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?
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, July 3, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
MJ and DI
My mother got out of the hospital last Friday (June 26), went home and broke her hip on Saturday. She somehow survived Sunday but was back in the hospital on Monday. She had surgery today (July 1) and somehow expects to be walking within a week.
At least that’s the news I got from my mother and my brother up in Clearwater. I never heard of anything like that, but, hey, it sounds good to me.
I had chemo this morning. It wasn’t bad but early in the drive home my tight lower lip went completely numb. It only took an instant for the lip to go from being normal to tingling, as if I’d been given a big pain-killer shot in a dentist’s office.
I know I should have turned back to the hospital, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go home.
I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. It worked out though. Not long after I walked into the apartment, the lip felt fine.
So far, so good. Mom seems to be okay and I’m here.
Meanwhile, I wish everybody would stop talking about Michael Jackson, his money, his DNA, his drug habit, and everything else.
I feel bad for Farrah Fawcett Major’s loved ones and followers. Thanks to The King of Pop, her passing has hardly been noticed.
The same thing happened to Mother Theresa (now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta) after her death in 1997. Diana, the Princess of Wales, died just a few days earlier and news of her passing in a brutal auto accident in Paris put the Roman Catholic nun at the back of most newspapers.
I don't know why, but this stuff bothers me. In a way, though, I enjoy it. It takes my mind off me and my mom for a bit and gives me something new to complain about.
At least that’s the news I got from my mother and my brother up in Clearwater. I never heard of anything like that, but, hey, it sounds good to me.
I had chemo this morning. It wasn’t bad but early in the drive home my tight lower lip went completely numb. It only took an instant for the lip to go from being normal to tingling, as if I’d been given a big pain-killer shot in a dentist’s office.
I know I should have turned back to the hospital, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go home.
I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. It worked out though. Not long after I walked into the apartment, the lip felt fine.
So far, so good. Mom seems to be okay and I’m here.
Meanwhile, I wish everybody would stop talking about Michael Jackson, his money, his DNA, his drug habit, and everything else.
I feel bad for Farrah Fawcett Major’s loved ones and followers. Thanks to The King of Pop, her passing has hardly been noticed.
The same thing happened to Mother Theresa (now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta) after her death in 1997. Diana, the Princess of Wales, died just a few days earlier and news of her passing in a brutal auto accident in Paris put the Roman Catholic nun at the back of most newspapers.
I don't know why, but this stuff bothers me. In a way, though, I enjoy it. It takes my mind off me and my mom for a bit and gives me something new to complain about.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, May 8, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, April 17, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Valentine's Day
The other day was Valentine’s Day. It was also the anniversary of my father’s death. I was lucky this year. I got to drive up to Clearwater to spend a few days with my mom and my brothers, Kevin and Pat. On Saturday, Valentine’s Day, we went to Roman Catholic mass together, in remembrance of my father’s passing.
My dad has been dead for 13 years. I’m not sure how old he was when he died. That’s because history seems to show that he was born in either 1906 or 1907, in Ballinahinch, Ireland.
According to my old man, he was born in his family farmhouse on December 26, 1906. That’s the day we celebrated his birthday though we didn’t celebrate much since it was the day after Christmas.
According to his birth certificate, though, my father was born on February 20, 1907. My dad said the difference in dates arose because his birth wasn’t registered until his father, John Doherty, made a trip to Cashel, the town where such things were recorded.
That’s possible. After all, when my dad, Patrick, was born into an Irish Catholic family in what is now the Irish Republic, things like his birth date weren’t so important to the British who ruled the island. Neither were his freedom or his health or his education or his diet.
He loved potatoes. Once, in a fancy restaurant, after the waiter had listed all the vegetables he could order with his meal, my dad asked simply for a few boiled praties. That’s the Gaelic word for potatoes. He loved potatoes. My mom said that if she kept serving him spuds, he’d keep eating them until he exploded. That’s because when he was a boy he was never sure that any praties he ate might not be the last available for a time.
My father came to America as a young man. He worked as a handyman for a time, then as a meat-cutter for Harding’s Corn Beef, then as a salesman, and – finally – as a longshoreman, loading and unloading boats on the Chicago River. He left the house before dawn and never came home before sunset. He was a hard man, big and strong and tough. I heard he was quite a boxer as a young man, the champion of Cashel, taking on challengers from other villages. I know he had huge fists.
He was tough with his family, as well. But he loved us all. In his world, that love was best expressed by putting food on the table in a safe house. He wanted each of us, he often said, to climb higher up the ladder than he’d been able to climb.
