother, at least for a time.

Mom

2009-06-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

My phone rang yesterday afternoon. It was my brother, Pat, the lawyer in Clearwater. He called with the news that my mother was in the hospital. I wasn't really surprised. You see, my ninety-two year old mom has recently been a bit confused when she and I spoke on the phone. For the last few weeks, she seemed always to be searching for words, sometimes saying things that didn’t make sense.

I’d already talked to Pat about her problem. He sees her almost every day. He had noticed the same things but knew there was no way we could force her to go to a doctor, at least not yet. He said he would watch her carefully, but for now he would let it pass. I agreed.

We were wrong.

My mom, Mary, telephoned Pat in mid-morning yesterday. When she spoke, nothing she said made any kind of sense at all. Oh, she was able to talk, and to say real words, but the words she said had nothing to do with anything. She might want to say mailbox and instead, she’d say ice cream bar or puppy dog.

And she was terrified.

Pat took mom to the hospital in town where the doctors quickly diagnosed her problem as something called aphasia.

Pat explained what aphasia really is, but I didn’t get it. I was too worried about my mother and wondering what the hell I should do. Later, after we hung up, I looked it up online and discovered that it is a language disturbance caused by a lesion of the brain, making an individual partially or totally impaired in her ability to speak, write, or comprehend the meaning of spoken or written words.

Mom was held overnight. I spent most of the night worrying, sure she was either going to die or end her life in a nursing home. Some time around midnight, I decided to reschedule my next chemo so Lynne and I could rush up to be with her.

This morning, I found out that aphasia often cures itself and doesn’t last a long time. In fact, my mother is already somewhat better. A few moments ago, she and I spoke on the phone and even laughed together. Some of what she said didn’t make sense but that was okay and it will probably pass. She even thinks she’ll be able to keep working the New York Times crossword each day and that’s a relief.

So I feel better today. And that’s good. You see, I’ve been having a rough go since my last chemotherapy. It’s more than two weeks now and I am just starting to feel good enough to want to write anything at all. My appetite has returned enough that I don’t have to force everything down my throat and I'm not forced to spend the entirety of each day in bed.

Of course, my mother knew I’d been having a rough time, so before we quit talking, she asked me how I was doing. I told her I felt okay. I also told her Lynne and I would be up to visit her as soon as possible.

My mother asked me if I have any more chemo scheduled and I told her I did, in just a week, and she told me not to worry about her, that she would be fine.

"Hell," she said, "just stay home and take care of your damn self for a while."

I laughed.

Now, you might think that rough language was caused by my mom’s bout of aphasia. It wasn’t.

That’s the way my mother – a bright or maybe brilliant retired English teacher/librarian – talks.

Not always, but sometimes and only with me. She once explained to me that she talks that way because she’s retired, never in a classroom or library, and she gets to cuss a bit when she feels like it.

When I heard her words, I really felt relief because I truly knew she was already recovering.

Damn, it made me feel good.

Father's Day

2009-06-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

The last week was rough. Not surprising in any way since it was a post-chemo week. I spent much time in bed reading. I had no opportunity to get any new books, so I flipped through the pages of volumes I read and enjoyed earlier, but didn’t much remember. I watched parts of a couple of Cubs games on television and didn’t much care who won. Tried to eat and enjoy food and couldn’t.

A bad week, right?

Yes. Except for one thing.

On Thursday, I got a father’s day card from Dylan, my elder son. The card – also signed by his wife, Mickie, and daughter, Chloe – included the word "love."

I’ve know I’ve written a bit in this blog about my alcoholism and my background as a usually drunken loser. If you ever wondered just how bad I was, how bad I treated people in my life, consider this:

The father’s day card I got yesterday is the first, the very first, father’s day card I ever received. I never expected it.

When I left the home I shared with the two boys and their mother, Cathy, Dylan was 3 and Eamon was 1. I didn’t see either of the boys again or even speak with them or write them letters until a time about seven years after my departure when we met very briefly and very nervously. The boys, aged 10 and eight at the time, didn’t really want anything to do with me and I don’t blame them.

After that meeting, we basically had nothing to do with each other until just a few years back.

Now they’re married, each of them, and each of them is a father. Neither boy drinks, and I know each is doing a hell of a lot better than I did.

The thing that’s tough is that I loved my sons. I loved Cathy, as well. I had a problem, though, because I couldn’t live the love I felt. I drank instead. Oh, I’d stay sober for a time, sober enough to temporarily save the marriage or a job. But I always ended up in some gin mill or low life hillbilly bar, drinking. And when I drank, I got drunk damn near every day I can remember.

Think about that for a moment. It makes it hard to be a father or a husband.

I got lucky with Eamon a few years back. He and I met and had a chance to talk. We started using the telephone to stay in touch. After a bit of time, we spoke about our love for each other. I was invited to his wedding and though I couldn’t go because of my illness, he understood. Since then, I’ve met his wife, Jennifer, and cuddled my grandson, Aidyn. Wow.

I wasn’t so lucky with Dylan. We sent each other e-mails and spoke briefly on the phone, but he was distant. So was his wife and my granddaughter. They live in Colorado and there was no way for us to meet each other so we stayed apart. A couple of times, on the phone, I told him I loved him but he didn’t respond. Not at all.

That’s why the Father’s day card is a big deal. He also said he and his wife would come to Florida as soon as they could. If so, I’ll get to see my beautiful granddaughter and maybe, just maybe, get to hug her at least for a moment.

I talked to my younger brother, Pat, after I got the father’s day card. Like me, he said it was really great that I’d have caring contact with my two boys. The were, he said, truly good young men. He’d know better than I would because when they were young, he had more contact with them than I ever did.

I’m glad Pat helped them when he could. I’m glad their mother, Cathy, was as good a woman as she was and is. I’m glad their stepfather was the stand-up man he was. And I’m really glad my sons and I have at least a little contact, for however long it lasts.

Lack of Memory

2009-06-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

It’s Tuesday. Chemotherapy yesterday so I’m not feeling wonderful. I am, however, feeling a hell of a lot better than I might be feeling, so I’m thankful.

I know I’ve written a bit about memories lately. Not a lot, but a bit. I’ve even mentioned that one of my side-effects from chemotherapy, a relatively recent one, is that my memory is nowhere near as encompassing as it was last month. And it’s nowhere good as, say, six months ago.

Online, I’ve read that loss of memory is a not unusual side-effect involved in several types of chemotherapy and, when I’ve mentioned it to my doc or to the nurses who shoot the chemicals into my blood system, they haven't been surprised in the least.

I’d like to say it’s really bothering me, and it is sometimes. A couple of times at fellowship meetings, when I’ve started to say something I consider really meaningful and important, I’ve gotten in mid-paragraph and my mind has gone completely blank. That embarrasses me but seems not particularly bothering to my listeners.

I’ve also run into serious problems working the New York Times crossword puzzle, a near-daily challenge I’ve given myself for almost 30 years. In the past, I never bothered working the Monday puzzle because that’s the easiest of the week. Infrequently, I’ve been stumped by a Thursday puzzle (usually the trickiest) and, a few times, by the big Sunday puzzle. That all changed about two months ago when I found myself unable to solve almost any Times puzzle. Even the Monday ones.

That’s disheartening. It is specially bothersome since my mother and I talk on the phone each evening, and, for years, one of the things we chatted about was that day’s crossword experience. No more. She is kind enough not even to bring it up.

And, of course, the lack of memory sometimes causes difficulties when I’m working on my memoir.

There is at least one benefit, though.

You see, I’ve discovered that my memory of books I’ve recently read is terrible. In fact, I can read a book…put it down for a couple of weeks and then pick it up and start reading it again. Oh, it may seem familiar but not very.

Saturday, Lynne and I went to our local Kroch’s to look around. I found a memoir written by a journalist-alcoholic, picked it up, looked at it and found it interesting. So I bought it.

I finished reading the book - Drunkard - yesterday. As I read it I had, again and again, the sense that it was not new to me. Three or four times, I got out of bed (my constant reading location these days), and searched my bookcases and stacks of books and books dumped in the corners of my room, figuring I’d find a copy of Drunkard I’d read a couple of months ago, finished, and not recognized in the book store.

I didn’t.

Until this morning. I could not find one of the shoes I needed to go outside. Finally, I knelt by my bed and lowered my head to search. I found the shoe. But I also found a copy of the book, a bit dusty, but the same book.

Of course, there’s a downside here. I spent money I didn’t need to spend. But, think about this for a moment. If I plan correctly I can take five or six books, or maybe 15 or 20 books I really enjoy and stack them on the floor next to my bed. I can work my way through the stack one book at a time, carefully arranging the books I’ve read in a new stack on the other side of my bed. The second stack, of course, would have to be arranged in reverse. It could be done though, couldn’t it?

I would save hundreds of dollars a year. And I would consistently be reading something I enjoy.

Right now, in fact, I’m reading one of Garrison Keillor’s books and loving it. I know I’ve read it before. There’s no doubt. In fact, I read it last month. As I turn the pages, I feel a slight sense that I’m revisiting prpse, but not a strong enough sense to diminish my pleasure.

I’m okay, then, with my memory loss. For now. I do hope it doesn’t get any worse. I’d hate to start forgetting names. If I do, and we meet, I hope you understand, whatever your name is.

Pal

2009-06-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

I’m sick of being sick. I’m also sick of writing about being sick and talking about all the stuff that goes with being sick.

This is the right kind of day for me to feel this way because this is one of the days just before chemotherapy when I’m able and allowed to feel pretty good.

That’s all that I want to write about cancer, for today.

I’m sitting here – at the big desk in my room – thinking about the past and the times I had fun. I’ve no idea why I get some of the good memories I get when I get them. My best thought is that the good memories, the ones that make me smile, are gifts from whomever to allow me to forget about where I’m at and what I'm facing right now.

I just remembered my sixth birthday when my dad came home from work and I ran to meet him in our basement because I knew he’d have a present for me. He was dressed, as always in cold weather, in heavy boots and a workman’s pants and a sweater under a thick U.S. Navy peacoat guaranteed to keep him warm. His work clothes, as always, were covered with dust that settled on him as he loaded or unloaded grain from a Chicago River cargo vessel.

I don’t remember what I said but I’m pretty sure it was something like "Daddy!" I guess he smiled. What I do remember is him sliding his big left hand into his huge peacoat pocket and me standing still, waiting to see just what he brought me as a birthday present. I hoped it was some kind of toy, maybe even the slingshot I’d wanted ever since I’d spied a drawing of one on the back of a comic book.

I held my breath for a moment, then yelped as he pulled from his pocket a tiny, black and white puppy just big enough to fill his hand. The dog barked once or twice, then whimpered, then kicked all four legs as my dad held it so I could grab it for myself.

My father had found the dog, he said, below deck on some ship that had spent time in Alaska. "I think she’s a husky," he said.

I named the dog "Pal." Not because that was a great dog’s name but because it was the name of the dog in a book I was reading for school. It made no difference to me that Pal was a boy dog’s name while the dog I was holding was a little girl. I didn’t care a bit.

We, the family, had Pal for a dozen years. At first, she was my dog then, as time passed, she became the family’s dog who always seemed fondest of the stevedore who’d carried her off the cargo ship.

It’s enjoyable thinking about that part of my past. Hey, it’s enjoyable thinking about anything other than you-know-what. So I’m going to stop right here.

Anniversary

2009-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was honored at one of my fellowship meetings on the last Saturday of last month. At least that’s the way I look at it.

You see, last month marked my 14th year without any beer or booze or even wine. That may not sound like much to you, but trust me, it is.

Fourteen years.

And I made this last year in the face of some true trials and tribulations. My own illness. Lynne’s problems. Fear. Loneliness, at times. Pain and exhaustion.

Once, just once in this period, I thought seriously about getting drunk. I can’t tell you what brought it on because it would hurt someone I don’t want to hurt. Trust me, though, I was in a place, going through serious troubles that filled me with pain and terror and anger. I was driving my car when this happened. I didn’t think about taking a drink. I’m not that kind of drinker. My thoughts were a bit more serious.

"Screw this sobriety. Let’s go get a quart of vodka and get all f##@*d up!"

That’s what I thought.

Instead, I pulled my car off a highway and onto the road’s shoulder. I closed my eyes and managed to say a prayer to a higher power I’m not sure about and who – if he’s around – has pissed me off. I do that, sometimes. And I guess he (or she) wanted to give me a break. The desire left. Quick.

That may sound like nothing to you.

It ain’t. It’s a big deal. For me, anyway, it’s a real big deal.

It would have been wonderful if I could have sat in the celebratory fellowship gathering a few days ago and thought about making 14 more years. That would have been great. After all, I’ve enjoyed looking forward in my life, thinking about things I might accomplish, trips I might take, new things I could learn. But I can’t do that any longer.

Hell, I don’t know for sure how long I’ll be around. I’m not a pessimist, but trust me. I don’t think very often about what I’ll be doing five years from now or ten years from now or fifteen. But I do make plans for the more immediate future.

I think of writing I’d like to do. I think of taking a trip to St. Augustine with Lynne. The last time we were there was like a honeymoon. I plan to see my mother and brothers some time soon. I hope I get to see a granddaughter I’ve never seen. And so on.

At the fellowship meeting where I was congratulated on my fourteen years of sobriety, I was given a brass medallion and asked to say a few words to the others in the room. In the past, I haven’t made a big deal out of my anniversary. This time, though, I felt like I should.

I hugged my friend who handed me the card. I thanked everybody in the room. And then I thought for a moment. I wondered what I might say. Then I put into words my biggest hope for the future.

"I sure as hell hope I stand here a year from now and celebrate my fifteenth anniversary without booze."

That’s what I said and for now that’s the most important future desire I can have.

Hopes

2009-05-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

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.

God

2009-04-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

I go to a sobriety fellowship meeting almost every morning. I’ve been sober for a long time so I don’t really have to go. I go because it’s habit and I enjoy myself, mostly.

At each meeting, there are prayers.

The Serenity Prayer at the beginning. The Lord’s Prayer at the end. In between, lots of stuff about God’s will and counting on God for help.

It is supposed to be okay if you don’t join the prayers or talk about God because the fellowship doesn’t demand religious belief. If you don’t join in, though, you better be prepared for some people to look at you as if you are committing some kind of terrible sin.

I don’t join in and hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer any more. I haven’t for a couple of years. It’s not because I don’t believe or don’t want to be social. It’s because my immune system has been weakened by chemo and I’m afraid of holding hands with some alky I’ve never seen before.

I do believe enough to pray, my own way.

Listen. I like to think I’m an intelligent fellow. I’ve been told I have a high IQ. I was invited to join MENSA a few decades ago. Unfortunately, at the time I was in this place where they kept me behind a whole bunch of locked doors so I couldn’t really get to a meeting. Still, I’ve always considered myself bright.

Right now, though, there are times when my mind seems incredibly slow and my thinking incredibly shallow. I can blame that slowness and lack of depth on the handful of drugs I take every day and on the chemo.

There’s one good thing about this slower mind of mine. I can read the chapter of a book, enjoy it, then go to sleep. When I wake, I can pick up the book, look at the chapter I just read and remember none of it. So I can read it again. And enjoy it again.

I can save tons of money simply reading the same book over and over again.

Anyway, I have come up with a belief in a Higher Power. I have to say, however, that my Higher Power belief is a bit different from other beliefs I hear spoken about in fellowship meetings. My mental shallowness probably has a lot to do with this.

I was raised Catholic. My dad went to mass and communion almost every day of his life. We went as a family each Sunday and Feast Day. I was an altar boy and believed enough to consider becoming a priest for a while. I stopped thinking about a life of chastity when I was in the seventh grade. I saw a girl with remarkable breasts in the school library. About eight years later, the same girl – Patti – and I would marry.

Anyway, I practiced Catholicism until I graduated from high school and enlisted in the Air Force. Then, I simply stopped. I went to one mass in Japan, with girl I liked. Dropped in on a Buddhist Temple or two for the same reason. I visited a Baptist service in Texas and didn’t like it; went to a couple of mostly-black churches during my hippie years. I don’t remember thinking much about God in all those years or all the years I drank.

Now I do.

First, I need to be honest about my belief. The God I believe in doesn’t really have a name. If you want to call God something, "God" is about as good as it gets. But I don’t think you need to refer go God as "God" to get attention. "Help" or "Hey You" are probably acceptable.

The first times I prayed as an adult were in the earliest days of my sobriety. My sponsor – a kind of guide in the fellowship – told me he thought it might be a good idea if I asked a higher power for help. He told me how he did it. He was sober 30-something years at that point, so I paid attention.

I lived alone, but I was afraid someone would see me pray, so I prayed in the shower. "God," I said, "I don’t know if I believe in you. I don’t know that you’ll help me if you’re listening. But Jimmy told me I should pray. So I’m praying. Help."

That’s what I said. And something happened. I didn’t drink. I stayed sober.

When I think of God, I remember those simple prayers. I imagine God as an old guy (sorry, I can’t imagine an old woman God). The guy I think of resembles Monty Hall, long-time host of "Let’s Make a Deal." And his deal is simple. If I do one simple thing he asks me to do, I win everything. If I don’t, a lose everything.

And the thing I’m supposed to do is lead a life of service to other people. It doesn’t have to be "uniformed" service like that performed by the religious crew in "Guys and Dolls" or big-deal service like that done by Francis of Assisi. It can be smaller than the stuff done by television evangelists. It can be so small only I know about it and maybe the person or institution I'm serving.

It works. Sure, sometimes I’m not of service – I do something to hurt someone or maybe cheat someone – but not often. And when I do, I try to fix it.

Usually, I do what Monty Hall wants me to do. I make a deal. I offer service. And in return, he, God, makes my life okay (most of the time) and, as a consequence, I don’t really fear death. Not at all.

It just makes sense to me. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after I die. Maybe nothing. Or maybe – and this is what I think – I’ll return to be part of the undefinable power that created everything damn near an infinity ago. I’m okay with that.

I’m also guided by the great, deep, philosophical argument presented by Blaise Pascal. It’s bit fancier than my Monty Hall approach, but not really much.

You see, Pascal said, if God really does not exist, it makes no difference at all what you believe. If you bet there’s no God, and you win, you win nothing. If you bet there is a God, and you lose, you lose nothing.

If, however, there is a God and you bet he exists, and he does exist, you win eternal happiness.
Of course, if you bet there is no God, and he does exist, you lose, you lose everything.

Therefore, the safest, most meaningful, most profitable bet is to put all your money in Monty Hall’s hand and bet in the existence of a higher power.

That’s what I do.

Oh, yes, there were a lot of people praying that I’d get good news from my cat scan a few days ago.

I didn’t get "miraculous" news, but I got pretty good news. The main tumor has grown, but just slightly. It could have been much worse. I thought it would be. I’m starting a new kind of chemo.

I guess the prayers didn’t do any harm.

Yuck

2009-04-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

Cat-scan today. I won’t learn what the scan discloses until sometime next week. I guess I shouldn’t be frightened, but I am. I figure the recent weight loss and increased fatigue signal problems.

Problems….

Anyway, I went and lay in the machine with my arms above my head and kept still while I was being scanned and the technician and I hardly talked. That’s okay. I didn’t really have much to say and she looked angry.

