The Times Seem to be Changing

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

I haven’t.

I guess I should not have said anything.

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

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

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

I hope so.

Lynne

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.

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.