My dad and I loved each other, but we didn’t get along well during all those years when booze ruled my life. I became things, drinking, he never wanted me to become. In fact, neither he nor my mom talked to me for more than a dozen years when my drinking was bad. I don’t blame them. Those were years when I couldn’t look in the mirror.
Anyway, after I got sober things improved.
"I don’t understand your being a drunk," my father told me. "I don’t know why you can’t just stop when you want to stop." I knew it would make no sense to try to explain. "Anyway," my father said, "you’re sure as hell doing better these days. Keep the plug in the damned jug." Then he hugged me. It’s the only time I can remember that he hugged me.
At the mass said at my father’s church on Valentine’s Day, I got to sit next to my mother. She’s 93 years old now and a bit deaf and very unsteady on her feet. She can’t kneel any more the way Catholics are supposed to kneel during mass. But she was there. And when the priest announced that the mass was being said in remembrance of Patrick Joseph Doherty, my mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
I’m glad I was there.
My dad has been dead for 13 years. I’m not sure how old he was when he died. That’s because history seems to show that he was born in either 1906 or 1907, in Ballinahinch, Ireland.
According to my old man, he was born in his family farmhouse on December 26, 1906. That’s the day we celebrated his birthday though we didn’t celebrate much since it was the day after Christmas.
According to his birth certificate, though, my father was born on February 20, 1907. My dad said the difference in dates arose because his birth wasn’t registered until his father, John Doherty, made a trip to Cashel, the town where such things were recorded.
That’s possible. After all, when my dad, Patrick, was born into an Irish Catholic family in what is now the Irish Republic, things like his birth date weren’t so important to the British who ruled the island. Neither were his freedom or his health or his education or his diet.
He loved potatoes. Once, in a fancy restaurant, after the waiter had listed all the vegetables he could order with his meal, my dad asked simply for a few boiled praties. That’s the Gaelic word for potatoes. He loved potatoes. My mom said that if she kept serving him spuds, he’d keep eating them until he exploded. That’s because when he was a boy he was never sure that any praties he ate might not be the last available for a time.
My father came to America as a young man. He worked as a handyman for a time, then as a meat-cutter for Harding’s Corn Beef, then as a salesman, and – finally – as a longshoreman, loading and unloading boats on the Chicago River. He left the house before dawn and never came home before sunset. He was a hard man, big and strong and tough. I heard he was quite a boxer as a young man, the champion of Cashel, taking on challengers from other villages. I know he had huge fists.
He was tough with his family, as well. But he loved us all. In his world, that love was best expressed by putting food on the table in a safe house. He wanted each of us, he often said, to climb higher up the ladder than he’d been able to climb.
My dad and I loved each other, but we didn’t get along well during all those years when booze ruled my life. I became things, drinking, he never wanted me to become. In fact, neither he nor my mom talked to me for more than a dozen years when my drinking was bad. I don’t blame them. Those were years when I couldn’t look in the mirror.
Anyway, after I got sober things improved.
"I don’t understand your being a drunk," my father told me. "I don’t know why you can’t just stop when you want to stop." I knew it would make no sense to try to explain. "Anyway," my father said, "you’re sure as hell doing better these days. Keep the plug in the damned jug." Then he hugged me. It’s the only time I can remember that he hugged me.
At the mass said at my father’s church on Valentine’s Day, I got to sit next to my mother. She’s 93 years old now and a bit deaf and very unsteady on her feet. She can’t kneel any more the way Catholics are supposed to kneel during mass. But she was there. And when the priest announced that the mass was being said in remembrance of Patrick Joseph Doherty, my mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
I’m glad I was there.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Bitter
I’ve had a tough week.
My wife has been ill, and it’s been rough. I can’t say what’s wrong with her, it wouldn’t be right. But I can say she’s been waging a terrible war against her illness and, unfortunately, losing all but a few of the battles.
It’s hard, in times like these, to take the focus off myself. There’s this feeling I have – rightly or not – that I’m the one who needs help right now. "Damn it," I say to myself, "why this? Why now? What about me?"
"I don’t want to die alone." That’s what I say.
I don’t want to.
Then I think about her and try to put myself inside her head. I can’t. She’s been not well pretty much since the day I left my oncologist’s office in the VA hospital, met her in the waiting room, and told her the news.
"It’s not good."
I remember. Her eyes went kind of blank for a moment as if she was looking into a future she couldn’t comprehend. Then she nodded. "Yes," she said. "I get it."
But she didn’t really get it right away. Not all of it. But as time passed, and I had chemo and didn’t get any better, as my immune system crashed and I puked and bled in unmentionable ways, as I grew sicker, she started to get it. She began to understand the future and now it scares hell out of her. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be inside her head.