I telephoned Lynne from the hospital hallway just to let her know I was done and she told me she’d been praying for me and knew without a doubt that I was going to be okay. I hope she’s right, but doubt it. I keep those doubts to myself though I’m sure she knows.

I’d planned to write today, but I just don’t have the steam. I try to read and can’t remember what I read from paragraph to paragraph. I could listen to the Chicago Cubs baseball game on my computer, but I just don’t care. I’ll sleep. Then later, Lynne and I will eat, or she’ll eat and I’ll make believe and then I’ll go to bed and she’ll be alone.

Some of the days are like this. There’s no real way to fight it. All I can do is hope tomorrow is a bit brighter.

Plagiarism

2009-04-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

I’m between chemo treatments now, enjoying about three weeks without injections. Later this month, it’s cat-scan time, then a visit to the oncologist. Then the doc and I will decide what, if anything, we can do. I think there’s only one more chemo method we can attempt, something oral, but we’ll see.

I am alone a lot these days. Oh, Lynne and I are in the apartment but a distance apart that is much too long and arduous to be easily overcome.

Perhaps because of loneliness, I have found it a bit easier now to write every day. That makes me happy. I believe I’ve always been cheered by writing, grateful that I have had both the ability and opportunities to make my way as an author.

In an old shoe box in my closet, I have the very first thing I ever wrote. It was a little story about St. Patrick and Ireland. I guess I knew I really wanted to write books, because I’d taken two sheets of typing paper and folded them in half, then stapled them to fashion a tiny book ofeight pages, each filled with words and iterrible llustrations done in crayon.

My mom saved that creative work, giving it to me along with a bunch of old souvenirs – photos and grade cards from school and old news clippings and a dried flower from someplace long forgotten. I was, according to the date my mother had written on the first page, five years old when I’d written about St. Patrick.

I was thinking about that piece of work yesterday and suddenly, without warning, I remembered some other writing I managed to scribble out 45 years ago, or so.

What I remembered was winning the first writing contest I ever entered, a contest held when I was in the fifth grade at Our Lady of Peace, or maybe the sixth. If my memory is correct, every Catholic student in whatever grade I was in was given the chance to write 100 words or so about something Catholic and then – to win a prize – submit the writing to some priest or maybe a bishop or even a cardinal.

That judge, poor fellow, would read all the words of all the students and name two winners. One of the winners would be a girl, the other would be a boy.

I didn’t write a word until the night before the work was to be turned in. I had no idea what to write until I picked up a tiny volume written by some priest somewhere to explain different Catholic terms to little boys, like me. Flipping the little book open, I found myself looking at a page about prayer. Specifically, about how to pray.

I don’t know who the author was and have no recollection of the words. I do remember reading each sentence and then rewriting it in little boy terms. I even remember making a couple of mistakes on purpose. I remember hoping I would not get caught.

Ha!

Not only did I not get caught, I won the contest. Some girl from a school in the north side of town, won the female division.

As I recall, both writings – mine and the girl’s – were printed in the city’s Catholic newspaper or perhaps the parish bulletin. I was, I guess, supposed to feel proud. Instead, I was terrified. I just knew someone would recognize the words and shame me. I kept waiting for the telephone to ring or for a posse of monsignors to show up at the front door.

Instead, all I got was a note that I’d won a ticket to see The Song of Bernadette movie in one of the downtown movie houses. I wouldn’t be alone, of course. I’d be accompanied by the little girl who had won the female contest and by two nuns, one from my school and one from hers.

I don’t remember enjoying the movie even though we sat in the balcony. The only thing I remember about the little girl are the truths that she was terribly obese and disgustingly holy. As I recall, she sat with her hands together and her head slightly bowed from the film's opening until its ending.

I firmly remember that we couldn’t get popcorn or candy. I remember I had to sit next to a nun who prayed her rosary without a pause. I remember some other kids looking at me and the girl and the nuns and laughing. I couldn’t wait to get home.

I don’t believe I’ve ever knowingly plagiarized since those days. The reward for stealing those words was, to my mind, a simply horrible punishment.

I don’t even enjoy the memories at all.

The Future

2009-04-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

I spoke earlier about how difficult it is to simply think of my future and easy it is to embrace the past.

I spend a lot of time in bed these days. Sometimes asleep, usually awake. Often, as I lay in bed, I look around my room at stuffed, untidy bookcases, at boxes full of old manuscripts, at pictures, at piles of books on the floor, and clothes I should have hung up. Hell, I’ll look at just about anything that captures my eye.

One recent day, I looked at the top of one of my bookcases. I saw a couple of small boxes holding financial statements and old contracts from publishers. I glanced at the 20 or so books filed on top of the case. I saw an Irish cap I bought a few months ago, a cap I love. I also saw a framed picture of me in the fifth-grade class in Our Lady of Peace School in Chicago.

When I looked at the cap, I wondered briefly – very briefly – if I’d live long enough to once again experience cold weather in South Florida. I wondered if I’d ever wear the cap again.

Then I looked at the old class picture. Instantly, I was back in the fifth grade, tiny and skinny, dressed in my light blue uniform shirt and dark blue tie decorated with embroidered letters reading "OLP." I closed my eyes for a moment and I was back in the classroom with its green chalkboard, huge crucifix, and Sister Maureen, as small as most students in the class, with a look, when angry, as terrifying as any monster in any movie.

I smelled the classroom. I looked around and saw Jimmy Ross and Mike Ryan and and Jimmy Flynn and I remembered our playing together in the street outside the school and remembered how Sister Maureen always sold candy in the classroom to raise money for the missions in Africa and I smiled and really felt good.

Forget the Irish cap. I was much more comfortable in my world of 50 years ago than in the real world of today when I try to imagine my future.

I told Lynne (she’s home from the hospital) about my feelings. We’re married 18 years now, our anniversary just three days ago. As we talked, we both realized how long it has been since we’ve sat and spoken, for any time at all, about our fears and hopes and wishes and our feelings.

It has been a long time, but it hasn’t really been intentional.

We’ve both been locked inside ourselves. Part of the locking having to do with the feelings we share, each of us, that the other, our spouse, is in enough pain without our adding any weight.

It’s not helped great deal by the physicality of our situation, me in bed for hours at a stretch, unable or unwilling to speak to anyone while Lynne’s awake, moving about, looking for company.
That situation is just not right, Lynne told me. I agreed. So we’re going to set at least a little time aside each day, time to sit and talk about the stuff that matters, not the bank account or the dinner recipe or what television to watch.

Instead, we’ll talk about how we feel, what we fear, what we welcome, that kind of thing. Wish us luck.

Oh, yes, when I told Lynne about my inability to imagine the future, any future, she gave me some advice.

Think first of tomorrow, she said. Have a hope for that next day, that tomorrow, a desire, a target, whatever. Make the hope or desire or whatever achievable. That way, there’s some satisfaction almost certainly in store.

At the same time, she said, have one goal a bit further out, maybe two months or four months or so, but within a very possibly achievable time. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Maybe a short trip to St. Augustine, the city we both love. Maybe a trip to hear an opera or visit a friend in Miami or who knows. Again, its something achievable, realistic, and therefore comfortable.
My short-term goal is simple. I’m back working again, writing a bit and editing a bit each and every day. It’s good. I like the feeling of still being worthy of something. It also makes me feel as if there’s some reason for me to look into the future.

My long-term goal is for Lynne and me to go up to our favorite city, to eat in one or two of St. Augustine’s justifiably famous restaurants, to visit one more time the Castillo de San Marcos on the waterfront and to walk along the narrow streets of the Old City past the tourist traps and gift shops.

Let me rephrase that. The real long-term goal is for us to take that trip after I’ve finished writing the two books I’m working on. and almost finished That would be a pretty good way to end my life.

Memories

2009-04-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

I spend some time each day reading a few of my favorite newspapers on line.

I start with the New York Times. I’m a subscriber, but I usually start reading before my "real" paper has hit the porch outside my front door. By the time the paper comes, generally, the only thing I look at is the daily crossword. That’s because my mother and I have started something like a competition to see who does better on the puzzle each day. I telephone her at 6 p.m. and we compare notes.

Anyway, after the Times, I hit the Washington Post. I’m not so crazy about the Post these days. I loved it when the Carl Woodward-Bob Bernstein team broke some disgusting news about Tricky-Dicky-Nixon almost every day. It seemed to me they weren’t aggressive enough in George W’s earliest days and stayed too friendly as his disastrous time in office came to an end.

(The only true reporting on Bush was available on the John Stewart Show. If you don’t know that show, it’s on the "Comedy Network." I think that says a hell of a lot about the Bush era.)

After the Post, I look at the Chicago Tribune. No mystery here. I was a kid in Chicago and – after my time in the service – returned as a student at the Goodman School of Drama, part of the Art Institute. That’s a good school. One of the most famous in the country. Lest you think I’m bragging, I need to be honest and say my drinking got me expelled. At the age of 23.

After the Trib, I look at the Chicago Sun Times because the Sun Times is a bit more politically liberal than the Trib. The Sun Times also features Roger Ebert, the famous movie reviewer and general commentator.

I have a special feeling for Ebert. We’re both suffering cancer. Not only that, but he was the friend of a friend of mine when I was going to the Art Institute in the late 1960’s.

One night, late, my friend and I stopped in anIrish bar in Old Town and grabbed places at a crowded table. In one chair, silent but observant, sat a guy who introduced himself as Roger Ebert, the critic for the Sun Times. He wasn’t famous then. Just a nice guy who was drinking Guinness Stout, as I recall. We even talked movies for a couple of minutes. I’m sure he doesn’t remember that night, but I do.

Anyway, the Trib this morning had a brief about how the roof above one of the upper-floor rooms at the Field Museum leaked during a thunder storm, dampening or damaging some of the 250,000 items stored in that single room.

Suddenly, I remembered the Field for the first time in fifty years, or at least forty. My mom used to take us, Kevin and Pat and me, to the museum six or maybe seven times a year. I can close my eyes and remember walking through the main entrance into a magical world. I remember the dinosaur bones and the displays of Neanderthal man and huge insects and rooms filled with mummies, dozens and dozens of mummies.

It’s funny. I can close my eyes and remember the Field and other things from my distant past. I can’t spend even a minute imagining the future.

JUDY

I got a brief email the other day from a woman named Judy. I usually don’t open emails from men or women I don’t know. The subject line on this one, though, said something about "old memories," so I decided to open it.

I’m glad I did.

This email was from someone I knew fifty years ago. Judy Caulfield, her name was, and she lived a little ways up a hill from the girl, Patti, who became my first wife. I can vaguely remember Judy. I think I kissed her a few times but do remember how nice she was.

In her message to me, Judy first told me she'd been reading my blog. She went on to tell me that I’d been always nice to her. She told me I needed to remember more of the past than just my days of drinking, that I just didn’t remember myself fully.

Here’s part of her message:

"What I am trying to say with all this mindless babble is that you had a friend out there all these years who always smiled whenever (she) thought of you. I never knew Kieran the drunk. The Kieran I remember was very sweet and so kind that you have always had a spot in my heart. Isn't it funny how we all go through life not knowing the little bits we leave as we walk."

Again, I don't want to brag, but I’m glad I got that message. I needed it.

Mom

2009-03-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

The other day was Valentine’s Day. It was also the anniversary of my father’s death. I was lucky this year. I got to drive up to Clearwater to spend a few days with my mom and my brothers, Kevin and Pat. On Saturday, Valentine’s Day, we went to Roman Catholic mass together, in remembrance of my father’s passing.

My dad has been dead for 13 years. I’m not sure how old he was when he died. That’s because history seems to show that he was born in either 1906 or 1907, in Ballinahinch, Ireland.

According to my old man, he was born in his family farmhouse on December 26, 1906. That’s the day we celebrated his birthday though we didn’t celebrate much since it was the day after Christmas.

According to his birth certificate, though, my father was born on February 20, 1907. My dad said the difference in dates arose because his birth wasn’t registered until his father, John Doherty, made a trip to Cashel, the town where such things were recorded.

That’s possible. After all, when my dad, Patrick, was born into an Irish Catholic family in what is now the Irish Republic, things like his birth date weren’t so important to the British who ruled the island. Neither were his freedom or his health or his education or his diet.

He loved potatoes. Once, in a fancy restaurant, after the waiter had listed all the vegetables he could order with his meal, my dad asked simply for a few boiled praties. That’s the Gaelic word for potatoes. He loved potatoes. My mom said that if she kept serving him spuds, he’d keep eating them until he exploded. That’s because when he was a boy he was never sure that any praties he ate might not be the last available for a time.

My father came to America as a young man. He worked as a handyman for a time, then as a meat-cutter for Harding’s Corn Beef, then as a salesman, and – finally – as a longshoreman, loading and unloading boats on the Chicago River. He left the house before dawn and never came home before sunset. He was a hard man, big and strong and tough. I heard he was quite a boxer as a young man, the champion of Cashel, taking on challengers from other villages. I know he had huge fists.

He was tough with his family, as well. But he loved us all. In his world, that love was best expressed by putting food on the table in a safe house. He wanted each of us, he often said, to climb higher up the ladder than he’d been able to climb.

My dad and I loved each other, but we didn’t get along well during all those years when booze ruled my life. I became things, drinking, he never wanted me to become. In fact, neither he nor my mom talked to me for more than a dozen years when my drinking was bad. I don’t blame them. Those were years when I couldn’t look in the mirror.

Anyway, after I got sober things improved.

"I don’t understand your being a drunk," my father told me. "I don’t know why you can’t just stop when you want to stop." I knew it would make no sense to try to explain. "Anyway," my father said, "you’re sure as hell doing better these days. Keep the plug in the damned jug." Then he hugged me. It’s the only time I can remember that he hugged me.

At the mass said at my father’s church on Valentine’s Day, I got to sit next to my mother. She’s 93 years old now and a bit deaf and very unsteady on her feet. She can’t kneel any more the way Catholics are supposed to kneel during mass. But she was there. And when the priest announced that the mass was being said in remembrance of Patrick Joseph Doherty, my mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

I’m glad I was there.

A Good Day

2009-01-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

I just finished my nightly phone conversation with my mother.

We’re both cold today. The temperature was a very un-Florida-like thirty-seven when I woke this morning and not much higher than that up in Clearwater where mom lives.

We each spent a lot of time in bed today, under the covers to keep warm. I know we have it easier than people in Minnesota but staying under the covers today seemed like a good idea.
So we complained a bit on the phone. We talked about how we were tired, in addition to being cold.

Then we talked about Barak Obama. President Barak Obama. We talked about what a wonderful day yesterday was, seeing Barak Hussein Obama take the toast of office administered by a conservative Chief Justice so shaken that he couldn’t get the words of the oath straight. We talked about how good it was to see Dubya headed off stage and how good it was to see Dick Cheney for what we hope is the last time, smirking in a wheelchair with all the confidence of the truly venal.

"I’m glad I lived long enough to see that," my mom said.

"I’m glad, too," I said. And I am. It’s about time. It’s about damn time.

Bitter

2009-01-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a tough week.

My wife has been ill, and it’s been rough. I can’t say what’s wrong with her, it wouldn’t be right. But I can say she’s been waging a terrible war against her illness and, unfortunately, losing all but a few of the battles.

It’s hard, in times like these, to take the focus off myself. There’s this feeling I have – rightly or not – that I’m the one who needs help right now. "Damn it," I say to myself, "why this? Why now? What about me?"

"I don’t want to die alone." That’s what I say.

I don’t want to.

Then I think about her and try to put myself inside her head. I can’t. She’s been not well pretty much since the day I left my oncologist’s office in the VA hospital, met her in the waiting room, and told her the news.

"It’s not good."

I remember. Her eyes went kind of blank for a moment as if she was looking into a future she couldn’t comprehend. Then she nodded. "Yes," she said. "I get it."

But she didn’t really get it right away. Not all of it. But as time passed, and I had chemo and didn’t get any better, as my immune system crashed and I puked and bled in unmentionable ways, as I grew sicker, she started to get it. She began to understand the future and now it scares hell out of her. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be inside her head.

In the fellowship I belong to, there’s a lot of talk about God’s will. No matter what happens, I’m told, it’s "God’s Will." The words are always said with reverence, said so large that I know there’s no arguing with them.

That’s baloney. God is supposed to be rational, loving, and just. There’s been nothing rational or loving or just about this last week and my wife’s pain. If God’s intention is to teach me how painful it is to watch someone I love suffer, I’ve learned. I don’t need any more training, so stop, already.

Friends ask what they can do to help and the only response I can make is to ask them to pray. What I don’t tell them is that I don’t think prayer is going to help because the God who would do this isn’t about to listen to any pleas from anybody.

So I've had a tough week.

But nowhere near as tough as my wife's. I wish it would end.

Hopes

2009-01-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I watched – online – an interview Barbara Walters conducted on Patrick Swayze, the actor who is battling pancreatic cancer.

I've only seen a few minutes of Swayze as an actor. Lynne and I went to see "Ghost" the very first time we dated. We were shy - hard to believe, right? - and we were both embarassed by some scene I don't remember. I also don't remember Swayze as a particularly impressive actor. That may have more to do with my memory than with his talent, but it’s a fact. As a consequence, I was not much interested when I first saw a link to his interview. But for some reason, I clicked on the link. I’m glad I did.

Swayze has – like me – already outlived his prognosis. Like me, he has some goals he wants to accomplish before the cancer wins its fight, as it surely will. Like me, Swayze is questioning his faith but not abandoning it. He is feeling angry but hopeful – not for a cure, but for meaningful days. He wonders what is on the other side. He’s scared sometimes. Me too.

At one point in the interview, Walters asked him how long he thought he’d live. At first, Swayze was reluctant to answer. I understand that. After all, that’s a hell of a question to have to answer, isn’t it? Finally, though, he said he hoped to live five years, perhaps long enough for science to find a cure. Then he hedged his bet. He said "averages" gave him about two more years.

It would be wonderful if, somehow, some magic bullet was found to cure Swayze’s cancer – and mine. Meanwhile, he wants to work, to film a television series, to ride horses on his property out west. He hopes to spend some quality time with his loved ones. I hope he realizes all these goals.

I hope the same things for me. There’s a book I want to finish. I want to have a few good months with my wife. I want to hold my grandchildren and share some more stories with my good friend, Mark. I want to go to a few more meetings of the writer's group I've been part of for more than ten years. Maybe there’s some way I could take the helm of a small sailboat again, just for a few minutes. Or read another book that just knocks my socks off.

But there’s a problem with having a lot of hopes when you have cancer. That’s because this disease doesn’t care about the averages. A doctor, asked about Swayze and his illness, put it right. The cancer could kill Swayze quickly, at any time, he said. All it needs is an excuse.

This morning – January 10 – when I went online, I saw another link to a Swayze story. It seems that at about the same time that I was looking at his first interview, he was hospitalized. In the lexicon of cancer, his condition isn’t serious. He has pneumonia. That frequently happens as a side effect of chemotherapy because the same chemicals that fight cancer destroy a body’s ability to fight off infections.

