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.

My Oldest Son

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

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

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

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

What crimes?

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

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

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

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

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

Bad News

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

Too bad. I can barely write at all.

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

No more.

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

Back to Work

I feel okay today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Worst Year Ever

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom, Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

The prayers seem to be working.

Here’s what I mean:

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

That may be a miracle.

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

Lack of Memory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is at least one benefit, though.

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

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

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

I didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

Pal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anniversary

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

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

Fourteen years.

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

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

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

That’s what I thought.

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

That may sound like nothing to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memories

I had chemotherapy on Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mickey, I love you.

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

I didn’t remember much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not bad, hunh?

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

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

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

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

Mother's Day

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

I do want to talk about Mom, though.

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

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

That’s what I choose to believe.

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

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

My mom and I were – and are.

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

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

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

Whew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberal

Liberal
I’ve been a liberal all my life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God

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

At each meeting, there are prayers.

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

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

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

I do believe enough to pray, my own way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what I do.

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

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

I guess the prayers didn’t do any harm.

Yuck

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.

Loneliness

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

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

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

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

What was terrible was the loneliness.

And it was Christmas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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