In the fellowship I belong to, there’s a lot of talk about God’s will. No matter what happens, I’m told, it’s "God’s Will." The words are always said with reverence, said so large that I know there’s no arguing with them.
That’s baloney. God is supposed to be rational, loving, and just. There’s been nothing rational or loving or just about this last week and my wife’s pain. If God’s intention is to teach me how painful it is to watch someone I love suffer, I’ve learned. I don’t need any more training, so stop, already.
Friends ask what they can do to help and the only response I can make is to ask them to pray. What I don’t tell them is that I don’t think prayer is going to help because the God who would do this isn’t about to listen to any pleas from anybody.
So I've had a tough week.
But nowhere near as tough as my wife's. I wish it would end.
My wife has been ill, and it’s been rough. I can’t say what’s wrong with her, it wouldn’t be right. But I can say she’s been waging a terrible war against her illness and, unfortunately, losing all but a few of the battles.
It’s hard, in times like these, to take the focus off myself. There’s this feeling I have – rightly or not – that I’m the one who needs help right now. "Damn it," I say to myself, "why this? Why now? What about me?"
"I don’t want to die alone." That’s what I say.
I don’t want to.
Then I think about her and try to put myself inside her head. I can’t. She’s been not well pretty much since the day I left my oncologist’s office in the VA hospital, met her in the waiting room, and told her the news.
"It’s not good."
I remember. Her eyes went kind of blank for a moment as if she was looking into a future she couldn’t comprehend. Then she nodded. "Yes," she said. "I get it."
But she didn’t really get it right away. Not all of it. But as time passed, and I had chemo and didn’t get any better, as my immune system crashed and I puked and bled in unmentionable ways, as I grew sicker, she started to get it. She began to understand the future and now it scares hell out of her. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be inside her head.
In the fellowship I belong to, there’s a lot of talk about God’s will. No matter what happens, I’m told, it’s "God’s Will." The words are always said with reverence, said so large that I know there’s no arguing with them.
That’s baloney. God is supposed to be rational, loving, and just. There’s been nothing rational or loving or just about this last week and my wife’s pain. If God’s intention is to teach me how painful it is to watch someone I love suffer, I’ve learned. I don’t need any more training, so stop, already.
Friends ask what they can do to help and the only response I can make is to ask them to pray. What I don’t tell them is that I don’t think prayer is going to help because the God who would do this isn’t about to listen to any pleas from anybody.
So I've had a tough week.
But nowhere near as tough as my wife's. I wish it would end.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
New Year
I saw my oncologist yesterday, the day before New Year’s Day. It seemed fitting, in light of the date, to ask him about my prognosis.
Strange as it may seem, this is only the second time since my diagnosis that my doctor and I have talked in any meaningful way about how long I might live or when I’ll die. I know he doesn’t like to be pinned down and, in fact, can’t legitimately talk about anything other than average survival rates for patients with stage three lung cancer.
To be honest, I’m not real crazy about knowing much more than that about my projected end.
I do know that I’ve already outlived my first prognosis which was – given the averages – that I’d last two years. I’m at two-and-a-half and counting. Not bad. But, given the date, as I said, and the start of a new year, I just had to ask. But I asked in a way to give him plenty of wiggle room.
"Do you think I’ll watch Notre Dame play next year?" I asked.
At first, he looked shocked. "Do you mean play for the national championship?" I guess he remembers that I once said that was what I wanted.
"No," I said, "just play another football game."
"Yes," he said, "you should live to watch them play next season. But I’m not sure they’ll win." I guess he’s a Boston College fan.
Anyway, by my lights, that prognosis is pretty good. So that’s my new target. To watch Notre Dame play again.
I just talked to my mom. She turned 92 yesterday. She’s a young 92, younger than I am at 63 going on 64. I told her about the prognosis and she pretended not to hear me. She does that. She uses her hearing loss as a short-cut to denial, and I’m not about to take that ability away from her.
We laughed about growing old. She told me that when I was a baby – adopted as a preemie after my biological mother died giving birth to me – I caught every baby illness in the books, but shook each one off quickly. "I pray every day you’ll do the same thing with the cancer," she said.
I do, too. I don’t think it will work. I don’t think I’m worthy of a miracle. I know that if I was in charge there are a lot of other people I’d expend my divine powers on before I got down to my name. But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking forward to Notre Dame’s next game because I think that’s doable without miraculous intervention. And I’ll keep feeling grateful that I still have my mother to talk with and laugh with. I’m going to see the end of 2009. God willing, I’ll be able to wish mom another happy birthday.