That's a reminder, if one was needed, just how tenuous hopes have to be, how important it is not to link hapiness to specific goals. Sure, it’s wonderful to have a positive attitutude. It’s nice to have plans and hopes and goals but the truth is that the path any terminal cancer patient is on is full of tricky turns and unexpected dangers. There are some wonderful vistas to be seen, but the road can end at any moment.

I hope Swayze is okay. I hope he gets back to his goals. I hope I do, too.

Tree

2009-01-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

I took our Christmas tree down earlier today. The living room looks empty without it.

We had a fake tree. We’ve been using it for almost 15 years now. I could claim I bought the tree because I didn’t want to cause a real tree to be chopped down, but that’s not true. I bought it because real trees are too much trouble. They smell good, sure, but they shed needles. They’re expensive. I saw a tree outside the grocery store going for $65.

That’s too much money. Years ago, I bought a Pontiac station wagon for $50. This was back in my drinking days. Though it shimmied at anything over walking speed, it was big enough that I was able to live in it for a few weeks I don't much remember. It ran for almost a year. That’s a purchase that made sense. Not a tree.

Of course, when I was little, my family had real trees. And I loved them. When I was little. Now, they seem to be too much work.

I do love Christmas, though, and the decorations and the good cheer. I’m a bit sad that today is Twelfth Day, the day that marks the official end of Christmas. This is the day, tradition has it, when the three wise men brought gifts to the Christ child.

I just found out that in Ireland, Twelfth Day is sometimes celebrated as "Women’s Little Christmas." This is a day when, by custom, men do all the household chores while their wives and mothers and sisters take the day off. In County Cork, I read, the pubs are full of women while the men are home washing dishes and taking care of the kids.

I thought I knew a lot about Ireland. I guess I don’t. My dad never told me about Women’s Little Christmas. I guess my mother didn’t know about it either. I can’t imagine my father washing a dish while mom was out getting a pint of Guinness.

In fact, my dad didn’t much like Christmas. Maybe it was because his birthday was December 26. When I was a kid, I always thought that was a bum deal. But that’s not why he didn’t like Christmas. He didn’t like spending time or money on what he figured were frivolities. He didn’t walk around saying "Humbug" to everybody but he wasn’t exactly full of good cheer.

For years, after my parents built a motel not far from Tampa, our only Christmas tree was an aluminum number illuminated by a spotlight that flashed red and blue and green. It wasn’t even in our living room. It was in the motel office, behind the registration desk.

It was a terrible tree. But not long ago I learned those old, aluminum trees are rare and selling for hundreds or in some cases a thousand dollars or more. I asked my mom what happened to ours. "Oh, your father threw it away thirty years ago," she said.

I glad my dad didn’t live to find out he threw away a valuable antique. That might well have caused him to give up on Christmas all together.

Lynne and I are throwing our old, phony tree away today. It won’t stand straight. It’s worn out. Some of its branches are almost bare. She wants to get a real tree next year. I’ve thought about it and decided we should, if I’m celebrating Christmas. For one thing, it’s what Lynne wants. For another, I’d enjoy it.

I would like to smell a tree one more time. But I’m not going to tell Lynne about Women’s Little Christmas.

New Year

2009-01-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

I saw my oncologist yesterday, the day before New Year’s Day. It seemed fitting, in light of the date, to ask him about my prognosis.

Strange as it may seem, this is only the second time since my diagnosis that my doctor and I have talked in any meaningful way about how long I might live or when I’ll die. I know he doesn’t like to be pinned down and, in fact, can’t legitimately talk about anything other than average survival rates for patients with stage three lung cancer.

To be honest, I’m not real crazy about knowing much more than that about my projected end.

I do know that I’ve already outlived my first prognosis which was – given the averages – that I’d last two years. I’m at two-and-a-half and counting. Not bad. But, given the date, as I said, and the start of a new year, I just had to ask. But I asked in a way to give him plenty of wiggle room.

"Do you think I’ll watch Notre Dame play next year?" I asked.

At first, he looked shocked. "Do you mean play for the national championship?" I guess he remembers that I once said that was what I wanted.

"No," I said, "just play another football game."

"Yes," he said, "you should live to watch them play next season. But I’m not sure they’ll win." I guess he’s a Boston College fan.

Anyway, by my lights, that prognosis is pretty good. So that’s my new target. To watch Notre Dame play again.

I just talked to my mom. She turned 92 yesterday. She’s a young 92, younger than I am at 63 going on 64. I told her about the prognosis and she pretended not to hear me. She does that. She uses her hearing loss as a short-cut to denial, and I’m not about to take that ability away from her.

We laughed about growing old. She told me that when I was a baby – adopted as a preemie after my biological mother died giving birth to me – I caught every baby illness in the books, but shook each one off quickly. "I pray every day you’ll do the same thing with the cancer," she said.

I do, too. I don’t think it will work. I don’t think I’m worthy of a miracle. I know that if I was in charge there are a lot of other people I’d expend my divine powers on before I got down to my name. But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking forward to Notre Dame’s next game because I think that’s doable without miraculous intervention. And I’ll keep feeling grateful that I still have my mother to talk with and laugh with. I’m going to see the end of 2009. God willing, I’ll be able to wish mom another happy birthday.

Reading

2008-12-30T10:56:00.000-08:00

This is the first Christmas I can remember without any gift-wrapped books under the tree with little stickers on them proclaiming they were for me. Instead, I got a couple of gift cards I can use to buy books at the local B&N.

There’s a reason for that. I don’t read the way I used to and the people most likely to buy me books are aware that my reading habits have changed. I used to read nothing but history and biography. I loved books about Elizabethan England, the reign of Henry Tudor, the settlement of pre-colonial America, Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, and old ships or famous mariners.

With that range of interests it was always pretty easy to find me a book or two or three.

I don’t read history any more. Or biographies. So buying me a book is a bit more difficult.

When I first stopped reading history, I turned my attention to memoirs. I read Pete Hamill’s A Drinker’s Life; and Tweak, written by Nic Sheff, a methamphetamine addict.

I devoured books by Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris and James Frey even though I was savvy enough not to believe Frey’s words because I’ve been where he claimed to be and I knew where he was talking about just ain’t the way he described it.

I read Smashed by Koren Zailckas and the beautifully-titled Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn.

These are tales written by the discarded, the addicted, the harmed, and those much less than perfect. Obviously, they each achieved some measure of stability, at least enough to put pen to paper. So each story is a success story in some way.

Each of these stories, and the others I’ve been reading, starts in pain and ends in hope. Each is the story of a mountain climbed or some difficult path walked to a better place. And that’s wonderful.

Lately, though, I’ve been reading Charles Bukowski’s books: Ham on Rye, and Women, and Hollywood, and Pulp, and others. Bukowski, for those who don’t know his work, is the writer whose story was told, at least in part, in the movie Barfly.

His books are different. They’re not about climbing some spiritual mountain or walking some difficult path to overcome an addiction or a dreadful childhood or bipolar illness or whatever. There’s no real salvation in Bukowski’s books. Instead, they tell how he embraced his need and his pain and his rage and somehow managed to co-exist with them and even to profit from the experience.

So why am I reading this stuff?

Thank God my experience has taught me the truth about myself. I know that if I tried to co-exist with my own long-acknowledged alcoholism the way Bukowski did, I’d be lost with the first drink. I’ve accepted that truth and don’t fight it any longer.

I envy Bukowski though, though he died a few years back, at the age of 74. I don’t envy his ability to drink and write and manage to eke out an existence but his ability to embrace his demons without flinching and turn that embrace into something positive.

Because not all demons can be overcome. Not all mountains can be climbed and not all difficult paths lead to happiness. In fact, many difficult paths lead only to more difficulties.

I’ve faced a truth other than the truth that I can’t drink in safety. I’ve faced the truth that I’m dying. What I want to do is embrace this damned cancer the way Bukowski embraced his drunkenness and then turn it into something positive.

At least that’s what I’m trying to do.

Loneliness

2008-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

I just read an article in the on-line version of the Chicago Tribune about a man in Berlin who was so lonely he jumped into a polar bear’s cage for company.

No lie. He jumped into the moat just inside the cage because he felt lonely. That’s what he said.
The zoo-keepers lured the bear away with a leg of beef so the lonely guy remained lonely but he wasn't eaten.

I’ve been there. Not Berlin and not in polar bear’s cage, but lonely. And it’s terrible. It’s terrible at any time of year but it’s particularly terrible at this time of the year.

Once, about thirty years ago, I was forced by drink and other circumstances to spend a few months as a guest of the Salvation Army in Tampa. It wasn’t as bad as you might think. I had to pray for my supper, but that was okay. A few cots away from mine there was a huge man who roared in his sleep with enough force to make the walls tremble, but that was okay because I wasn’t sleeping in my car. I had to smoke roll-my-own cigarettes and couldn’t drink but at least I was safe.

What was terrible was the loneliness.

And it was Christmas.

I’d been the editor of a weekly paper in a small town near Tampa, so I knew people professionally. I’d been married, twice, in fact, and I had two small children and parents and two brothers so it wasn’t as if I was from another planet. I even had a few friends, friends I hadn’t driven away with my drinking.

But I was alone. I understood why. I understood it was my own fault. But it was truly painful. And it seemed to me that everywhere I looked I saw a couple holding hands or a family laughing or two friends in earnest conversation. Oh, yeah. That and the Christmas trees.

On Christmas Eve, the Salvation Army folks gave each resident an orange, a few pieces of chocolate, and a couple of cookies. I got mine and then I sat on my bed, thinking.

A few minutes later, one of the Sally workers called my name. That’s what those who live on the streets call the Salvation Army. Sally. Anyway, one of the Sally people called my name and told me I had a phone call. I was so excited I half ran to the phone, leaving my Christmas orange and candies and cooked on my bed.

The phone call was unimportant. I don’t even remember who it was. What I remember was that when I got back to my bed, my Christmas goodies were gone. I don’t think badly of the guy who took them; hell, it was instinct pure and simple. Given the chance, I would have done the same. But, damn, it hurt.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that lonely again, ever. In its way it was a lot worse than the cancer is now.

So I can understand why the guy in Berlin hopped the wall to get in the cage with the polar bear. He probably wanted to be eaten.

Losing Ground

2008-12-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

Lynne and I were going to drive up to Clearwater next week to spend Christmas with my mother. I had to phone my mom a few hours ago and tell her we wouldn’t be there. I can’t make the trip.

It’s not that I need to be hospitalized or anything near that. It is simply that the thirty months of on-again, off-again chemo I’ve had since my diagnosis have worn me out. I wake, go to my fellowship meeting, run an errand or maybe two, and come home to fall in bed. I work a bit in the afternoon and that’s it.

I take drugs to battle fatigue. It seems to me they don’t help.

So I was concerned about a five-hour drive and more concerned about getting sick while I was with my mother and not getting enough rest in a house filled with relatives and noise.

My mom understood. "It’s more important that you take care of yourself," she said. "We all know you want to be here."

I could tell she was sadder than she let on. I’m her favorite. I know that. And we have fun when we’re together. And when I’m with her, she’s not alone, at least for a few days.

It’s times like these when I think of the cancer as a live, virulent, hungry thing that wants only my destruction. It’s taking longer than anybody thought. But it’s times like these when I fear it’s really getting the upper hand.

Goodness

2008-12-16T02:05:00.000-08:00

I’ve been alone for most of the day today. Lynne, my wife, took a commuter train down to Miami this afternoon to visit a friend of hers. This friend – Jimmy Miller – was disabled in a terrible accident almost twenty years ago. He’s been in the hospital ever since, unable to use his arms or legs. When he speaks, it’s almost impossible to understand him. Lynne has known him, been a friend of his, and visited him as regularly as she can for all of those years.

I couldn’t do that. I'd rather stay home alone.

I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like being in the hospital because I’m always afraid that once I’m inside I’ll never get out. I know that’s silly but it’s not really out of the question these days.

I also don’t like visiting friends or relatives in the hospital. I never know what to say. I certainly have no idea how to begin a conversation with Jimmy. So Lynne goes alone. And since I can’t drive her it takes a real effort on her part. She has to catch the train and ride for about 90 minutes then transfer to a local for a couple of miles and then walk two blocks to where she can sit by Jimmy’s bed for an hour or two talking.

Jimmy likes sports, particularly basketball, but I don’t think Lynne and he talk much about the NBA. He loves music. He has a CD player in his room and it’s always on, just loud enough for him to hear. Lynne loves music. So they spend some time talking about music. Sinatra, Ella, maybe Tony Bennett. And they talk about their shared faith, a belief that all will be well even as Jimmy rests in his bed unable to move. The same faith that convinces Lynne that visiting her friend is the right thing for her to do not because she expects anything in return but because it’s, well, what God wants her to do.

Lynne and I have different beliefs. We’ve found a way to coexist in peace. I try to act with charity because I think that’s the most important of the graces. Lynne doesn’t try anything. She just does it. She’s innocent and loving and good in ways I can’t comprehend. Don’t get me wrong, she can be hard to handle sometimes, as can I, but she’s as good a person as ever lived. And for almost two decades, she's made be better than would have been alone.

I thought I should say that.

God

2008-12-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

Some of the people in the sober fellowship I’m in have a habit of saying things I don’t understand. Usually these are things they assume they know about God.

Of course, belief in God is not a requirement of this fellowship. Belief in a higher power is. Often, over time, what begins as faith in a higher power morphs into belief in God with an upper-case G. At that point, men and women who once questioned God’s existence start to talk as if they share God’s private moments.

"God won’t give you more than you can handle," is one of the things they say, often.

What the hell does that mean, anyway?

Does it mean this higher power won’t bring down on me anything bad enough to cause me to pick up a drink? Does it mean this God of theirs won’t afflict me with a problem so severe that suicide becomes attractive?

I wonder how anybody can say that.

The way I see it, the only people who use this line are people who’ve never been given more than they could handle. The ones who were given too much of a load are either drunk or dead, I guess. Or maybe mad. Not angry. Mad. And often, they didn't do anything to deserve it.

The survivors are the ones who have a reason to be upbeat. Not the ones who suffered. And those who are upbeat usually didn't do anything outstanding to deserve their good fortune.

Woody Allen once said that anybody who doesn’t consider suicide from time to time just ain’t paying attention. I’m not saying I’m thinking of suicide. I’m not. But I’m thinking I can sure understand how suicide might look attractive.

I had chemo today and I’m not feeling great but, as I said, I’m nowhere near suicide. I also had an appointment with my shrink. He’s a good doctor. If anything, he’s too good, that’s why he always runs late.

Anyway, in the waiting room I saw a young woman sitting in a wheelchair. Young enough to have been in Iraq or Afghanistan where ever-changing front lines put women in deadly combat. This young woman didn’t appear to be physically wounded. But she was wounded. She was closed in on herself. She had her hands over her eyes. She rocked. Though I didn’t hear it, I bet she moaned.

Later, I heard my doctor and his nurse talking. I didn’t plan to or want to overhear and they never broke any rules because they never said anybody’s name. But I heard the words.

Severe depression. PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Suicide attempt.

Anybody who doesn’t consider suicide from time to time just ain’t paying attention.

God won’t give you any more than you can handle.

Indeed. Somebody forgot to tell her.

Television

2008-12-08T03:03:00.000-08:00

I spend a great deal of time in bed these days. I used to spend much of my time in bed reading. I read history and memoirs and a little bit of fiction. Though I’ve never wanted to live in New York City, I’ve always enjoyed reading The New Yorker magazine, The New York Review of Books, and the editorial section of The New York Times. In a normal week, before I got sick, I’d read two books, perhaps three.

That’s changed now. I just can’t read as much as I have for most of my life. I’m too tired. I hold a book on my belly as I always did, I start to read, and I nod off. I hold a magazine or newspaper section, read a couple of paragraphs and wake, later, with the magazine or paper over my face.

I miss the reading.

As a consequence, I find I’m spending much of my time watching television. In fact, the television in my room is almost always on. I’m either watching some movie or show I’ve already seen or studiously not watching some movie or show I’ve already seen. Either way, the television takes up a lot of space in my life. Most nights, Lynne comes in my room and switches the set off after my pills have started working and I’m asleep.

When I was a boy, my parents, who were far from wealthy, always had money to buy me one book a month at Marshall Field’s Department Store in the Chicago Loop. We take the elevated downtown, look for bargains in the basement, eat a fried hot dog for lunch and, always, stop in the book department on the fourth floor. That’s where my mother, a teacher and ultimately a school librarian, handed me a book about the history of the old west and teased me with the idea that someday I might be a writer.

Books were respected in our house. They were kept in bookcases that lined one wall in the living room and the bottom half of a wall that that ran along a hall almost the entire length of a three-bedroom apartment. To crack a book’s spine or dog-ear a page was a criminal offense.

Television wasn’t respected. I had to sneak to a neighbor’s house to see Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob and Clarabell and Princess Summerfall Winterspring on screen about the size of postcard. On weekends, we’d often go to my grandfather’s house to visit old Mike Molloy and my uncle Kevin and there we’d see wrestling and Ed Sullivan and the Jackie Gleason and Art Carney and Fulton Sheen and my mom and dad would watch as raptly as anybody else in the room. When we got home, though, the television went back to being the "idiot box."

Now, my mother lives alone. My dad is dead. My brothers and I can visit only so often. The television in her house is her constant companion, turned loud enough for her to avoid having to read lips. She watches Judge Judy and Flip this House and reruns of Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy show.

Don’t get me wrong. Books are still important to my mother and to me. But it’s different. Television is no longer the idiot box in either my mother’s house or in mine. The television provides an easy way to disconnect, to free the mind. And sometimes – in my case or my mother’s – that freedom from thought is as refreshing as a good read.

Critique

2008-12-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

I spent last Sunday with the critique group I belong to. At our meetings, we each read – if we’re ready – a chapter or sample of our current project. After we read, the other writers critique. Gently. We have a tendency to say things like, "Have you considered…" or "Maybe you could think about…" Even the most negative of comments are prefaced by a compliment of some sort.

We never get nasty.

With this group, that’s easy to do. There’s always something good to say about everything that’s read. That’s not always the case. In the past, I’ve been in groups where the writing was bad and personalities clashed. It could be brutal.

Once, I submitted a couple of sample chapters of a novel to an editor at a major publishing house. I’d been advised to mail the chapters off and given the editor’s name by an agent at a writing workshop I attended. With that support, I expected a positive response, or at least a friendly one.

Instead, the editor told me my ear for dialogue was abysmal and that he could hardly finish reading the first page of the manuscript. It’s taken me a long time to get over those comments, even though I’ve published about ten books since that editor passed his judgments.

I enjoy the critique group I’m in now, though I can’t always make the meetings or stay very long when I do. These men and women have often given me what I needed in terms of encouragement when the going got tough. Now they let me know how much they care just be being there for me.

And, of course, there’s Sylvia’s Irish soda bread. She gave me three more loaves, already sliced, still warm from the oven. I’ve started buying exotic preserves to go with her home-baked bread. Peach and blackberry and pure apple. It’s wonderful.

It’s funny how little it can take to make me happy these days. Or how little it can take to make me miserable.

The critique group and my friends and Sylvia’s soda bread remind me of what’s important.

Notre Dame

2008-12-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

Notre Dame’s football season ended Saturday night. It ended badly. A season that started brimming with high expectations turned into a bummer. The last game was brutal The University of Southern California (USC) embarrassed the guys from South Bend. It was so painful I turned the game off at half time.

