Chow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Good Day

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

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

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.

New Year

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

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.

God

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.

Thanksgiving

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.

Mixed Feelings

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

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?

Good Eats

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

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.

Soda Bread

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

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.

The Language of Cancer

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?