Strange as it may seem, this is only the second time since my diagnosis that my doctor and I have talked in any meaningful way about how long I might live or when I’ll die. I know he doesn’t like to be pinned down and, in fact, can’t legitimately talk about anything other than average survival rates for patients with stage three lung cancer.
To be honest, I’m not real crazy about knowing much more than that about my projected end.
I do know that I’ve already outlived my first prognosis which was – given the averages – that I’d last two years. I’m at two-and-a-half and counting. Not bad. But, given the date, as I said, and the start of a new year, I just had to ask. But I asked in a way to give him plenty of wiggle room.
"Do you think I’ll watch Notre Dame play next year?" I asked.
At first, he looked shocked. "Do you mean play for the national championship?" I guess he remembers that I once said that was what I wanted.
"No," I said, "just play another football game."
"Yes," he said, "you should live to watch them play next season. But I’m not sure they’ll win." I guess he’s a Boston College fan.
Anyway, by my lights, that prognosis is pretty good. So that’s my new target. To watch Notre Dame play again.
I just talked to my mom. She turned 92 yesterday. She’s a young 92, younger than I am at 63 going on 64. I told her about the prognosis and she pretended not to hear me. She does that. She uses her hearing loss as a short-cut to denial, and I’m not about to take that ability away from her.
We laughed about growing old. She told me that when I was a baby – adopted as a preemie after my biological mother died giving birth to me – I caught every baby illness in the books, but shook each one off quickly. "I pray every day you’ll do the same thing with the cancer," she said.
I do, too. I don’t think it will work. I don’t think I’m worthy of a miracle. I know that if I was in charge there are a lot of other people I’d expend my divine powers on before I got down to my name. But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking forward to Notre Dame’s next game because I think that’s doable without miraculous intervention. And I’ll keep feeling grateful that I still have my mother to talk with and laugh with. I’m going to see the end of 2009. God willing, I’ll be able to wish mom another happy birthday.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Goodness
I’ve been alone for most of the day today. Lynne, my wife, took a commuter train down to Miami this afternoon to visit a friend of hers. This friend – Jimmy Miller – was disabled in a terrible accident almost twenty years ago. He’s been in the hospital ever since, unable to use his arms or legs. When he speaks, it’s almost impossible to understand him. Lynne has known him, been a friend of his, and visited him as regularly as she can for all of those years.
I couldn’t do that. I'd rather stay home alone.
I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like being in the hospital because I’m always afraid that once I’m inside I’ll never get out. I know that’s silly but it’s not really out of the question these days.
I also don’t like visiting friends or relatives in the hospital. I never know what to say. I certainly have no idea how to begin a conversation with Jimmy. So Lynne goes alone. And since I can’t drive her it takes a real effort on her part. She has to catch the train and ride for about 90 minutes then transfer to a local for a couple of miles and then walk two blocks to where she can sit by Jimmy’s bed for an hour or two talking.
Jimmy likes sports, particularly basketball, but I don’t think Lynne and he talk much about the NBA. He loves music. He has a CD player in his room and it’s always on, just loud enough for him to hear. Lynne loves music. So they spend some time talking about music. Sinatra, Ella, maybe Tony Bennett. And they talk about their shared faith, a belief that all will be well even as Jimmy rests in his bed unable to move. The same faith that convinces Lynne that visiting her friend is the right thing for her to do not because she expects anything in return but because it’s, well, what God wants her to do.
Lynne and I have different beliefs. We’ve found a way to coexist in peace. I try to act with charity because I think that’s the most important of the graces. Lynne doesn’t try anything. She just does it. She’s innocent and loving and good in ways I can’t comprehend. Don’t get me wrong, she can be hard to handle sometimes, as can I, but she’s as good a person as ever lived. And for almost two decades, she's made be better than would have been alone.
I thought I should say that.
I couldn’t do that. I'd rather stay home alone.
I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like being in the hospital because I’m always afraid that once I’m inside I’ll never get out. I know that’s silly but it’s not really out of the question these days.
I also don’t like visiting friends or relatives in the hospital. I never know what to say. I certainly have no idea how to begin a conversation with Jimmy. So Lynne goes alone. And since I can’t drive her it takes a real effort on her part. She has to catch the train and ride for about 90 minutes then transfer to a local for a couple of miles and then walk two blocks to where she can sit by Jimmy’s bed for an hour or two talking.