This year, the Irish lost games they should have won, giving up healthy leads to less-talented teams. The fans – including me – expected a nine-win season or maybe eight wins and a trip to a major bowl game. Instead, the Fighting Irish ended the regular season at 6 – 6, hoping for an invitation to a third-tier bowl.

My mom, an ND fan for almost ninety years, called on the phone after the Irish lost to USC. "They were terrible," she said. "The coach should be fired."

My mom isn’t the only fan who feels that way. The sharks are already circling Coach Charlie Weis who was, after all, hired away from the pros at $2-million a year to return Notre Dame to football greatness. No wonder coaching Notre Dame is famously known as the second hardest job in the country. Barack Obama just won the hardest.

Last year at this time, at the end of what was the worst season in the history of ND football, I started counting days, waiting for this year’s team to take the field. I figured – pessimist that I am – that 2008 was likely to be my last chance to watch a team I’ve been following for almost 60 years.

Now it’s over, or almost over. There will be a bowl game and I’ll watch it and root. Then, I’ll start counting days, waiting for October of next year, waiting for a new season. And when the Irish take the field I’ll be sitting next to my teddy bear, the one dressed in a Notre Dame uniform, cheering the team again.

I wish the Irish had done better, but waiting for next year – waiting for the Irish to excel and for the Cubs to finally win the world series – may well be the impetus I need to keep on living for another 12 months.

Here’s hoping.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

Lynne and I watched The Fantasticks the other night. The movie starred Joel Grey and a cast of unknowns. She didn’t care for it. I did.

About 40 years ago, when I applied for entrance to Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, I had to perform a soliloquy and sing a song, solo. For the soliloquy I chose the St. Crispen’s Day Speech from Henry V. As tough as I think I am, I still choke up every time I read or hear that speech. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers….

I sang two songs. Not because I’m a good singer or because I enjoy singing. I sang two songs because I’m a terrible singer and I hate singing. I figured singing two songs terribly might gain me some points for courage. I guess they did, because I was admitted to Goodman.

The songs I chose for my audition were On the Good Ship Lollipop, made famous by Shirley Temple; and Try to Remember¸ from The Fantasticks. I chose the first because it didn’t require much in the way of vocal range. I chose the second because it was so mushy and popular (this was, after all, 1967) that it could hardly be sung to ill effect.

I also loved the song. I still do.

I’m thankful I’ve been given the opportunity to remember, to reflect, as I have since my illness was diagnosed. That’s what I’m truly thankful for on this Thanksgiving. The time I’ve been given.

I know I have a list of blessings too long to count, but this opportunity to look back, to remember, is an immense gift in that it enables me to make some sense of a life that was, in truth, not very well lived. I’m thankful for that.

I complain. I piss and moan, as my father would have said. And some days it’s justified. But the value of each day I have – to reflect, to feel joy or sadness or pissy or whatever – just can’t be overstated.

Of course, I’m thankful for Lynne’s love. For my mother’s love. For the presence in my life of my brothers and my two sons and their wives and my truly beautiful grandchildren. I'm grateful for friends who care, and there are more than I deserve. And I'm grateful and all my other blessings.

But this time I've been given is the real blessing. Because the time is what affords me the opportunity to remember, to express my love as best I can, to give thanks, to take what steps I can to leave something of value behind.

So I’m grateful.

Tired

2008-11-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

I’m tired today. Not because I did anything worth speaking of. Not because of a lack sleep or lack of rest. I’m tired because of cancer.

I’d like to be positive today. To be cheerful and upbeat. I know it must be trying for Lynne and for everybody who comes in contact with me to deal with a crank. A grouch. A tired, old man.
But that’s the way I feel. Cranky. Grouchy. Tired.

I have been able to write for a couple of hours so that’s not bad. But it hurts to walk from my room to the kitchen. I don’t have enough energy to bathe. It is difficult to sit upright. I’ve spent most of the day in bed and once again my bed is calling me, seducing me to lie down and rest.

I don’t want to spend all my time in bed. It’s no way to live. I take meds to give me energy and they don’t. I wonder, what would I do, what could I do if I were truly poor and had to do physical work of some sort to care for my wife and me?

Oh, well. At least that’s a blessing. It just doesn’t seem like much right now because I’m so damned tired.

Mom

2008-11-22T06:02:00.000-08:00

I can’t always remember what I’ve written. I know that forgetfulness comes with age, that it’s just natural part of life. It also has something to do with the medicines I take.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve already written here that I talk to my mom on the phone every day at 6 p.m. If you already know that, you’ll just have to excuse me.

My mom is a pistol. Though she’s 93, she drives herself to mass each morning, then goes to the grocery store or runs other errands. When she comes home, she works on and usually finishes the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the afternoon she gardens, washes clothes, cooks and does other chores.

A few weeks ago, she, this 93-year-old woman dug a small post hole, mixed a bag of concrete, and reset a tipped-over clothesline post in her back yard. "Mom! Why didn’t you hire someone?" I asked.

"Ah, hell. It was a small enough job," she answered. "Why should I waste the money."

Yeah, she’s a pistol.

I love talking with her, though it’s a chore. She’s almost as deaf as the clothesline post she put up in her yard. I spend half my time with her hollering, repeating the same things like a parrot until she understands.

I do the "Times" crossword puzzle every day, just as she does. Then, when we’re stumped, we compare notes on the phone. The puzzles are all edited by Will Shortz, a celebrity who’s on public radio every Sunday morning. One day last week Shortz asked puzzle solvers to identify the man who said, "Everything in life is luck"?

The answer was "Donald Trump."

"What’s the answer to that question about luck?" my mother wanted to know.

"Donald Trump," I said. I had cheated and found the answer on line.

"Donald Duck?" my mother hollered. "What do you mean?"

"Trump, mom. Donald Trump!"

"What the hell does Donald Duck have to do with it! That’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard." My mother didn’t always curse like that. It’s a part of her getting older, just like my forgetfulness is part of my aging.

Finally, I got her to understand it was Trump not Duck who made the crack about luck.
"I swear," my mom said. "No wonder Will Shortz has to wear a disguise in public. I’d like to punch him in the nose."

No wonder I look forward to talking to my mother every day. No wonder that’s the one appointment I have every day I never seem to forget.

Cool

2008-11-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

The weather is cool now. The temperature this morning when I woke was 51 degrees, but with the wind out of the northeast at about 5 mph, it felt cooler.

When I went outside to pick up the local paper and the New York Times, I wore only a pair of slacks and a tee-shirt. By the time I’d walked the thirty or so feet to where the newspapers lay, I was chilled, shivering a bit. This doesn’t happen very often here in South Florida. It’s a wonderful change for those of us who live in heat so many months of the year.

When I talked to my mother on the telephone last night, she said she was getting ready for the cold weather. She made it sound as if a blizzard was headed her way and that she had to get the livestock into the barn before the cattle froze solid where they stood. What she meant, I knew, was that she had to put on a pair of the thick, woolen socks my old man used to wear when his feet were cold and throw an extra blanket on her bed.

Anyway, I told my mom I thought the change in weather was great. "Humph," she said. "I had enough of this in Chicago." I remembered, then, waking in the morning to find the milk left by our back door frozen so the cream – solid – pushed up and out of the bottle like magic, holding on its apex the cardboard bottle cap. I remembered walking to school through heaps of city-gray snow, shivering as an icicle built over my upper lip. I remembered hopping out of bed very early one morning to sit on a towel atop the steam-heat radiator under my bedroom window, watching the snow fall, wondering if I could figure out a way to avoid walking to school.

I knew what my mother meant, then. "But it is nice for a change, because we know it won’t last."
"I guess so," my mother said. But I knew she didn’t mean it.

She isn’t having it so easy these days. Her husband dead now for more than a decade. Her brothers both dead and her cousins as well. The retired teacher across the street, good for a laugh and companionship at dinner, died two years ago. And that’s not all.

My older brother sick, in a wheelchair. Me – her favorite, of course – is sick with terminal cancer and my younger brother ailing as well. She’s worried about us and about the few investments she has, the ones that pay for her food. She worries about her own health, too, after all, she was born more than 90 years ago.

I can see why she wants it warm. But still, for me at least, it’s a welcome change.

The Kids

2008-11-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

People who know me well, and there are several, know my story and know why I was not involved in my two sons’ lives as they were growing up.

I wanted to be, I truly did. But I simply wasn’t able to do or be what I could and should have been. It is the greatest regret of my life.

The boys – Dylan and Eamon – are men now, both married, and each with one child. My elder son, Dylan, and Mickie, his wife, have a beautiful daughter, Chloe. Eamon and his wife, Jennifer, have a marvelous little boy, Aidyn.

Over the last several months, my sons and their wives have sent me two hundred pictures, maybe more as attachments to e-mails. There are pictures of birthday parties, of visits to the zoo in Denver, of Aidyn wearing a leather jacket and of Chloe wearing a Barack Obama sweatshirt at an election rally. How great is that!

There are pictures of Aidyn and Chloe together and pictures of the kids with my sons. There are pictures that make me laugh aloud and some that make me want to weep for joy and for sadness at missed opportunities.

God, I feel so fortunate to have these boys and their wives and children in my life right now, no matter how peripherally, no matter how impermanent the contact is.

I print the pictures out, pictures of the two kids, my two grandchildren, and Lynne buys frames and I hang them, as many as I can, on a wall where I see them as I work. Chloe and Aidyn. A dozen pictures so far, and more to come, I’m sure.

I used to think the grandparents I knew were saps. No kid, I knew, could be as beautiful, as smart, as perfectly charming, as the grandchildren these idiots talked about. Now I know I was right. Oh, their grandchildren were okay, I’ll give them that. They were cute, maybe. And perhaps they weren’t quite as slow as they appeared in the pictures these proud grandparents showed me. Maybe someday they’d look more presentable.

But if you want to see a truly beautiful child, or a baby as smart as a little engineer, drop in my room and look at the wall over my desk. Those kids, that Chloe and that Aidyn, they’re really something to see. Trust me. They’re worth looking at.

Looking at their pictures, I sometimes forget what's going on, that tomorrow I have to get chemo, or that I may never see them or get to hug them. I forget cancer and think only good things, for a while. And that's wonderful.

Good Day

2008-11-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing. Some days are bad. Very bad. And then, just when I start to think all my days are going to be bad, I have a day that’s so good it can hardly be believed.

Today is a day like that. Good, I mean. Wednesday, two days ago, was one of the bad ones.

On Wednesday, I had chemo. I was only able to walk about 50 yards along the sidewalk leading from the hospital’s front door to the parking lot before I had to sit down and rest. I was nauseous on the drive home, so much so that I pulled off the road to puke. I spent the rest of the day in bed except for a few minutes I devoted to working on that day’s entry for this blog.

Yesterday was so-so. But that’s okay because it turned out to be just a transition.

Today’s been great. I woke up feeling good. No nausea. I had some energy. The drive to the VA hospital was pleasant: traffic was light, it was cool, the sun was just coming up. The crossword puzzle I brought with me was not quite impenetrable and I was called on time for my appointment.

Linda Vesley, my therapist, was, as always, wonderful and understanding. I enjoy the time I spend with her. She helps, she's funny and smart, and great company. The stuff we talked about was sobering, but the session was pleasant.

The drive home was good. The Symphony Orchestra of Ireland was on the radio playing Mozart. I didn’t have to vomit.

Now I'm up from my nap. I’m going to write a bit and I expect the writing to go well. I’ll read and enjoy what I read. There won’t be any bills in the mail or, if there are, I won’t open them. I expect to eat something unhealthy but enjoyable and then waste my time watching a movie. Lynne and I will not argue about money or anything else.

I’m not going to complain, today, or try not to, because this is one of those rare days when I feel happy to be alive.

Many people who know me well believe I’m a curmudgeon, a grouch, a cynic.

And I am, kind of. Or maybe the problem is that days like this don't come along all that often when cancer's in the picture.

Anyway, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The Bear

2008-11-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

The chemotherapy waiting room was crowded this morning, the most crowded I’ve ever seen it. Every chair was occupied, there were three men in wheelchairs, and three more leaning against a wall in the hallway until a volunteer hauled chairs from some other room.

Later, one of the nurses explained that the lab held up some blood work which meant the pharmacy couldn’t mix the chemicals on time and then some new patients showed up. The bottom line was that the whole system was screwed up.

I bring a crossword puzzle with me every time I come to the hospital, one of the old Sunday puzzles I have in a collection put out by the New York Times. I’m usually able to keep myself occupied long enough to get through the visit without getting bored. Today was different. The puzzle was just too hard. I had to quit.

So I was sitting there looking around when I noticed a guy sitting across from me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure why he caught my attention and then I realized that he looked just like my old man, dead now for more than a decade. Really. This man looked enough like my father to be his twin, enough like my dad to give me a momentary chill.

My dad was quite a guy. I think, sometimes, of how he’d have managed cancer. He’d have faced it the same way he faced everything, with his fists cocked, ready to punch back, but enjoying the fight. We called him "The Bear" not because of his looks but, rather, because of his willingness to scrap.

That’s the way he was.

I’m adopted, so I’m not physically like my dad. He was a longshoreman, much like the working stiffs in "On the Waterfront." He had arms as big as some men’s legs and hard as tree trunks. I’m tall and skinny and a writer.

He was tough enough to start with nothing, retire at 55, travel the world with my mother, raise three sons – a doctor, a lawyer and me – and overcome two heart attacks with enough steam left over to die doing yard work.

I think he was cynical as I am. He expected trouble in his life and was rarely disappointed. But his cynicism gave him a sense of humor that can only be described as a little dark. Like mine.

Not long before my dad’s death, he and my mother were watching television when a report was aired about Pope John Paul II, who himself wasn’t in real good shape.

"It’s easy to tell he’s not married," my dad – a lifelong and reverent Catholic said.

"How that?" my mom asked.

"If he was married, his wife wouldn’t let him out of the house looking like that."

Now, that’s funny.

He also told us all to make sure we didn’t do anything extraordinary to keep him alive when he was at the end of his life. We agreed. Then he said, "But make damn sure you don’t let me go even one minute earlier than I’m supposed to go."

I remembered those two things he said while I was waiting for my chemo. I smiled. And I also gained some strength. Like my old man, I’m ready to go, but I don’t want to be early for the departure.

Dinner at 8

2008-11-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

Lynne and I rent movies from an outfit called Netflix. It’s great. I order the movies – in DVD format – online. They’re delivered within a couple of days. We watch, then ship them back in prepaid envelopes. There’s no hassle at all.

The movie selection Netflix offers is fantastic. Last night, for instance, we watched "Dinner at 8," the comedy that hit movie screens in 1933, smack-dab in the middle of the depression. The cast included Marie Dressler, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Jean Harlow.

Much of the acting is dated. There are a lot of contrived poses, larger than life gestures, and exaggerated facial expressions. Still and all, it’s a wonderful movie.

The story centers around a couple’s plans to host a fancy dinner party for a visiting British Lord and Lady. Invited guests include an aging actress (Dressler), an alcoholic actor (John Barrymore), and Harlow as wanna-be socialite from the wrong side of the tracks. Nothing goes right, of course, hence the laughs. Dressler is outrageous.

What really makes the movie great, though, is its topicality. The rich have fallen on hard times, work is hard to get, the market is in the tank and it’s impossible to borrow. At the same time, the rich, the well-off, continue living as if there’s no such thing as a charge for services rendered.

In the film, Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore) is the head of a bankrupt shipping company. Despite a heart condition and the threatened takeover of his company by a louse played by Wallace Beery, Oliver is able to don a tux and to entertain his guests at a party he can’t afford. His daughter, oblivious to dad’s needs, worries only about breaking up with her boyfriend so she can carry on with the alcoholic actor. His wife has all her focus on the guest list and the aspic centerpiece.

Sound familiar? It should. All the characters in Reagan's selfish America – made even more toxic by the worst president in the country’s history – were represented in this movie filmed 75 years ago, at the time of the nation’s last economic nightmare.

The movie had a happy ending – except for everybody but the actor who killed himself. Even his wasn’t too bad, since he had time after he turned on the gas to pose himself under a spotlight. Oliver didn’t die of a heart attack. The company was saved. Beery was thwarted. The wayward daughter went back to her boyfriend. All was well.

Of course, that’s a movie. Here’s hoping things work out as well in the real world.

In any event, watching Marie Dressler play Carlotta Vance took me out of myself, and that was welcome. At the movie’s end, Harlow’s character, an empty-headed beauty, tells Vance she’s reading a book that predicts that machines will soon replace working men and women. After a classic double take at the news that the blonde can read a book, Dressler looks her up and down and tells her that she’s sure that Harlow had no reason to fear being replaced by a machine. It’s worth watching the movie just for this one scene.

Mark

2008-11-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

I had breakfast with one of my favorite people yesterday morning. Mark and I have been friends for three decades. It’s a comfortable friendship. We meet every few weeks to catch up on the news, talk about our families, about politics and movies and books, and share our ideas. We enjoy the time we spend in each other’s company.

Like all friendships, ours has been transformed over the years, shaped and reshaped by our changing circumstances. At first, he was my boss, but even then we recognized shared ideas and ideals and that made us close. He’s been a mentor and a cheerleader. He was best man when Lynne and I got married. He stayed my friend even when I disappointed him. He has protected and aided me in a hundred different ways since I’ve been diagnosed.

During these years, we’ve shared the joy we find in writing. Mark is a successful businessman. He’s made a more-than-comfortable living as a business writer and a ton of money creating direct marketing copy. But he’s happiest, I know, when he writes his poetry and short fiction.
And he’s good. He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Some of his lines are good enough to make my breath hurt. And I let him know that as often as I can. But I also tell him (and so does Lynne, who has edited much of his work) when he’s off target.

And he lets me know what he thinks of my work – good and bad. And in that, he has made me a better writer than I ever thought I could be. In fact, Mark edited the early chapters of my book about the Sea Venture, chopping out what I later knew was a major flaw.

It was Mark, too, who first encouraged me to write a memoir. He told me it was a worthy project and I believed him. So I wrote my story and he read it and said it’s not bad.

And now he’s encouraged me to write a novel.

I’ve had one inside me for a while and now seems to be as good a time as ever to put it on paper. I can write without worrying about hurting anybody’s feelings and without worrying about selling the book because, hey, I’ll be gone, right? There’s no real risk of failure.

That’s freeing.

Anyway, when we walked to our cars after breakfast yesterday, I gave him the first chapter to read. Then I started to drive away while he sat in his car for a moment. I didn’t know it, but he was looking at the first page of the manuscript. He drives faster than I do, so he was able to catch up with me about a block away, his lights flashing and horn blaring.

"I read the first paragraph," he hollered when he pulled up next to me and rolled his window down. "I read the first paragraph and it’s outrageous!"

I smiled. He doesn’t throw praise around just to hear his own voice.

"Keep it up!" he said.

So now I have a new project, just when I needed one. Who wouldn’t want Mark for a friend? I hope he knows how much his friendship means to me.

Obama

2008-11-05T11:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was quite a day.

I had chemo in the morning and felt sick all day, as usual. But that was okay.

