Lynne

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Plagiarism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ha!

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t even enjoy the memories at all.

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.