Jimmy likes sports, particularly basketball, but I don’t think Lynne and he talk much about the NBA. He loves music. He has a CD player in his room and it’s always on, just loud enough for him to hear. Lynne loves music. So they spend some time talking about music. Sinatra, Ella, maybe Tony Bennett. And they talk about their shared faith, a belief that all will be well even as Jimmy rests in his bed unable to move. The same faith that convinces Lynne that visiting her friend is the right thing for her to do not because she expects anything in return but because it’s, well, what God wants her to do.
Lynne and I have different beliefs. We’ve found a way to coexist in peace. I try to act with charity because I think that’s the most important of the graces. Lynne doesn’t try anything. She just does it. She’s innocent and loving and good in ways I can’t comprehend. Don’t get me wrong, she can be hard to handle sometimes, as can I, but she’s as good a person as ever lived. And for almost two decades, she's made be better than would have been alone.
I thought I should say that.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thanksgiving
Lynne and I watched The Fantasticks the other night. The movie starred Joel Grey and a cast of unknowns. She didn’t care for it. I did.
About 40 years ago, when I applied for entrance to Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, I had to perform a soliloquy and sing a song, solo. For the soliloquy I chose the St. Crispen’s Day Speech from Henry V. As tough as I think I am, I still choke up every time I read or hear that speech. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers….
I sang two songs. Not because I’m a good singer or because I enjoy singing. I sang two songs because I’m a terrible singer and I hate singing. I figured singing two songs terribly might gain me some points for courage. I guess they did, because I was admitted to Goodman.
The songs I chose for my audition were On the Good Ship Lollipop, made famous by Shirley Temple; and Try to Remember¸ from The Fantasticks. I chose the first because it didn’t require much in the way of vocal range. I chose the second because it was so mushy and popular (this was, after all, 1967) that it could hardly be sung to ill effect.
I also loved the song. I still do.
I’m thankful I’ve been given the opportunity to remember, to reflect, as I have since my illness was diagnosed. That’s what I’m truly thankful for on this Thanksgiving. The time I’ve been given.
I know I have a list of blessings too long to count, but this opportunity to look back, to remember, is an immense gift in that it enables me to make some sense of a life that was, in truth, not very well lived. I’m thankful for that.
I complain. I piss and moan, as my father would have said. And some days it’s justified. But the value of each day I have – to reflect, to feel joy or sadness or pissy or whatever – just can’t be overstated.
Of course, I’m thankful for Lynne’s love. For my mother’s love. For the presence in my life of my brothers and my two sons and their wives and my truly beautiful grandchildren. I'm grateful for friends who care, and there are more than I deserve. And I'm grateful and all my other blessings.
But this time I've been given is the real blessing. Because the time is what affords me the opportunity to remember, to express my love as best I can, to give thanks, to take what steps I can to leave something of value behind.
So I’m grateful.
About 40 years ago, when I applied for entrance to Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, I had to perform a soliloquy and sing a song, solo. For the soliloquy I chose the St. Crispen’s Day Speech from Henry V. As tough as I think I am, I still choke up every time I read or hear that speech. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers….
I sang two songs. Not because I’m a good singer or because I enjoy singing. I sang two songs because I’m a terrible singer and I hate singing. I figured singing two songs terribly might gain me some points for courage. I guess they did, because I was admitted to Goodman.
The songs I chose for my audition were On the Good Ship Lollipop, made famous by Shirley Temple; and Try to Remember¸ from The Fantasticks. I chose the first because it didn’t require much in the way of vocal range. I chose the second because it was so mushy and popular (this was, after all, 1967) that it could hardly be sung to ill effect.
I also loved the song. I still do.
I’m thankful I’ve been given the opportunity to remember, to reflect, as I have since my illness was diagnosed. That’s what I’m truly thankful for on this Thanksgiving. The time I’ve been given.
I know I have a list of blessings too long to count, but this opportunity to look back, to remember, is an immense gift in that it enables me to make some sense of a life that was, in truth, not very well lived. I’m thankful for that.
I complain. I piss and moan, as my father would have said. And some days it’s justified. But the value of each day I have – to reflect, to feel joy or sadness or pissy or whatever – just can’t be overstated.
Of course, I’m thankful for Lynne’s love. For my mother’s love. For the presence in my life of my brothers and my two sons and their wives and my truly beautiful grandchildren. I'm grateful for friends who care, and there are more than I deserve. And I'm grateful and all my other blessings.
But this time I've been given is the real blessing. Because the time is what affords me the opportunity to remember, to express my love as best I can, to give thanks, to take what steps I can to leave something of value behind.
So I’m grateful.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Mom
I can’t always remember what I’ve written. I know that forgetfulness comes with age, that it’s just natural part of life. It also has something to do with the medicines I take.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve already written here that I talk to my mom on the phone every day at 6 p.m. If you already know that, you’ll just have to excuse me.