I forced myself to stay up as late as I could watching the election results. As states were declared, some for Obama, some for McCain, I thought back. I remembered how, when I was a boy in Chicago, the only Afro-American I ever saw in my neighborhood was a woman – I never knew her name – who did chores for the families on our street. She baby sat for my brothers and me once, that’s all I recall.

When we moved to Clearwater in 1958, the beach was segregated, as were the schools. Blacks would often step off the sidewalk and stand in the street as whites walked by. My only contact with a black man was when I worked in a restaurant, first as a dishwasher, later as a line server. My boss was a 20-year-old with moves as graceful as a dancer. I drove him home after work one day. He refused to sit in the front seat with me, saying he’d better sit in the back. Not for his sake, but for mine. "It’s too dangerous in my neighborhood if people think we’re friends," he said.

During my one year of public school, I saw no people of color other than a janitor. When I went to Catholic high school in Tampa, I was surrounded by young men whose families fled Cuba during the revolution. They were all wealthy, so they had little to do with me. There were no blacks at all.

In the service, things were different and by the time I went to college things had changed, a bit, at least in Chicago. I was a politically active hippy. I found time to Still, help register African-American voters on Chicago’s South Side and marched with Jesse Jackson when he was an unknown. I remember the smell of tear gas and remember reading about the riots in Selma and Montgomery. I never thought I’d see the day when a black man would be elected president of the United States.

So that's why yesterday was quite a day.

As a consequence, I can understand Michelle Obama’s words when she said she was proud of the United States for the first time in her life. She could have said it better, but, hey, I can understand. I’ve never been more proud to be an American than I am today.

And, man, am I glad the cancer let me live long enough to hear Obama’s speech.

The Vote

2008-11-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

I’ve just passed a milestone in my experience facing terminal cancer, one of the three goals I gave myself when I was first diagnosed.

I think I’ve mentioned that I want to live long enough to see the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame win another national championship and to watch the hapless Cubbies play in a World Series.

While the football season isn’t over, the Irish have already lost three games. That means they’re out of the hunt.

The Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. So, as I have my entire life as a Cub fan, I just have to wait ‘til next year.

My other goal was to vote in one more presidential election before I shuffle off to someplace where attack ads are not allowed. (They won’t be in heaven, I figure, and as far as hell is concerned, even Beelzebub must be tired of them by now.) Anyway, I mailed in my absentee ballot a couple of days ago. So I’ve accomplished that one.

I promised myself I’d stay away from politics in this blog. Not because it isn’t important but because I have a tendency to rant. That comes, I know, from being the son and grandson of Irish political junkies, union guys and organizers who found their survival linked to politics and politicians. My Grandfather, Mike, and my dad, Patrick, both saw "No Irish Need Apply" signs and both, with the help of political muscle, fought to work and ultimately became homeowners able to send their kids to college. No surprise, then, that when I was a kid, we breathed politics. We didn’t have a television then, so I didn’t know who Howdy Doodie was but I knew about FDR and Ike and Keefauver and Mayor Daley and about Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins and the hard men of Ireland, too.

So, poliltics were important in my house and are still. But I’m not going to say who got my vote.

Suffice it to say I figure this is the most important election of my lifetime. It’s also the first time I’ve really been excited about casting a vote since 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed and I marched aginst the Vietnam War on the streets of Chicago. That should give you a hint.

I’m going in for chemo again tomorrow. I know I’ll be ready to puke by the time I leave the hospital. I’ll also be tired. But I’m going to sleep all day and mainline compazine if I have to so I can stay awake and watch the election returns tomorrow night. My 93-year-old mother – who curses like drunken mariner when she talks about the current political scene – says she’ll stay up all night if she has to, praying the right man wins. If she can do it, so can I.

That’s how important this is, I believe. And I’m thankful I had the chance to cast one more vote. And if things go the way I hope, I'll hang on for Inauguration Day.

Jim

2008-10-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was feeling grouchy when I woke this morning. I didn’t sleep well and I’m still having some chemotherapy-related problems. I lay in bed looking at the alarm clock wondering why I should bother to get out of bed.

What the hell, I thought. It’s just going to be more of the same. Get up, get tired, go to bed, get up again, write for a while, then get tired again. What’s the point?

Sometimes that’s the way I feel. I have to force myself to write. When I write, nothing seems to work out. The thought of eating is enough to make me gag. I’m impatient with my wife, who doesn’t deserve it. If I had a dog, I’d kick him. Or, with my luck, he’d bite me.

That’s the way it goes.

But I forced myself to get up and dressed. I had to. I had an appointment with my therapist at the VA, a block of time when I could go tell her – her name is Linda – how miserable I was, not so she could cure me but simply because I need someone to hear me moan and groan.

Before I headed for the hospital, I stopped by the fellowship meeting I go to each morning. The meeting hadn’t started, so I grabbed a cup of coffee and said hello to a couple of acquaintances. I lied when somebody I don’t really like about asked me how I was feeling. "Wonderful," I said. "Everything is just hunky-dory." I didn’t care if he heard what I muttered about him under my breath.

After I walked out, I sat in my car for a moment drinking my coffee. As I was sitting there, a white car I recognized pulled into the space next to me. It was a friend who just came down here from New York to spend a couple of weeks in his vacation home.

I was glad to see him. About six months ago, he was hospitalized with kidney failure. I’d been in touch, so I knew he’d recovered, but this was the first time he’d been in town since then.

Jim, that’s his name, is about as different from me as it’s possible to be. He’s big and I’m not. He’s serious and I’m not. He’s a conservative Republican and I’m a liberal Democrat. He was an army ranger in Vietnam while I was demonstrating against the war on the streets of Chicago. He was a command-level police officer in New York City while I was…well, you get the idea.

You’d think we wouldn’t get along, wouldn’t you? But we do. He and I have only known each other about three years, but when he’s here I see him almost every day and when he’s up north, we stay in e-mail contact. We’re comfortable in each other’s company.

There is, though, another area of disagreement. He’s a hard-core Roman Catholic and I’m a used-to-be Catholic. He goes to mass a couple of times a week. I drop into the Episcopal Church a couple of times a year.

Jim really believes in the power of prayer. I pray, but it’s more like an insurance policy for me. I’d hate to die and find out I was wrong.

Jim told me a long time ago that he would pray for me every day. When I heard he was sick, I started praying for him every evening. My prayer probably isn’t as formal as his, but I don’t think that much matters. I believe God doesn’t worry too much about formalities and if He did he’d probably be too busy to help Jim or me.

Anyway, when Jim saw me this morning he laughed. "I see we’re both still on this side of the grass," he said. "it looks like the prayers are working."

I guess that’s right. And that makes me happy. As soon as I saw him, I was able to smile. The day was suddenly made better.

Friendship is like that, isn’t it?

Shopping

2008-10-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been feeling great for the last week or so. I’m not in anything like terrible shape, I’m not in pain, but I’m still nauseous and so tired I spend almost all day in bed. My wife is taking good care of me. She lets me rest as much as I need and she lets me know she loves me. That’s what I need right now.

It’s nice, sometimes, to have somebody wait on me. For some reason a tuna sandwich always tastes better when someone serves it to me, on a plate, with a pickle slice or two, and tomato soup is great when I don’t have to open the can myself.

My wife is not real handy in the kitchen but she has been known to make me sandwich or a hot dog and she can mix a mean glass of iced coffee and that’s really okay. My mother taught me to take care of myself, so I know how to bake a strawberry pie and Yorkshire Pudding, iron a shirt and hem a pair of slacks all with the same masculine hands. I think my mom figured my personality would keep me from getting married so I’d better learn how to fend for myself.

Anyway, I believe I’m pretty easy to care for. I don’t like to be fussed over. When I’m in pain or sick I find comfort in being left alone. I think I got that from my distant ancestors who handled illnesses and hurt by crawling into some cave in Donegal, hiding under a pile of skins and trying to tough it out.

Of course, when I’m hiding in my cave I don’t get to do some of the things I’m still able to do. I can’t, for example, go to the grocery store. And that means I don’t feel very useful.

I enjoy the grocery store. I go to the big Publix not far our home early in the morning almost every day. I walk the nearly empty aisles and I almost always find something I’ve never seen before. A lot of interesting things are sold in grocery stores now, things that weren’t sold in the store my I went to on the south side of Chicago with my mom when I was a kid. This morning, in the aisle where the dog beds are sold right next to the butane candle lighters, I discovered a kind of air freshener I’ve never seen before. I won’t go into details, but I stood there and read the instructions for about ten minutes. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed saying hello to the men and women I see every morning stocking shelves and working behind cash registers or just walking around looking for something I guess they never find. There’s one guy, James, from Jamaica, who’s about my age and he smiles as soon as he sees me and then we compare our aches. And I buy treats for myself.

And every day, at some point, Lynne thanks me for going shopping. That’s good because it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something. So this morning I left the cave and, just like the hunter-gatherer I am, I went to Publix and brought home the cottage cheese and frozen pizza.

Everyone dies

2008-10-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve complained before about some of the senseless things well-meaning people say when they’re trying to make me feel better or ineptly expressing their concern.

The other day, for example, a woman friend said she thought chemotherapy would be a wonderful way to lose a couple of dress sizes. I was barely able to fight the sudden urge I had to teach her about the joys of chemotherapy by puking on her shoes. How about that?

Then there are the off-beats who swear that a diet of nothing but raw vegetables or boiled yak or palmetto fronds will cure incurable cancer and who become offended when I refuse to run out to buy vegetables, kill a yak, or climb a palmetto.

And, of course, there are all those who prescribe faith or good thoughts as cure-alls as if those of us who have cancer don’t have faith, enough faith, the right kind of faith, or are just too cranky to live. A lot of good, God-fearing people die of this disease every day.

And that brings me to the dolt who heard me talking to a friend this morning – another friend who’s fighting cancer – and interjected himself into our conversation.

"Well, everyone dies," he said after listening for a few minutes.

Wow.

Look, I know from my own experience how difficult it is talk to someone who’s got a terminal disease. I’ve done it with friends and, I’m sure, I’ve said some goofy things myself. But, really. If "everyone dies" is the best you can do, please keep your mouth shut.

I often wonder how these individuals who make such senseless comments will do if they find out they’ve got terminal cancer or they need a heart or kidney transplant they can’t get. I wonder how they’ll feel if the doctor looks at them, grins, and says, "Well, everyone dies."

Here’s what I know. If you have a broken heart, I can quickly tell you to move on, that it happens to everybody, to be grateful for what you have, and so on. When I have a hangnail, the only thing I can think about is the pain I’m in.

I guess everybody’s that way, to some degree. I guess that’s how it’s possible to say something as true and as ignorant as, "Well, everyone dies."

Mixed Feelings

2008-10-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

I went for chemo yesterday and was told they couldn’t pump any more poison into my system for a week or so. My white blood cell count was so low, the nurse said, that if I had the treatment I’d almost certainly get some sort of infection.

That happened to me last year. It started after a chemotherapy treatment when I went through a couple of terrible days. I thought it was just a rough patch, so I tried to ride it out. My wife kept saying I should go the hospital, but I refused until it couldn’t be put off any longer.

I passed out in the elevator on the way from our apartment down to the parking lot, came to, then passed out again as Lynne was driving me to the VA hospital.

I hate it when she says something I disagree with and then is proved right.

Anyway, by the time I was at the ER, my blood pressure was 80 over 40. I’m not a doctor, but on House or Gray’s Anatomy when a patient’s blood pressure is that low they start warming up the machine to jolt his heart back into working condition.

The doctors didn’t have to jolt me back to life, but I did spend about a week in a segregated room, flat on my back, too weak to sit up.

I was scared.

I’m always scared when I’m admitted to the VA hospital. Don’t misunderstand, it’s a great hospital with wonderful doctors and nurses and orderlies and maintenance workers. The food is good and so are the televisions. But there’s part of me that can’t seem to let go of the idea that one day I’m going to walk into that very hospital and not walk out.

I’d rather not know where I’m going to die.

So, I have mixed feelings right now. I'm glad I'm not suffering from the nausea and the other stuff you'd rather not hear about and I'm grateful they caught my low white cell count so I don't have to worry about being hospitalized for now. But I don't like the idea of giving this thing that's eating me alive from the inside out any kind of rest to get bigger or stronger.

Life Story

2008-10-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working on a memoir for about two years writing in roughly two-hour chunks as often as I’ve felt up to it. I wrote it through, then rewrote and rewrote again. Now the writing is pretty much done. My wife edited it and now a friend of mine, himself a fine writer, is helping me polish.

I don’t know if it will sell or if anybody outside my immediate circle will ever read it. I hope so. I think any writer who is content writing into a black hole is probably not much of a writer.

I often tell a story about a famous writer at a cocktail party. I’m not sure who it was, though I usually say it was Faulkner. Anyway, this famous writer was at a cocktail party when a woman approached. "I should write my life story," she said. Every writer has heard that line. "I should write my life story, it’s really interesting."

"Madam," the famous author said, "most people think their life stories would make a good book. In truth, most life stories don’t even make interesting sentences."

I agree with that idea, so I was hesitant to write my own story. It does seem a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? But a couple of people who work in publishing suggested I give it a whirl, so I decided I would. I’m calling my memoir Low Bottom Alky. That’s a term for alcoholics who end up on the streets, losing just about everything. The book is really the story of my drinking career and what has happened since I got sober. The first part of the book is a lot longer than the second.

I sent the book to my editor-friend yesterday. All except the last chapter. That’s the chapter that tells of this current bout with cancer and how I’ve dealt with the disease. I’ve written that chapter but I’m just not ready to let it go.

You see, I’m really not sure how to end the story. Oh, I’m pretty confident that I won’t start drinking again. That just doesn’t seem to be much of an option. But beyond that, I’ve no idea what will happen.

I’ve written more than a dozen biographies for young adult readers. I never wanted to write about someone still living. I’ve always been afraid that as soon as I wrote the life story of some famous, living person they’d do something terrible that made the book worthless.

Years ago, I met Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the famous environmentalist. She was 99 years old at the time and she impressed me so much I determined to write her life story. I didn’t want to start, though, until she died. I don’t know for sure what mischief I thought a centenarian could get into, but I didn’t want to take the chance. And, darn, she just kept living and living and living. She didn’t die until she was 107. As soon as I saw her obituary, I started writing.

The end of her book was, I thought, particularly moving. I hope the end of my memoir is as well. I just don’t know when and how it will come, do I? I may live for another two years. I may not make it until the new president gives his State of the Union Address.

Hey, there could be a miracle, right? I don’t think that's going to happen, but it is possible.

Wouldn’t that be something to write about?

I'm Sick

2008-10-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

I don’t feel well.

The new chemo is rougher on me than I thought it would be. At least for today it is. I won’t go into details, but trust me, it’s not good.

I’ve been spoiled so far. For most of the time since I was diagnosed, there hasn’t been a great deal of pain. There really hasn’t been much discomfort, except for that associated with the chemotherapy. For weeks, even months at a time, I’ve been able to convince myself that I’m not really sick. I feel too good to be sick. I don’t really look sick.

Today, I know I’m sick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in agony. I’m not even in a great deal of pain. It’s just enough to let me know who’s boss, at least for today.

I try not to complain because I know what it’s like to be around a complainer.

I have this good friend, Jimmy Black. Jimmy was married to a complainer. One time she had a cold and every ten minutes or so, she would complain. About her nose. Her throat. About her cold, over and over. Jimmy was reading a book, trying to concentrate. After about an hour of her complaints, he lost his temper.

"Denise," he said. That was her name. "Denise, trust me. I know you have a cold. Trust me. If I have dementia and I forget everything including my own name there’s one thing I won’t forget. I won’t forget you have a cold."

That’s the way I am around a complainer. So I try not to complain. But guess what? I don’t feel well.

I'm sure it’ll pass, but today I right now I’m sick.

It striked me that what I really don't like about feeling this way is that it makes me wonder how I'll bear up later, you know, when the fun really starts.

Good Eats

2008-10-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

I know there are a lot of cancer patients, most I guess, who pay a great deal of attention to their diets as part of their treatment.

I’m not one of them.

I figure I’m going to lose weight in any case, right? So that’s certainly not an issue. I already take medicine for high cholesterol, blood pressure and baby aspirin as a blood-thinner, so I don’t have to worry too much about those issue. Chemo continues to make me nauseous so I have to force myself to eat most times. So when I do eat, why shouldn't I eat stuff that’s appealing. To me. Not to my wife.

My oncologist and the nurses who treat me have never, as far as I remember, given me any orders or suggestions to moderate my diet. A lot of the pamphlets and magazines in the waiting room are filled with sample diets featuring things like raw vegetables and cereals I’ve never heard of. My General Practitioner used to make suggestions, now she just asks how my appetite is and when I tell her I often eat two chili dogs for dinner she shakes her head and goes "tsk-tsk."

My wife keeps talking about eating blueberries. Or maybe cranberries. I’m not sure. Along with cancer, I’ve developed an amazing power lose my hearing at will.

I had chemo yesterday. I was nauseous before I walked from the hospital a quarter of a block to my car. On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store. I bought two pounds of baby back ribs and two bottles of bar-b-q sauce. When I got home, I put the ribs and one bottle of sauce in a crock pot and turned on the heat. Then I took some anti-nausea medicine. I had a polish sausage and cheese with onion sandwich. Lots of mustard. Then I went to sleep.

I woke late but managed to work for a couple of hours, then ate dinner. When I carried my plate of ribs past Lynne, she shook her head and made the same "tsk-tsk" sound my general practitioner makes when I talk about food.

The ribs were great. Greasy, but great. They almost overloaded my plate. And I ate ‘em all. My wife is trying to diet so she ate a Weight Watchers meal, then had some boiled squash (no butter).

Before going to sleep I had a slice of devil’s food cake with marshmallow icing and a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Then I took my pills and pretty much passed out.

When I woke this morning, I was sick to my stomach. I threw up once before I left the house for a fellowship meeting and an appointment with a psychologist. We didn’t talk about food.

And guess what? I would have been nauseous and thrown up this morning even if I’d eaten nuts and berries last night. I just wouldn’t have enjoyed my meal at all. I wouldn’t have been able to dig into my bar-b-q ribs and cake and ice cream.

My wife swears she enjoyed her diet dinner and squash without butter. For some reason, I don’t buy it. I think that’s strategy she using to try to make me change – with the best intentions in the world, of course. What I know for sure is that loved meal.

Listen, I know my high-fat-anti-good-stuff-diet isn’t going to make my cancer go away. But it also isn’t going to make it any worse. It does keep my weight up enough so that a strong wind won’t carry me away. I haven’t yet had to buy any skinnier clothes. But what it does, and what it will continue to do as long as I’m able and have anything to say about it, is provide me with pleasure.

Tonight I’ll have either chili and eggs with melted cheese or two cheeseburgers. Oh, yeah, and more cake

Enough

2008-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

I got the call at about 8:30 Wednesday night. As soon as I heard Jacky’s voice, I knew.
"Kevin died this afternoon," she said. "Thank God it’s over."

I heard her catch her breath.

"At least he’s out of pain," Jacky said. Then we spoke for a few moments about what a great guy Kevin was and about how I wished there was something, anything, I might do. Of course, there wasn’t. Jacky cried and I tried not to cry and failed and then we hung up.

