Bad Times

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.

Bad News

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.

MJ and DI

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

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

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.

Pal

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.

Yuck

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.

The Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

Chow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valentine's Day

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

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.

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.

Goodness

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

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

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

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

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

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.