My mom is a pistol. Though she’s 93, she drives herself to mass each morning, then goes to the grocery store or runs other errands. When she comes home, she works on and usually finishes the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the afternoon she gardens, washes clothes, cooks and does other chores.
A few weeks ago, she, this 93-year-old woman dug a small post hole, mixed a bag of concrete, and reset a tipped-over clothesline post in her back yard. "Mom! Why didn’t you hire someone?" I asked.
"Ah, hell. It was a small enough job," she answered. "Why should I waste the money."
Yeah, she’s a pistol.
I love talking with her, though it’s a chore. She’s almost as deaf as the clothesline post she put up in her yard. I spend half my time with her hollering, repeating the same things like a parrot until she understands.
I do the "Times" crossword puzzle every day, just as she does. Then, when we’re stumped, we compare notes on the phone. The puzzles are all edited by Will Shortz, a celebrity who’s on public radio every Sunday morning. One day last week Shortz asked puzzle solvers to identify the man who said, "Everything in life is luck"?
The answer was "Donald Trump."
"What’s the answer to that question about luck?" my mother wanted to know.
"Donald Trump," I said. I had cheated and found the answer on line.
"Donald Duck?" my mother hollered. "What do you mean?"
"Trump, mom. Donald Trump!"
"What the hell does Donald Duck have to do with it! That’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard." My mother didn’t always curse like that. It’s a part of her getting older, just like my forgetfulness is part of my aging.
Finally, I got her to understand it was Trump not Duck who made the crack about luck.
"I swear," my mom said. "No wonder Will Shortz has to wear a disguise in public. I’d like to punch him in the nose."
No wonder I look forward to talking to my mother every day. No wonder that’s the one appointment I have every day I never seem to forget.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve already written here that I talk to my mom on the phone every day at 6 p.m. If you already know that, you’ll just have to excuse me.
My mom is a pistol. Though she’s 93, she drives herself to mass each morning, then goes to the grocery store or runs other errands. When she comes home, she works on and usually finishes the New York Times crossword puzzle. In the afternoon she gardens, washes clothes, cooks and does other chores.
A few weeks ago, she, this 93-year-old woman dug a small post hole, mixed a bag of concrete, and reset a tipped-over clothesline post in her back yard. "Mom! Why didn’t you hire someone?" I asked.
"Ah, hell. It was a small enough job," she answered. "Why should I waste the money."
Yeah, she’s a pistol.
I love talking with her, though it’s a chore. She’s almost as deaf as the clothesline post she put up in her yard. I spend half my time with her hollering, repeating the same things like a parrot until she understands.
I do the "Times" crossword puzzle every day, just as she does. Then, when we’re stumped, we compare notes on the phone. The puzzles are all edited by Will Shortz, a celebrity who’s on public radio every Sunday morning. One day last week Shortz asked puzzle solvers to identify the man who said, "Everything in life is luck"?
The answer was "Donald Trump."
"What’s the answer to that question about luck?" my mother wanted to know.
"Donald Trump," I said. I had cheated and found the answer on line.
"Donald Duck?" my mother hollered. "What do you mean?"
"Trump, mom. Donald Trump!"
"What the hell does Donald Duck have to do with it! That’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard." My mother didn’t always curse like that. It’s a part of her getting older, just like my forgetfulness is part of my aging.
Finally, I got her to understand it was Trump not Duck who made the crack about luck.
"I swear," my mom said. "No wonder Will Shortz has to wear a disguise in public. I’d like to punch him in the nose."
No wonder I look forward to talking to my mother every day. No wonder that’s the one appointment I have every day I never seem to forget.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Kids
People who know me well, and there are several, know my story and know why I was not involved in my two sons’ lives as they were growing up.
I wanted to be, I truly did. But I simply wasn’t able to do or be what I could and should have been. It is the greatest regret of my life.
The boys – Dylan and Eamon – are men now, both married, and each with one child. My elder son, Dylan, and Mickie, his wife, have a beautiful daughter, Chloe. Eamon and his wife, Jennifer, have a marvelous little boy, Aidyn.
Over the last several months, my sons and their wives have sent me two hundred pictures, maybe more as attachments to e-mails. There are pictures of birthday parties, of visits to the zoo in Denver, of Aidyn wearing a leather jacket and of Chloe wearing a Barack Obama sweatshirt at an election rally. How great is that!
There are pictures of Aidyn and Chloe together and pictures of the kids with my sons. There are pictures that make me laugh aloud and some that make me want to weep for joy and for sadness at missed opportunities.