You remember Kevin? He’s my friend, the one who came down from Georgia last month so we could go to a Chicago Cubs/Florida Marlins game together. He’s the guy who learned just a few months ago that he had incurable pancreatic cancer.

When my father died about ten years ago, I barely wept. He was ninety and had already had bypass surgery. His death was no surprise. It made me sad, of course. It should have. But my dad’s death made sense, it was part of the natural flow, as proper as a tide or a sunset.

Not Kevin, though. He was too young by far. He left not just his wife but three little boys, the youngest of whom is only three years old, so young he’ll never remember this wonderful man who was his father.

And that’s why I cried when I heard the words. "Kevin died this afternoon." That and because of the truth that he may have been the best friend I’ll ever have and I miss him already, can’t believe I’ll never see him or hear him again, never laugh with him again.

Believe me, I grieve for Jacky and the three boys. I also grieve for me. And, dammit, I feel like it’s not fair and I want to tell God to lighten up. No more pain for a while, hunh?

How terrible is it when a wife finds herself saying, "Thank God" when her husband dies. To find relief – if any can be found – in the truth that "at least he’s out of pain."

Enough, God. Enough, already. Cut us some slack. Kevin’s family. And my friend Brian, the one I wrote about Monday. And Brian’s daughter. My friend Greg who just learned he has cancer. And me, too. And my wife.

Enough for a while.

Giving Up

2008-10-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve known Brian for about a dozen years. We get along because we share a world view that’s either cynical or realistic, depending on your perspective. We laugh at the same things, usually human foibles. The people we know rarely disappoint us by acting rationally.

When I want to let Brian know how much I like him, I tell him he’s the kind of guy I would have gone drinking with back in the day when I used to drink. He says the same thing about me.

In our circle, the compliments don’t get much better or more genuine than that.

Brian discovered he had lung cancer about the same time I did. He had surgery and I remember being jealous because I figured he was so much better off than I was.

How’s that for an outlook? Being envious because a friend gets a big chunk of his lung excised?

Well, I’m not envious anymore.

Brian is not doing very well. He had the surgery but he never really recovered. He was forced to quit work. He lost weight and found it difficult to get around. Of course, drawing each breath was a struggle.

Now he’s on chemo and he’s miserable. He came into a meeting I was at the other day and only stayed about five minutes. I caught him in the parking lot.

"I’m ready to give up," he said. "It’s just not worth it." He was sitting behind the wheel of his car, his head bent, breathing as if he’d just run a mile.

"Oh, Christ," I said. I couldn’t think of anything else. What else could I say? Hang in there? Don’t give up? Life is worth living? None of those statements seemed appropriate.

A little later, when I was home, sitting on the side of my bed, my wife asked me how I was feeling. I tried to answer her and I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I just didn’t know what to say.

"I wish you could talk more about what you’re feeling," she said.

I wish I could, too. And I do try. I tell her I’m sad. I tell her I’m angry and frightened. But those words don’t really convey what I feel. I guess I’m lucky – she and I are both lucky – because if I was really able to tell her what I feel we both might start crying and raging and shaking and maybe never stop.

So I say I’m okay and I say whatever I’m feeling will pass soon enough, but, dammit, there are moments when I’m not at all okay and when the feelings don’t quickly pass.

I’m not okay when I see a friend like Brian because I realize that someday soon I’ll be just like him. Or worse. Maybe, just maybe, I’m closer than I imagine to the point where I say I can’t take it anymore. Maybe I’ll be ready to give up.

There are simply no words I can say or write to adequately describe how that makes me feel. And if I could express those feelings, I wouldn’t because, in truth, you don't need or really want to hear or read those words.

But I’ll be okay. It’ll pass. It always does.

The Blob

2008-10-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

I had the first chemo session of my new course of treatment yesterday. I’ll get chemo once a week for three weeks, then take a one-week break, then repeat the cycle, probably for about six months.

It had been several months since my last session. I’d forgotten what it was like to sit in the oncology waiting room early in the morning, one of a dozen or so patients, all of us trying to make believe our lives are somehow normal.

I’ve been on what’s known as a "drug holiday." That sounds like it’s the kind of vacation I might take to buy marijuana, but it’s nowhere near that much fun. It’s a break I was given so my body could recover a bit from the side effects that go along with injecting toxic stuff into my bloodstream.

So there I was, waiting to start my treatment and nodding hello to the other men and women in the room. It’s pretty easy to figure out pretty much where any patient stands in terms of treatment.

The first-timers, especially, are obvious. They’re usually not alone. Most times some family member or loved one sits alongside, not quite managing to look brave. The new patient usually looks stunned, as if he’d opened a newspaper to find his own obituary. There’s a lot of eye movement, looking for an exit, a place to run and not finding a way out.

Most of the patients, by the way, are men. Not many women show up for cancer treatments. I think that’s because until very recently women were not as prevalent in the service so most of the women veterans just aren’t old enough, yet, to have come down with cancer. There are plenty of young women in the hospital. I see them being wheeled down the halls or limping along on crutches or in the mental health clinic looking as if they’re trying to get free of some fear or demon that chased them home from the desert.

It’s also easy to identify the patients who, like me, are in the middle of treatment. Most of us look resigned. We know what’s going on and don’t like it a whole lot but, what the hell, there’s no choice. We know there's not really any hope but we can still fake it. Like me, the others try to present a cheery face. We know enough to bring something to read or a crossword puzzle and maybe a cup of coffee to make the wait more bearable.

There’s a lot of waiting. Blood has to be drawn and taken down to the lab. Tests have to be run. The doctor has to give the okay for the actual chemotherapy and then the pharmacy has to see to it that the chemicals are mixed properly. I guess they can’t pre-mix this stuff. Given enough time it would probably eat its way out of the plastic IV bags it’s kept in. Like the Blob in the horror movie.

Then there are the patients who are near the end of their treatment. Not because they’re getting better but because the road they’re on is coming to a halt. Sure, there may be something waiting on the other side, but this side is about all played out. No matter what your faith or belief the knowledge that you’re near the end can weigh you down.

I didn’t enjoy my time in the clinic yesterday. It was brief. I’m getting what’s known as a "push" – a relatively quick dose of what looks like about six ounces of some clear liquid. As always, the nurses and the volunteers who work in the clinic were wonderful. They know every patient by name and they smile and deliver a steady dose of kindness and real love even as they have to be careful not to care too much.

So, I got my infusion. I left. When I left, I made sure I didn’t look in the waiting room again. It felt good to leave the hurt an the anxiety and the feigned cheerfulness behind.

Now, I’m nauseous. I had the hiccups for about an hour earlier. I've puked a couple of times. But overall I feel pretty good.

Bread

2008-10-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

I go to the grocery store every morning. I could, I guess, go once a week or maybe twice like most people do but I like stopping in after I attend the morning fellowship meeting I usually go to. Anyway, it seems as if we’re always in need of something: milk and diet soda and coffee-cream are almost always on the list along with the diet food my wife eats with amazing consistency.

When I was a boy, growing up on Chicago’s south side, my mother often sent me to a bakery for a loaf of fresh bread. I’d run the two blocks from the apartment building my parents owned to 79th Street and turn west to run along the street in front of Our Lady of Peace Church and then cross Jeffrey Boulevard to the bakery.

There was a newsstand on that corner, 79th and Jeffrey, where a short, dark, old man sold the Tribune and, I guess, magazines and cigarettes. In those days, if you were in a car and wanted the newspaper, all you had to do was stop, roll your window down, and honk. Joe, I think that was his name, would fold a paper in half (unless it was Sunday, when the paper was too thick) and run to the car to deliver it, all for a nickel.

I don’t recall the name of the bakery, though I do know it was run by an elderly couple. It seems like all neighborhood stores then were operated by gray-haired husbands and wives who, for some reason, hardly ever spoke to each other. The bakery couple was no exception. They didn’t speak to each other, but they knew every customer by name, even the customer’s children, like me.

It’s funny, I don’t remember the name of the bakery, but I do remember the husband who worked behind the counter seemed always to have flour on his hands. "How can we help you?" he’d ask. I’d tell him I wanted a loaf of white, thin sliced, or of pumpernickel, thin sliced, and he’d slap his hands together and laugh as if I’d just told him the best joke he’d ever heard. "You got it," he’d say. "You got it." And then he’d put a loaf of bread in automatic slicer that fascinated and frightened me.

He knew, somehow, that I loved to eat the end slices from the loaf of still-warm bread as I walked home. He never handed them to me, though. He’d take them, a slice from each end, and wrap them together in paper and hand them to me without a word. Maybe he did that for all the boys who ran errands for their mothers. Girls, too, I guess, though almost every family in our neighborhood had at least one boy big enough to send to the bakery.

The grocery store I go to these days is big and modern. It sells lottery tickets, outdoor furniture, cosmetics, greeting cards, Miami Dolphin tee-shirts, appliances, and other inedibles as well as food and drink. I’m there so often that the women and men who work the front registers know me on sight and always ask how I’m doing. The manager calls me by name.

That’s nice. But what’s really nice is the huge bakery in the back of the store. I stop there almost every day for a loaf of thin-sliced pumpernickel or something called White Mountain Bread. There’s a baker behind the counter, a middle-aged woman named Judy, who always says hello. She knows I like bread thin sliced and knows I like bread warm. She can’t always give me warm bread. I understand that. But when there’s fresh break cooling on racks in the back of the huge bakery she grabs one for me and puts it in a slicer that looks and sounds exactly like the one from Chicago almost sixty years ago.

I asked, once, for the end slices from a loaf of pumpernickel she was slicing and she handed them to me with a smile. I like that. Now she always gives me the end slices of any warm loaf she slices for me.

Isn't that something?

As Good as it Gets

2008-10-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone after talking with my mother. She’s 93 and lives alone in Clearwater, on the other coast of Florida. I call her every day because we love each other and I don’t want, ever, to have to think I missed an opportunity to speak with her.

I told her the news. I had to shout a bit because she’s very hard of hearing, but, after a couple of tries, she understood. My visit with the oncologist this morning went about as well as could be expected. The main tumor, the big one in my right lung, has grown, but only slightly. I go back on chemotherapy in a few days, for a short course with chemical recipe that, I was told, isn’t particularly virulent.

My mom was pleased by the news. So was my wife when I called her from the hospital. My friends will be relieved, I know, when they hear I’m not out of the fight.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get from my house to the VA hospital, driving north on Interstate 95, one of the busiest highways in the country. It’s rare to drive on I-95, no matter the time of day, and not get stuck in some sort of traffic jam.

Today was no exception.

I’m not a very patient driver. I’ve been known to grumble when I’m behind the wheel. Once or twice, I’ve indicated my displeasure with a hand gesture that, I think, is understood in almost any culture.

So, there I was this morning, on my way to have a conversation with a doctor about some vile thing that’s eating me alive from the inside and I was getting angry because… I wasn’t going fast enough!

How crazy is that? How off-the-map senseless is it to be in a hurry to get to a cancer ward? I had to laugh.

So I slowed down and I made it in plenty of time to have blood sucked from my veins and then to hear the news.

On the way home, I didn’t get angry. Instead, I thought of my wife and my mother and of all the people who will be pleased by the news that though the cancer has grown, I am still in the fight. There are a lot of people like that in my life and that’s a blessing. It really is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to suddenly turn into some saint on the superhighway. I’m not that kind of guy. What I’ll try to do, though, is remember how blessed I am to be able to hear relief in my wife’s voice, and to have the opportunity to call my mother another twenty times or maybe a hundred and twenty times or more than that. I’m blessed to have friends who care – there are a lot of people who don’t. I’m blessed to be able to get stuck in a traffic jam and blessed to be able write these words.

Fear

2008-10-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

I went to the VA hospital again today. Nothing serious, I just had to talk to my therapist, Linda Vesley. She and I like each other. We’re friends and I’m glad she’s in my life right now. But that’s a different story.

Today was a routine visit. She always asks how I’m feeling and how I’m getting along with my wife and about work and so on. She’s not a shrink so her insights, while useful, aren’t so much about what makes me tick as what will enable me to keep ticking.

Linda didn’t feel well today. I knew that as soon as I saw her. She was nauseous and achy. In fact, we cut my visit short.

That’s okay because I often don’t know what to say. I’m not real happy but I’m also not real sad. Lynne and I are getting along and – with the help of a new drug – I’m able to write a bit. My main problem is that the Cubs are already down two games to the Dodgers in a five-game series.

Imagine that.

Wait ‘til next year, Cubs fans!

Oh, yes. I did tell her I’m feeling a bit nervous about learning the results of may last CAT scan. I’ll go to the hospital early Monday morning to see my oncologist and get the news. I’ve been having a little pain, so I’m convinced I’m not going to like what I hear. It’s been about nine months, now, since my last chemotherapy, so I figure I’m due for some bad news.

I’m not often nervous when I’m waiting for test results. Once, after blood work and a colonoscopy, I could have sworn I heard the doctor say "liver cancer." I was about half dopey from drugs, though, so I let his comment pass. Later, after the drugs wore off, the only thing I could remember about the test were those two words.

Liver.

Cancer.

Unfortunately, It was Friday evening and the doctor’s office was already closed. I was scared. I was even more scared after I started doing research on my computer and read all about liver cancer.

When the doctor showed up at his office on Monday morning, I was sitting on the ground by the front door, waiting. When I told him why I was there he looked shocked. "No," he said. "No. I told you the scan was clear and the blood work indicated no signs of liver cancer."

I get my test results in writing now.

Anyway, I’m a bit nervous about this last cat scan. I’ll concentrate on the Cubs playoff games Saturday and Sunday, if they make it that far. I’ll watch Notre Dame play Stanford on Saturday. I’ll go shopping and maybe cook a small roast on Sunday. Lynne and I will go for a drive and maybe I’ll go to church with her on Sunday. She likes when I do that, though I think God doesn’t pay much attention to me since I’m not a regular.

Then I’ll get the results Monday morning. I hope Linda, my therapist, feels better by then. Just in case, you know. Just in case I need her.

Go Cubs Go

2008-10-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

The last time the Chicago Cubs played in a world series was in 1945, the year I was born. In that series, the Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers. Now, they have a chance to appear again.

I’ve been a Cubs fan since 1968 when my first wife, Patti, and I moved to Chicago so I could attend drama school at the Art Institute. In those days, we lived in an apartment close enough to Wrigley Field that we could hear the cheers or groans from the ballpark. In 1969, I went to every home game as the Cubs led the national league until the last month of the season when they went on an epic slide.

I always said I wouldn’t die until two things happened. The first was that Notre Dame had to once again win the national championship. The second was that the Cubs had to take home the World Series title.

Notre Dame is doing pretty well so far this season. They’ve won three games and lost one. They’re fun to watch and to root for, but they have little chance of winning the championship.

The Cubs had one of their best years ever this year. In Wrigley Field they were almost unbeatable. Tonight they play the Dodgers and they’re expected to win. In fact, for the first time in a long time, many people think they have a real chance of winning the whole shooting match.

Wouldn’t that be something.

On balance, though, I guess the cancer can’t kill me this year – at least it can’t kill me if I’m going to see Fighting Irish as champs.

Meanwhile, I’m going to watch the ball game tonight. I know it’ll bring back some of the best memories I have. Memories of sitting along the third base line, eating peanuts and hot dogs and cheering and groaning along with thousands of other fans.

I’m surprised how often I find myself feeling and thinking like I’m still that twenty-something guy sitting in the stands with a whole world of possibilities in my hands. I’m surprised when I look in the mirror and see myself so old.

I do have a lot of great memories though. Memories of climbing Mount Fujiyama and of anchoring my sailboat off a tiny island in the Florida Keys and watching in wonder as a million tiny shrimp turned the waters around me neon green with phosphorescence. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve held a son and grandson. I’ve traveled most of the world on business or as a serviceman or tourist. I’ve had wonderful times and even sad times I wouldn’t want to forget.

These memories make the growing older easier because without one, I couldn’t have the others.

Soda Bread

2008-09-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve been part of a writers’ critique group for a dozen years or more. There are half-dozen of us, give or take one or two, depending on our schedules. We meet once a month, always at someone’s home, and read and critique some of our recent work.

Sometimes it’s not a lot of fun to be part of a group like this. Egos can clash. Feelings can be hurt. If, as sometimes happens, you’re forced to sit and listen to really terrible writing at every meeting, violence may ensue.

I’m lucky. The group I’m in is comprised of writers who’ve already published or who deserve publication. We’re good for each other.

I haven’t been able to attend every meeting over the last year or so. Sometimes chemo has gotten in the way and sometimes I just haven’t been up to it. But these friends have steadily let me know of their love, with phone calls and e-mails.

I went to a critique group meeting yesterday. There were only a few of us there: Sylvia and Linda and Donna and Peter and me. I was asked to read first. So I did. A couple of sections of the memoir I’m working on. And then we talked. Sylvia told me how much she’d learned about me by reading this blog and by hearing parts of my story. Donna and Linda and Peter agreed. They told me they were happy I was finally opening myself up a bit.

I know I’ve spent most of my life not disclosing anything real about myself. Some of that is cultural. Irish men aren’t known for sober displays of emotionalism. It’s easier to hide behind a façade of toughness or to tell a joke or sing a song or just act as if it – whatever it is – doesn’t really matter.

Some of it is because there’s some stuff that’s always been too painful or embarrasing.

But I realized as we talked yesterday that I was glad I’d found a way to open up. This is new for me, but it’s okay. It’s not so bad having people know how I feel, that I’m afraid or sad or happy or whatever. As important as these people – Sylvia and Peter and Donna and Linda – have been to me they’re more important now.

We snack at these meetings. Yesterday, there was cheese and fruit and crackers. Since it was Linda’s birthday, there was a cake. And before I left, Sylvia gave me three small loaves of Irish soda bread.

I’d never eaten soda bread until I met Sylvia, who’s from Ireland. My mother didn’t bake much. Only an infrequent pie or one of her noteworthy cakes that always seemed to be listing slightly to port or starboard after they were iced. She didn’t bake bread because that wasn’t something one did with one’s rare leisure time. When she was a girl, baking bread was a time-consuming and necessary chore. Buying bread already sliced from a bakery was, for her, the beginning of women’s liberation.

Anyway, I’m not used to soda bread, but I love it. Served with what the Irish call a thick "lashing" of butter it’s good enough to make me close my eyes. I had some this morning for breakfast. And as I ate it, I thought of the group and of how lucky I am to have these friends and of how it’s really okay with me that they know more about me than they used to.

Dying Ain't Fun

2008-09-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Art Buchwald’s book, "Too Soon to Say Goodbye," written, much of it, while he was in a hospice in Washington.

Buchwald was lucky. In early 2006 he went in the hospice expecting to die from kidney failure. By his own admission, he figured he had about three weeks to live. Instead, his kidneys somehow got better. In June of that year he left the hospice for his summer home on Martha’s Vineyard. He lived, finally, until January 17, 2007.

Buchwald was comfortable with the idea of his death. He had the opportunity to undergo kidney dialysis and, instead, decided to die with dignity. As it worked out, he lived longer than anybody expected and had a great time in the hospice. He was visited by family and friends and by politicians and newsmen and people he’d never met. He ate what he wanted to eat. He was awarded the French equivalent of the Legion of Honor for his writing. He was spoiled.