God, I feel so fortunate to have these boys and their wives and children in my life right now, no matter how peripherally, no matter how impermanent the contact is.
I print the pictures out, pictures of the two kids, my two grandchildren, and Lynne buys frames and I hang them, as many as I can, on a wall where I see them as I work. Chloe and Aidyn. A dozen pictures so far, and more to come, I’m sure.
I used to think the grandparents I knew were saps. No kid, I knew, could be as beautiful, as smart, as perfectly charming, as the grandchildren these idiots talked about. Now I know I was right. Oh, their grandchildren were okay, I’ll give them that. They were cute, maybe. And perhaps they weren’t quite as slow as they appeared in the pictures these proud grandparents showed me. Maybe someday they’d look more presentable.
But if you want to see a truly beautiful child, or a baby as smart as a little engineer, drop in my room and look at the wall over my desk. Those kids, that Chloe and that Aidyn, they’re really something to see. Trust me. They’re worth looking at.
Looking at their pictures, I sometimes forget what's going on, that tomorrow I have to get chemo, or that I may never see them or get to hug them. I forget cancer and think only good things, for a while. And that's wonderful.
I wanted to be, I truly did. But I simply wasn’t able to do or be what I could and should have been. It is the greatest regret of my life.
The boys – Dylan and Eamon – are men now, both married, and each with one child. My elder son, Dylan, and Mickie, his wife, have a beautiful daughter, Chloe. Eamon and his wife, Jennifer, have a marvelous little boy, Aidyn.
Over the last several months, my sons and their wives have sent me two hundred pictures, maybe more as attachments to e-mails. There are pictures of birthday parties, of visits to the zoo in Denver, of Aidyn wearing a leather jacket and of Chloe wearing a Barack Obama sweatshirt at an election rally. How great is that!
There are pictures of Aidyn and Chloe together and pictures of the kids with my sons. There are pictures that make me laugh aloud and some that make me want to weep for joy and for sadness at missed opportunities.
God, I feel so fortunate to have these boys and their wives and children in my life right now, no matter how peripherally, no matter how impermanent the contact is.
I print the pictures out, pictures of the two kids, my two grandchildren, and Lynne buys frames and I hang them, as many as I can, on a wall where I see them as I work. Chloe and Aidyn. A dozen pictures so far, and more to come, I’m sure.
I used to think the grandparents I knew were saps. No kid, I knew, could be as beautiful, as smart, as perfectly charming, as the grandchildren these idiots talked about. Now I know I was right. Oh, their grandchildren were okay, I’ll give them that. They were cute, maybe. And perhaps they weren’t quite as slow as they appeared in the pictures these proud grandparents showed me. Maybe someday they’d look more presentable.
But if you want to see a truly beautiful child, or a baby as smart as a little engineer, drop in my room and look at the wall over my desk. Those kids, that Chloe and that Aidyn, they’re really something to see. Trust me. They’re worth looking at.
Looking at their pictures, I sometimes forget what's going on, that tomorrow I have to get chemo, or that I may never see them or get to hug them. I forget cancer and think only good things, for a while. And that's wonderful.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Bear
The chemotherapy waiting room was crowded this morning, the most crowded I’ve ever seen it. Every chair was occupied, there were three men in wheelchairs, and three more leaning against a wall in the hallway until a volunteer hauled chairs from some other room.
Later, one of the nurses explained that the lab held up some blood work which meant the pharmacy couldn’t mix the chemicals on time and then some new patients showed up. The bottom line was that the whole system was screwed up.
I bring a crossword puzzle with me every time I come to the hospital, one of the old Sunday puzzles I have in a collection put out by the New York Times. I’m usually able to keep myself occupied long enough to get through the visit without getting bored. Today was different. The puzzle was just too hard. I had to quit.
So I was sitting there looking around when I noticed a guy sitting across from me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure why he caught my attention and then I realized that he looked just like my old man, dead now for more than a decade. Really. This man looked enough like my father to be his twin, enough like my dad to give me a momentary chill.
My dad was quite a guy. I think, sometimes, of how he’d have managed cancer. He’d have faced it the same way he faced everything, with his fists cocked, ready to punch back, but enjoying the fight. We called him "The Bear" not because of his looks but, rather, because of his willingness to scrap.
That’s the way he was.
I’m adopted, so I’m not physically like my dad. He was a longshoreman, much like the working stiffs in "On the Waterfront." He had arms as big as some men’s legs and hard as tree trunks. I’m tall and skinny and a writer.
He was tough enough to start with nothing, retire at 55, travel the world with my mother, raise three sons – a doctor, a lawyer and me – and overcome two heart attacks with enough steam left over to die doing yard work.