"I never realized dying could be so much fun," he wrote.

You know, Buchwald was right, but only part right.

Of course, being sick isn’t a lot of fun. And not everybody has the chance to make going gentle into that good night a protracted visit with loved ones. Pain is pain, no matter what your outlook.

But still….

What made Buchwald’s end so much fun was his decision that, no matter how much time he had left, he was going to focus all his energies on living his life to the fullest. I know that reads as cloyingly maudlin as a bad greeting card but I can’t think of a better way to write it.

It isn’t always easy to do that, to focus on today rather than tomorrow or the month after this one or on the coffin that waits. But it’s the only way to make today worth living, isn’t it? It’s the only way – to steal again from Dylan Thomas – to "rage, rage against the dying of the light."

In a way, when I allow that to happen, when I allow myself that focus, it does work to make today sweeter than any day in the past. It infuses the day with excitement, with light. In those moments, Buchwald is right. Dying is fun.

I saw my VA therapist today, a smart, gentle woman named Linda Vesley. "Do you think about death every day?" she wondered.

I told her I did, not because I wanted to but because it’s always lurking right below the surface, waiting. All it takes is someone asking how I am or the mention of cancer on the news or any other reminder that I have this disease and there I go again, thinking about death.

When that happens, and it happens frequently, it takes at least a few minutes to get my focus back. And when that happens, Buchwald is wrong. Dying ain’t fun at all.

Birthday Party

2008-09-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

Early yesterday, I had to go to the VA for a cat scan. I was afraid, this time. I’m usually not but the last one I had showed my main tumor had grown a bit. This time, I fear, the news will be worse and then it’ll be time for chemo again. That's if I’m lucky.

Before the scan, I had to drink some barium. The last time I had one I drank banana-flavored barium. It didn’t taste too bad. This time, just to be different, I tried vanilla flavored. It wasn’t as good. Usually, the barium doesn’t bother me but yesterday, for some reason, it made me nauseous. Maybe because I was afraid.

After I came home, my wife – Lynne – and I celebrated her birthday. She loves presents as much as a little girl. When she opens a gift, her whole face lights up. Sometimes she giggles.
Buying her a present is always fun, always a pleasure, because I know how happy she’ll be, no matter what the gift.

Yesterday, she got clothes, a couple of necklaces, and a jazz CD from her sister, Jennifer, who lives in Richmond. I gave her a purse and a hat and dress she’d picked out. Her father gave her a check. She used a little of that money to buy herself a pair of shoes. I don’t think a man would be very happy if he got a pair of shoes as a gift. I guess that’s because to most men buying shoes is like buying tires for a car. More necessary than pleasurable. Lynne, however, loves shoes the way I love sailing.

I gave her three cards: two funny ones including a card with a picture of a monkey inside. For some reason, she loves monkey-pictures as much as shoes. The third card was mushy. It talked about love and how happy she’s made me and then said something about how I hoped we’d have a hundred more birthdays together.

When she read that card, she cried, just a little, but enough to let me know she cared.

After my nap, we went out for a late lunch in honor of the day. We didn’t go to a fancy place, just a seafood restaurant we both enjoy.

I couldn’t help myself. I kept looking at Lynne all during the meal. Every time I looked, she was smiling, her eyes were bright and she was beautiful. Happiness is like that. It’s attractive.
We ate fresh fish and then Lynne ordered chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, a special birthday treat. Again, she was happy.

During the meal, while we ate and she got chocolate sauce on her chin, we didn’t talk about the cancer, or the cat scan, or the fact that I was still nauseous from the barium. We didn’t talk about the truth that – despite what the mushy card said – we weren’t going to have a whole lot of birthdays together.

I’m glad we didn’t talk about that stuff. It was nice to be free of the cancer for a bit, to take a break, to have lunch with my wife and see her smile.

Heaven or Hell

2008-09-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

When I was a child going to Catholic grade school in Chicago, I knew with certainty that I’d be headed for what we called "the bad place" as soon as I died. My sins were legion and unspeakable.

Now, I’m not so sure.

First, I’m not sure there’s a heaven that’s anything like the one I learned about from the nuns at Our Lady of Peace School. There’s not a place where I’d be given a seat on some cloud and a little harp and told to enjoy myself for eternity. Obviously enough, if there's no heaven with little harps then there's no hell with pitchforks.

That’s a relief.

The Catholic Church taught that as soon as I died I would go through "particular judgment." As a sinner, I stood no chance. My body would be buried and my soul sent on to hell. Later, at the end time, my body would rise to be reunited with my soul for the "last judgment."

My fevered little mind developed the terrible belief that on judgment day I’d hop out of my grave and join a huge crowd gathered in a place akin to the world’s largest drive-in movie, only without cars. There, all the people who ever lived would be gathered, souls reunited with bodies, watching films. Each film would show all the good and bad ever done by one individual.

I hated the idea of my mother and father and friends knowing about all my sins. About all the nickels I filched from my mother’s purse. About my lies. What I really did when I was supposed to be taking a shower.

I’m glad I don’t believe that any more. That belief has been replaced by uncertainty. I just don’t know, any more than anybody else, what ultimately awaits.

I like to think, though, that no matter what heaven and hell are like, I’ve paid for my sins already. I’ve been a pretty decent guy for the last dozen years or so and I was never, not even at my worst, bad enough to be forced to spend eternity in hell.

I think maybe God really is a "higher power," some sort of beneficent, loving, tolerant force that put everything in motion and that when I die I’ll simply return to become part of that power.

That sounds good.

I have an old, tiny photograph taken when I was about four years old. In the photo, my father and I are walking down a beach, away the photographer, undoubtedly my mother. My dad and i are holding hands. I remember the bathing suit he used to wear. It was beige, decorated with green palm trees and orange flamingos. I remember the way he’d hold my hand, gentle in his big workingman’s hand. And I remember how safe and serene I felt in those moments.

I think that’s where I’ll be after I die. Not on that beach but in that feeling.

I hope so.

I heard somebody I met in the sober fellowship I'm in say that when he died he hoped he "would go to that big meeting in the sky."

Not me. I'll pass on that. I’d rather go to that big package store in the sky.

If not that, walking on the beach with my old man will suffice.

The View

2008-09-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are fortunate. We live in an apartment overlooking the Lake Worth Lagoon, in Florida. The lagoon is part of the Intracoastal Waterway on Florida’s east coast. When we look out the sliding-glass door that serves as the eastern wall of our living room, we can see the lagoon and beyond that the barrier island just south of Palm Beach. By straining just a bit we can see, beyond that narrow island, the vast sweep of the Atlantic Ocean.

People travel hundreds, often thousands of miles and spend a lot of money to see the view we can see every day of the year. The few visitors we have always, or almost always, stop to look out the window, remark about the beautiful view.

I’m spoiled.

I’m so accustomed to the view that days or weeks go by without my looking out the window. I walk across the living room with my eyes open but unseeing. In the three years we’ve had this apartment I’ve only sat on the balcony outside that sliding glass door, looking to the east, a half-dozen times, no more than that.

That’s a shame.

Before I got sick, I used to be too busy. For months and months I was too busy to look out the window. I sat at a computer day after day writing an average of 2,000 words each day. A million words every 18 months, give or take 100,000 words or so.

Now I can barely stand to work more than a couple of hours at a time. I’m just too tired. And still I have to remind myself to look out the window.

This morning, when I took the time to look I saw an osprey soaring right at the level of our sixth-floor apartment.

I’m going to look more often. I promised myself. Why not? I can’t work so I may as well enjoy myself.

Cranky

2008-09-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

I’m cranky right now. My nose is bleeding. I’m sitting at my computer with a wad of toilet tissue stuck up my right nostril in the hope that blood won’t get all over my penultimate, or second to last, clean tee-shirt. (I don’t wear a shirt when I’m working. Sometimes I don’t even wear pants. I work alone so it’s okay. I say that knowing it’s an image that may, if you have ever seen me, make you cranky or make your nose bleed.)

I know I’m supposed to look on the bright side. I also know a nose-bleed is not a real big deal in this world of ours. Still. I’m cranky.

Than I remember that if I really wanted to do something about my nosebleed, all I would have to do is call the veterans hospital where I get my care and a nurse or doctor would either tell me what to do or tell me to get into the emergency room.

That made me think how lucky I am. I guess I mean that even with a nosebleed and cancer I can see the bright side.

I didn’t much like being in the air force almost 50 years ago. I thought I would when I saw the television commercials showing jet aircraft screaming across the sky and happy men and women – they were on leave, I guess – standing in front of the Louvre or a pyramid. I never got to fly a jet and by the time I got to Japan, my overseas posting, I was already itching to get back to civilian life.

When I got cancer and contacted the VA, nobody ever asked me if I liked being a serviceman. I’m lucky they didn’t. Nobody asked if my cancer was somehow service related. I’m lucky there, too. I told them only service-related injury I suffered was a cracked noggin when I fell off a bar stool in Tokyo or maybe Yokohama.

Come to think of it, the people at the VA hospital didn’t ask me much at all. Instead, they told me they’d take care of me. That was good news. If my treatment depended on the level of my happiness when I was in the service, I’d be dead already.

Two courses of chemo, surgery for a blocked artery, hospitalization four times in two years, psychological help to deal with the disease, and on and on. When I say I’d be dead without the VA, I’m not overstating the case. I would be, no doubt.

All in all, it seems I got a good deal for my four not-so-happy years in uniform, even if I never did get to fly a jet.

And as I’ve been thinking about all this, and counting my blessings, my nose stopped bleeding.

The taste of a date

2008-09-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I had what could be called "a bit of a problem" with alcohol. It could also be called a "big, big problem." The problem was that I wanted to drink every day and once I started drinking I just couldn’t stop. It cost me a lot over the years in terms of losses I needn’t and shouldn’t go into here. What’s important is the fact that about 13 years ago, with the help of a fellowship of sober drunks, I finally got it. I quit. And I haven’t had a drink since then.

More than once since I was diagnosed with lung cancer, a friend or acquaintance has asked how I’ve been able not to drink in the face of this disease. It’s funny. The idea of drinking hasn’t even entered my mind…at least not as a serious possibility.

Why on earth would I want to make the time I have left miserable? Even if misery wasn’t guaranteed, why on earth would I want to make my days muddy and distorted by alcohol?

This morning, I went to the grocery store. I go almost every morning to get something Lynne and I have decided we need. Little Debbie cakes spring immediately to mind. Or flowers. I know the experts say that’s the wrong way to shop for food. I know going shopping every day means I’ll make more impulse purchases than I should. I don’t care.

This morning when I was shopping I got a couple of pounds of coffee, on sale. I grabbed a box of generic imitation sweetener for my wife and a loaf of fresh Cuban bread. I bought some Irish butter. It’s so creamy it’s worth the extra money.

After I put the butter in my cart, I walked through the produce section. In an open refrigerator display I saw little plastic boxes of strawberries, blueberries, even sliced mango and apple slices with caramel sauce for dipping.I’ve eaten all those things. My mother used to make the best caramel apples in the world, I think. And strawberry shortcake.

Suddenly, I saw a display of ripe dates. Now, I’ve never tasted a date. I don’t know why. As a consequence, in my mind dates are shrouded in mystery. Perhaps because they sound Biblical. Though dates are not mentioned by name in the Bible, I think Noah carried a couple of date palms, probably in his cabin on the Ark. He and his wife ate dates late at night while the rain fell and fell.

Anyway, this morning I decided I wanted to eat a date. I wanted to eat a date simply because I’d never eaten one before. So, with the connivance of a supermarket employee who has seen me every morning in the produce department, I did. She slipped me a date. And it was wonderful. Kind of like an apple made out of honey.

I’m glad I ate it.

If I’d been drinking, I wouldn’t have been in the grocery store. Hell, if I’d been drinking I wouldn't still be married. And I never would have the chance to taste a date.It sounds silly doesn’t it? Tasting that date is what makes it easy for me not to end my life in a bottle.

The taste of a date

2008-09-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I had what could be called "a bit of a problem" with alcohol. It could also be called a "big, big problem." The problem was that I wanted to drink every day and once I started drinking I just couldn’t stop. It cost me a lot over the years in terms of losses I needn’t and shouldn’t go into here. What’s important is the fact that about 13 years ago, with the help of a fellowship of sober drunks, I finally got it. I quit. And I haven’t had a drink since then.

More than once since I was diagnosed a friend or acquaintance has asked how I’ve been able not to drink in the face of this cancer.

It’s funny. The idea of drinking hasn’t even entered my mind…at least not as a serious possibility. Why on earth would I want to make the time I have left miserable? Even if misery wasn’t guaranteed, why on earth would I want to make my days muddy and distorted by alcohol?

This morning, I went to the grocery store. I go almost every morning to get something Lynne and I have decided we need. Little Debbie cakes spring immediately to mind. Or flowers. I know the experts say that’s the wrong way to shop for food. I know going shopping every day means I’ll make more impulse purchases than I should. I don’t care.

This morning when I was shopping I got a couple of pounds of coffee, on sale. I grabbed a box of generic imitation sweetener for my wife and a loaf of fresh Cuban bread. I bought some Irish butter. It’s so creamy it’s worth the extra money. After I put the butter in my cart, I walked through the produce section. In an open refrigerator display I saw little plastic boxes of strawberries, blueberries, even sliced mango and apple slices with caramel sauce for dipping.

I’ve eaten all those things. My mother used to make the best caramel apples in the world, I think. And strawberry shortcake. Suddenly, I saw a display of ripe dates. Now, I’ve never tasted a date. I don’t know why. As a consequence, in my mind dates are shrouded in mystery. Perhaps because they sound Biblical. Though dates are not mentioned by name in the Bible, I think Noah carried a couple of date palms, probably in his cabin on the Ark. He and his wife ate dates late at night while the rain fell and fell.

Anyway, this morning I decided I wanted to eat a date. I wanted to eat a date simply because I’d never eaten one before. So, with the connivance of a supermarket employee who has seen me every morning in the produce department, I did. She slipped me a date. And it was wonderful. Kind of like an apple made out of honey.

I’m glad I ate it.

If I’d been drinking, I wouldn’t have been in the grocery store. Hell, if I’d been drinking I wouldn't still be married. And I never would have the chance to taste a date.

It sounds silly doesn’t it? Tasting that date is what makes it easy for me not to end my life in a bottle.

Pain

2008-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

Every time I go to the VA hospital these days I’m asked to rate my pain from one to 10, with one being no pain and ten being a lot of pain. Most days I’m not in pain, so I just say "one" and the doctor or nurse who asked nods. When I’m in pain, I’m not sure what to answer. I’m not sure because I don’t know how bad pain has to be to get a "10" rating. Since I’m not sure how bad pain can get, I can’t even guess what a "4" rating is like, or a "6" or any other degree.

About eight years ago, when I was getting post-surgery chemotherapy for my colon cancer, I was hospitalized because of a particularly nasty chemo side effect. When I went to the ER, nobody asked how much pain I was in. I guess because I was moaning and groaning too much to answer. I would have said "10" because when that pain started, I figured it couldn't get any worse. When a nurse offered me morphine I almost licked his hand like a happy and thankful puppy.

Now, though, I’m not sure if that pain was worthy of the top rating. I think not. I think there’s pain a lot worse than that. And I’m not happy about that.

I’m in pain today. Not bad. I’d give this pain of mine today about a "two" rating.

I don’t like to tell my wife when I’m in pain like this. I figure if it doesn’t register on my face, it’s not worth bothering her. It’s not bad enough for me to go to the hospital, so there’s really nothing to be done, is there? And I don’t want to worry her. I also don’t want to have to keep telling her I’m okay every time she asks.

The only reason I bring it up is because I always think this pain is a hint of what’s down the road, some kind of message to keep me from feeling too sure of myself. And it works. Most times I’m sure I can take whatever lies ahead. Yo! take your best shot, cancer! Or, as someone famously said, "Bring it on!"

But then when I get these pains it reminds me that I really don’t know what number 10 pain is like. I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty bad. And that scares me. I’m thinking of asking my wife to leave me alone when the pain gets real bad. I don’t want her to have to experience it. But I guess that’s not fair, is it?

Anyway, I’m not going to tell her I’m in pain today. She won’t go on line until tomorrow or the next day, I think. She’s got too much to do. So by the time she reads this, if she does, the pain I’m in today will have passed so we’ll be able to forget about it. At least for now.

You don't know me

2008-09-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. Nobody truly knows me anymore. Not my friends, not men and women I’ve seen and had coffee and conversation with and shared fellowship meetings with for 13 years. Even the people I love the most – and who love me in return – don’t really know me any more. Neither my mother nor my wife. Not my brothers. Not Mark who loves me better than just about anybody else and not Jimmy who helped me get sober.

It’s not that these people, all of whom care about me, don’t wish to know about me, it’s just that knowing me, really knowing me, is impossible.

You see, the "me" they once loved is gone, replaced by a new me. This new me is different from the old me, very different. To be sure, I seem to be pretty much the same from the outside. I look the same, just a bit skinnier and with a bit less hair. I dress the same. My beliefs haven’t changed. I’m still a liberal and proud of it. I still love Law and Order and The Simpsons and can’t stand any reality show. I still love serenity and constancy in my life and hate conflict and uncertainty. And so on.

But I’m not the same person I was before the cancer arrived all unbidden to take up lodgings in my lungs.

I am not the same because my perceptions of the world and my place in it have shifted just slightly, the way an image can shift just a bit when reflected in window glass or seen in an imperfect mirror.

Of course the people who love me, who care for me, don’t know I’m not the same because there’s no way they could know. But when we’re together talking or laughing or hugging or whatever it is that we’re doing, everything from my end is colored just a bit, skewed just the slightest bit by this thing that’s growing inside me or, rather, by my knowledge of the thing that’s inside me.

It’s not that I’m always thinking about cancer or about death or about loss or gloom. I’m not. I have my moments, to be sure, but not that many. It’s not that. It’s more like the illness, the diagnosis and prognosis have put the thought of death in my mind, always just below the surface of my consciousness. And with the thought of death never very far beneath the surface I find that I detach myself a bit from everything I do so I can observe the closing of my. I do this, I think, becauseI truly believe that the way I die is important. Because I believe what I leave behind is important.

I wish I could better explain the change in me to the people who love me. I perceive it in myself, I know it’s there but I can’t explain it fully, not even to myself.

In face, words just seem to get in the way, to make understanding more difficult. As a consequence, the times I feel closest to the people I love and who love me is is when we’re together in silence or, and this is even better, when I’m alone thinking of those who care.

Go Irish!

2008-09-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a Notre Dame football fan as long as I can remember.

I came by it honestly. My maternal grandmother, Delia Malloy from Mayo, was such a fan that when she was, herself, dying of cancer in 1943 she had my dad carry her from her bedroom into the living room where she could rest on the sofa and hear #1 Notre Dame play #2 Michigan in a game that determined the national champ. Notre Dame won, the story goes, she cheered weakly, and then died.

I like that story. I have a picture of my two brothers and me on my living room wall. We’re each wearing a Notre Dame letter sweater. Kevin is six, I’m four and my brother Pat is two. It’s the only picture I have of myself in which I think I look handsome.

When I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I promised myself I wouldn’t die until I saw the Fighting Irish win another national championship.

I don’t know if I can make that promise stick but I sure hope I can.

Last year the Irish had their worst season ever. They won only three games. They lost to Navy for the first time in 43 years. My emotions were mixed. I was sad for the team and the school but I was kind of happy because I figured I had at least one more football season to go.

The Notre Dame Irish took to the field for the first time this year two days ago. They were playing San Diego State, a team they should have beaten without too much trouble. Things did not go so well during the first three quarters. The San Diego State Aztecs pushed the Irish around and looked like they were on the way to a big upset.

My wife went to church during the game and came home early in the fourth quarter.
She asked me how the game was going. She knows about my promise to myself not to die before ND wins it all.

I answered without thinking just as Notre Dame gave up the ball after a third-down run that didn’t pan out. "For this I stayed alive?" I said. "They look like bums."

My wife was shocked. Of course I was joking. Kind of.

In any case, the Irish came alive in the last quarter, scoring two touchdowns and winning the game by eight points. Then I felt pretty good. I felt good because, all joking aside, I do want to live long enough to see Notre Dame win big.

I guess I should be unnerved by every ND win. But I’m not. In fact, I feel pretty secure. That’s because I’ve also promised myself that I’m going to stay alive until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. The last time that happened was 1908. So the odds of them both winning all the marbles any time soon seem pretty slim indeed.

I thank God I’m able to enjoy small things like football and jokes about the cancer. If I couldn’t laugh, who knows what I’d do?

When I was at the VA hospital the other day I walked past a young vet who almost certainly just returned from Iraq or Afghanistan. He was in a wheelchair being pushed down the hall by a nurse. He looked like he should have been a freshman at Notre Dame or at San Diego State or someplace. Instead, he was sitting in the chair, unable to hold his head up, leaning precariously to one side. Both legs of his sweatpants were folded around the stumps of his limbs.

After I watched the ND game, I remembered him. In an instant, I realized how unimportant Notre Dame football is and the Cubs, too. Immediately I remembered that even a guy with terminal cancer could have it worse. And though I may be wrong, I thought the young man in the wheel chair would be willing to change places with me in a heartbeat if he could just walk into a room, sit down and watch a football game.

When not knowing is best

2008-09-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

I went to the VA early today. It wasn’t for anything serious, just to pick up some medicine I take to help fight fatigue.

The hospital is about fifteen miles from here. It’s a state-of-the-art hospital, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been an inpatient there four times in the last two years and I’ve been treated much better there than I’ve been treated in a lot of other places I’ve been in my life. The people who work there are great, and I mean the doctors and nurses and aides and everybody else. Even the guy who walks around with a tiny little broom and dustpan picking up pieces of paper and dust bunnies smiles when he says hello.

Everything looks new. Well, at least they have had all the machines they’ve needed, so far, to give me tests and take pictures and stick me and prod me and everything else they do in hospitals.

I have to say, though, I’m a pretty good patient. I don’t like pain, so I’ve been known to whimper and even groan when circumstances require it. But I don’t complain about the food even when its broth and Jell-O and I don’t demand a lot of service from nurses because I don’t like too many people bothering me under any circumstances.

I also don’t ask a lot of questions. I know I’m supposed to. I know I should get second opinions and all that and I’ve even done some of that in the past. But right now I just don’t want to be reminded of what’s going on inside my body. I don’t want to hear about it and don’t want to talk about it. I had colon cancer about eight years ago and had surgery and chemo and that worked out okay. But during that period, I talked about my bowels and bowel movements in public for the first time ever. I even said the words "bowel movement" to a woman. Now, I have a pretty rough vocabulary. You can’t live the way I have and not gain a certain fondness for some terms. But no man should be forced to say the words "bowel movement" to a woman under any circumstances, with or without cancer.

With this new cancer I don’t have to talk about my bowels but I do have to talk about other things I’d rather keep to myself. You’ll have to guess what those things are.

Sometimes people, strangers or passing acquaintances, ask me what kind of cancer I have and I tell them lung cancer. That’s as far as I’ll go. But they want to know more. Is it squamus or adenocarcinoma? Is it small-cell or non-small-cell? What stage? How many tumors? Where? What drugs am I taking? I don’t answer. I don’t respond because what they really want to know, especially strangers, is when I’m going to die. They’re like people who slow down to gawk at auto accidents not because they’re interested but because they’re hoping to see something ghastly. Or at least something they can talk about later. Or something that will make them feel better.

I don’t want to know enough to give them that kind of information about myself. I don’t want them looking at me like a smashed up Honda or Chevy. Hell, I don’t want anybody to know that much about me, not even myself.

I truly don’t want to know when I’m going to die. Fortunately, the real world isn’t like the movies. At least my real world. In the movies, some doctor is always able to say, almost to the minute, how long the patient is going to live. My doctor has never told me my prognosis except in the most general terms, in terms of averages. I know enough to know that when he starts talking in specifics – weeks or days – I’m not going to have too long to worry about it. That works for me.

That works for me because I never need to be reminded that I’m sick and I know that if I know just when I’ll die I’ll have more knowledge than I really want.

Drug Dreams

2008-09-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

I take a lot of medicine these days, even when I am, as now, between courses of chemotherapy.

I take sleeping pills because without them I have a tendency to wake in the middle of the night and then toss and turn in the darkness. I take two different types of anti-depressants for obvious reasons. I take medicine for my heart, medicine for my prostate and a medicine – it’s usually given to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder children – to help me battle fatigue. Of course I take vitamins. And, when I’m getting chemo, I take anti-nausea pills and steroids.

My doctors ask if the anti-depressants work and I have to say I don’t know. The only way I could find out is to stop taking them and see how depressed I get. I don’t really want to do that. The same with the medicine I use to fight my exhaustion. I seem to be a little perkier. I’m writing a few hours every day, which had become difficult before I started the new drug. Of course, it may be psychological. I don’t care.

There is, though, a side effect to one of these drugs, or maybe to some mix of drugs. And it's a side effect I’ve never read about or heard of. For the last month or so I’ve been having very vivid, very brief dreams, sometimes when I’m napping and sometimes if I go back to sleep after waking during the night. These dreams are so real that they wake me and when they do wake me I feel as if I’m actually in the situation I was dreaming about, no matter how goofy it is.

Wow.

Just the other day, for example, I dreamed I was talking on the phone to my sister in law, Jennifer, who lives in Richmond. When I woke, I hollered to my wife that she had to get to the phone, her sister was waiting to talk to her. After Lynne stopped doing what she was doing and answered the phone only to hear a dial tone, she wasn’t happy. I don’t blame her.

Once I dreamed that I’d lost an important book in my bed and I came awake to start stripping the bed frantically until I realized there was no lost book. I've come awake to answer a doorbell that hasn't rung and to express my anger to my wife for leaving me even though she hasn't.

Last night, I went to sleep wearing ear plugs to block the sound of the wind that often screams around our waterfront apartment when, like now, there’s a tropical storm nearby. The ear plugs are made of some substance you might get if you crossed wax and thick bubble gum, only not sticky. I jam them in my ears and push until they block the ear canal. They’re not very attractive, but who cares. They work.

About four o’clock this morning I dreamed I was eating a gum drop. I wasn’t. I woke to find one of the ear plugs in my mouth. Apparently it had fallen out and somehow turned itself, in my dream, into a piece of candy. I’m glad I didn’t try to gulp the whole thing, it might have killed me. As it was, it was just funny enough to make me laugh, after I spit the earplug out.

I guess I should tell one of my doctors or maybe all of them what’s going on. But I’m not going to. At least not yet. I don’t think I’ll sleepwalk and go for a drive or eat a frozen dinner or even a whole bunch of ear plugs. If I wake and find I’ve done something really goofy or dangerous, I’ll let the doctors know.

For now, it’s kind of interesting. And it’s great, for now, to know there’s a good chance that the next time I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and start laughing. It’s a nice way to wake.

I got a phone call yesterday from one of the radiology techs at the VA hospital. We scheduled my next chest cat scan for three weeks from now. The last one was pretty good. The main tumor had grown, but not much. If this one shows what we expect it to, more growth, I’ll be starting chemo again.

I’m not caging for sympathy, I’m really not. I’m just stating the truth. And the truth is that when I start chemo again, even though it keeps me alive, it’s going to be a bit harder to find reasons to wake with a laugh or a smile.

Denial

2008-09-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today how lucky I am that I’ve been graced with a wonderful weapon I can use to ward off some of my life’s more fearsome realities or even some of its minor irritants.

I’m talking about denial.

Denial sometimes gets a bum rap. It’s treated like a rowdy, unwelcome guest at a church picnic. It’s talked about as if it’s some kind of a sneaky trick our mind plays on us to keep us from facing something we need to face or taking some action we need to take. And sometimes it is. It’s what keeps alcoholics drinking, most of them, until they die.

But sometimes denial is just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes it truly helps.

I, for one, love it.

Denial is what makes it possible for me to function, some days. It’s what convinces me, often, that I’m not really sick. It’s what makes it possible for me to go hours, sometimes, without thinking about the damn thing inside me that wants me dead. It makes it possible, as goofy as it is, to believe, sometimes, that I’m going to be okay. That somehow a miracle will happen or the oncologist will tell me there’s a new cure, guaranteed to work overnight.

Denial also helps my family and my friends. Denial is what makes it possible for them to smile when they see me, to talk about next year, the year after that, to talk to me as if there’s nothing wrong. This is what makes it possible for them not to feel fear or sorrow or loss. The other day, my mother – who is in the tenth decade of her life – said something about me going to Ireland to meet relatives I’ve never met. She said maybe I’d be able to do it next year.

I was cruel. I should have agreed and kept my mouth shut. But I can’t always do that. "Mom," I said, "do you not know what’s going on with me?" As soon as I said it, I wished I could somehow suck the words back into my mouth.

She was quiet for a minute. "Yes", she said. "I know exactly what’s going on with you. I just don’t want to think about it."

Denial is what lets her not think about it and for that it’s good and welcome. And I don’t think I really have the right to take that from her.

As for myself, I wish I could stay in denial all the time. That I didn’t know what’s going on with me. But I can’t. Usually, I’m snapped out of denial when someone well- meaning, like my mother, talks about making plans for a future I probably won’t enjoy. Or I’m brought back to reality when someone asks me how I am. The someone could be ringing up my purchases at the grocery store or a friend or even my wife. As soon as I hear the words, any denial I’m enjoying departs.

"I’m okay," I say, often. "I’m hanging in there." But sometimes I can’t say that. Sometimes I say I feel like crap because I have cancer. And if I’m really feeling lousy or if I’m angry or just sick of being sick, I tell the questioner the truth. "I’m dying," I say. "How’s it going for you?"

Lookin' Good

2008-08-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

I’m between courses of chemotherapy right now. Of course, I’m not cured. My doctor at the Veterans Administration said I needed some time to rest up and recuperate before we start again with some new poison cocktail.

He’s a funny guy, my doctor. He’s kind of like "House" on television only with a potbelly and a great laugh. He tells me it’ll be good for me to take a "drug vacation." That’s what it’s known as in the world of oncology. Besides, he said, I’ll have plenty of time to be miserable later. I have a good idea what he means, but I’m not exactly sure. And I don’t really want to know. Not yet, anyway.

Meantime, he says, I’m doing as well as can be hoped. The main tumor, the one in my right lung, shrunk about 50% during my first course of chemo. The second course of chemo didn’t shrink it but did keep it from growing. Now it’s regained some of its appetite, but it’s still only about 20% larger than it was when I was first diagnosed. The other three tumors are pretty much unchanged. There are some spots on my liver, but for now they’re tiny.

"You really look good," a friend of mine told me a few days ago. "Wow, you look pretty healthy," another friend said. My wife tells me I look handsome, but that’s kind of her job, right?

You know, though, when I look in the mirror I see that, in fact, I do look pretty healthy. My hair has grown back except for my bald spot. My mustache isn’t as thick as it was, but it’s not stringy. I’ve lost some weight but since I’ve always been thin, it’s okay. My color is good. In fact, sometimes when I step our of the shower and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I look pretty normal. Except for the chemotherapy port in my chest and the purple blotches on my hands and my arms where I’ve bumped up against a door or a wall or just brushed against something hard.

Sometimes, looking at myself, I forget my diagnosis. And that’s wonderful when it happens. But it doesn’t last. Always, without fail, I’ll think about taking a trip or writing a new book or sailing one more time down to the Keys or doing something six months from now or next year and then it hits me.

Who am I kidding?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m glad I look good, that I’m not bald, that I’m not as skinny as I will eventually be. But it’s terrible to have to question every hope I have or dream I dream or plan I make for any time more than a few days or weeks from now. It’s really terrible when my wife talks about going to St. Augustine in the fall or about where we’ll spend Christmas, to nod, to smile, to agree, and then to think, ‘we’ll see.’

Sometimes, usually when I’m not feeling so good, I blurt that out. "We’ll see, Honey," I say. "We’ll have to see, won’t we?" And what I see is the pain in her eyes, the fear, and I realize how unfair that is to her, even though it’s true.

Maybe if I looked worse, less healthy, bald and emaciated, it would be easier, on me and on her.

The Language of Cancer

2008-08-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

I recently spent an evening with one of my best friends, a great guy who’s near the end of a battle with pancreatic cancer. We’ve known each other for almost a decade, grown close enough to say we love each other without any of the throat clearing or lack of eye contact that so often accompanies those words when said by two men. I consider him – his name is Kevin – one of the best men I’ve ever known. It was special to us both that he was able to come down to South Florida from Georgia so we could hang out together.

It was a great evening. We went to a baseball game between the Florida Marlins (his team) and the Chicago Cubs (mine) and though the Cubbies lost, we had a wonderful time. We watched the game, of course, and we ate hot dogs neither of us could really handle and we laughed a bit the way old friends should, at each other and things we shared. We talked, the two of us, how this disease has touched our wives and his young children and how we both wish things were different but just have to accept the truth. Of course, we got a little maudlin but that’s our right, I think. We also said "dammit" a lot and I think that’s our right, too.

Near the end of the evening we talked about the special language we share, along with other men and women who are facing terminal cancer. How when we say "goodbye" it sounds so final even when it isn’t because it has such a good chance of being just that, of being final.

Dammit.

How when we talk about being tired we’re talking about a tiredness that transcends any tiredness we’d ever experienced before this illness. And how silly it sounds when some well-meaning friend or family member responds by talking about how tired they are because they didn’t sleep well the night before.

We talked about how we know the names of drugs we shouldn’t know the names of and of medical procedures and different cancer stages that we wished we didn’t have to know.

We talked, too, about the fear we know, a fear it seems we can’t share with loved ones just because it would be too cruel to share it with them.

And we talked about how insulting it is to me and to Kevin or to anybody else with cancer when someone, anyone, tells us to keep a good attitude as if we or little babies with leukemia or Ted Kennedy or anybody else with terminal cancer got it because our attitudes were bad.

Dammit. Of course a good attitude is healthier than a bad one. But don’t use that fact to beat me up or make me feel guilty if I feel down or depressed or just like saying "screw it." It’ll pass.

Saying goodbye to Kevin after that evening was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I fear I’ll never see him again. And then who will I talk with?

Why Write?

2008-08-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Why am I doing this? That’s a question a friend asked me this morning.

Well, I’m not really sure. I know I was inspired partly by Leroy Sievers, the onetime producer of Ted Koppel’s television show, journalist and blogger (MyCancer) who died not long ago. Not that I could be Leroy Sievers or take his place or somehow replicate his work but, rather, that I’d like to follow his lead. Maybe, like him, I could speak to and for people facing terminal cancer and to their loved ones.

I hope I can.

Another reason why I’m doing this is that "this" is what I do. It's what I’ve done my whole life. I’m a writer. I’m a writer who has cancer. So I’ll write. About my life and its joys and struggles and about my wife, Lynne, and my mom and brothers and friends. From time to time, but not often, I’ll write about what it’s like to be a cancer patient who happens also to be a sober alcoholic thanks to a recovery program I’m in. I think that’s relevant and also think maybe I’m a better person, maybe I do a better job of facing my cancer because of that program and what I’ve learned there.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with these words. I guess I’ll send them to a few friends and see what happens.

I do know I’d like to hear from other men and women with terminal cancer and their friends and loved ones. We share something. We share having to face death in a way that others can’t understand. And we shouldn’t have to face it without help from others who understand.

I plan to write as often as possible. I’ve no set schedule. Right now, I’m between courses of chemo so I feel pretty good except for the exhaustion that just won’t go away. But I don’t know for sure when the treatments will start again. And when they do, when I’m back to sitting in a room with my feet up and a needle in a port in my chest, I don’t know how often I’ll be up to writing.

So contact me, if you feel like it. And then we’ll see what happens.

2008-08-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

About two-and-a-half years ago, I was told I have inoperable, stage-three lung cancer. At the time I was advised that patients like me usually last about two years, so I’ve already outlived my prognosis. During this time, I’ve tried not to focus all my attention on the disease that’s going to end my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not by nature a very upbeat kind of guy. But I refuse to live what’s left of my life in my grave.

Like other people, I wondered, often, what I would do if I got a death sentence? Now, I’m learning. And make no mistake, that’s what this is. The doctors can keep me alive for awhile and except for the tiredness and the nausea from chomotherapy my life isn’t bad, yet. But, hey, it’s coming to an end. And it’s ending no matter how much I rely on the good-old American belief that all problems can be solved with a can-do attitude and a cheery outlook and a touch of Yankee know how. If that was all it took to survive cancer, chemotherapy centers and radiation centers and cancer wards could be used to house the homeless. No, this is a reality I can’t be outrun. Short of an honest to God miracle, terminal cancer is final. But I refuse to think about that. I refuse because I believe the way I die is more important than my death. Believe me, I’m frightened sometimes, and angry, and worried about what will happen to my wife, or all the other things you might imagine, but I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to let the cancer beat me until I can just fight no more. If I feel strong enough or healthy enough to, heaven help me, make love with my wife or maybe go sailing one last time or lose myself in Pavarotti’s "Nessun Dorma" a few more times or get to watch another season of Notre Dame football, I want to be able to enjoy it.

I’m really not brave. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, in the dark, and I can’t breathe from the sudden fear. I’m afraid that when I’m dying I’ll turn into a weeping mass of pleading humanity. I’ve been promised that I’ll get pain-killers and that’ll be kind of nice, I think. I like the idea of taking morphine without having to worry about becoming addicted…hell, that’ll be off the table, won’t it?

It helps that I know just how blessed I am. I'm a sober alcoholic, sober for a little more than 13 years. I was what's known as a low-bottom alky: one of those guys you see lurking under bridges or in alleys, the kind of guy who cleaned the gin-mill toilet for a couple of beers and who followed his thirst to places I never thought I'd end up. Now I'm sober and though I'm deadly sick I'm able to treasure every day.

I wish I could live longer. But I can't. And then I remember what I thought when my oncologist looked over the top of his glasses and told me I had terminal cancer. I remember thinking, Man, I’ve had a hell of a ride. A lot of pain, but it was worth it.