I think he was cynical as I am. He expected trouble in his life and was rarely disappointed. But his cynicism gave him a sense of humor that can only be described as a little dark. Like mine.
Not long before my dad’s death, he and my mother were watching television when a report was aired about Pope John Paul II, who himself wasn’t in real good shape.
"It’s easy to tell he’s not married," my dad – a lifelong and reverent Catholic said.
"How that?" my mom asked.
"If he was married, his wife wouldn’t let him out of the house looking like that."
Now, that’s funny.
He also told us all to make sure we didn’t do anything extraordinary to keep him alive when he was at the end of his life. We agreed. Then he said, "But make damn sure you don’t let me go even one minute earlier than I’m supposed to go."
I remembered those two things he said while I was waiting for my chemo. I smiled. And I also gained some strength. Like my old man, I’m ready to go, but I don’t want to be early for the departure.
Later, one of the nurses explained that the lab held up some blood work which meant the pharmacy couldn’t mix the chemicals on time and then some new patients showed up. The bottom line was that the whole system was screwed up.
I bring a crossword puzzle with me every time I come to the hospital, one of the old Sunday puzzles I have in a collection put out by the New York Times. I’m usually able to keep myself occupied long enough to get through the visit without getting bored. Today was different. The puzzle was just too hard. I had to quit.
So I was sitting there looking around when I noticed a guy sitting across from me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure why he caught my attention and then I realized that he looked just like my old man, dead now for more than a decade. Really. This man looked enough like my father to be his twin, enough like my dad to give me a momentary chill.
My dad was quite a guy. I think, sometimes, of how he’d have managed cancer. He’d have faced it the same way he faced everything, with his fists cocked, ready to punch back, but enjoying the fight. We called him "The Bear" not because of his looks but, rather, because of his willingness to scrap.
That’s the way he was.
I’m adopted, so I’m not physically like my dad. He was a longshoreman, much like the working stiffs in "On the Waterfront." He had arms as big as some men’s legs and hard as tree trunks. I’m tall and skinny and a writer.
He was tough enough to start with nothing, retire at 55, travel the world with my mother, raise three sons – a doctor, a lawyer and me – and overcome two heart attacks with enough steam left over to die doing yard work.
I think he was cynical as I am. He expected trouble in his life and was rarely disappointed. But his cynicism gave him a sense of humor that can only be described as a little dark. Like mine.
Not long before my dad’s death, he and my mother were watching television when a report was aired about Pope John Paul II, who himself wasn’t in real good shape.
"It’s easy to tell he’s not married," my dad – a lifelong and reverent Catholic said.
"How that?" my mom asked.
"If he was married, his wife wouldn’t let him out of the house looking like that."
Now, that’s funny.
He also told us all to make sure we didn’t do anything extraordinary to keep him alive when he was at the end of his life. We agreed. Then he said, "But make damn sure you don’t let me go even one minute earlier than I’m supposed to go."
I remembered those two things he said while I was waiting for my chemo. I smiled. And I also gained some strength. Like my old man, I’m ready to go, but I don’t want to be early for the departure.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Shopping
I haven’t been feeling great for the last week or so. I’m not in anything like terrible shape, I’m not in pain, but I’m still nauseous and so tired I spend almost all day in bed. My wife is taking good care of me. She lets me rest as much as I need and she lets me know she loves me. That’s what I need right now.
It’s nice, sometimes, to have somebody wait on me. For some reason a tuna sandwich always tastes better when someone serves it to me, on a plate, with a pickle slice or two, and tomato soup is great when I don’t have to open the can myself.
My wife is not real handy in the kitchen but she has been known to make me sandwich or a hot dog and she can mix a mean glass of iced coffee and that’s really okay. My mother taught me to take care of myself, so I know how to bake a strawberry pie and Yorkshire Pudding, iron a shirt and hem a pair of slacks all with the same masculine hands. I think my mom figured my personality would keep me from getting married so I’d better learn how to fend for myself.
Anyway, I believe I’m pretty easy to care for. I don’t like to be fussed over. When I’m in pain or sick I find comfort in being left alone. I think I got that from my distant ancestors who handled illnesses and hurt by crawling into some cave in Donegal, hiding under a pile of skins and trying to tough it out.
Of course, when I’m hiding in my cave I don’t get to do some of the things I’m still able to do. I can’t, for example, go to the grocery store. And that means I don’t feel very useful.
I enjoy the grocery store. I go to the big Publix not far our home early in the morning almost every day. I walk the nearly empty aisles and I almost always find something I’ve never seen before. A lot of interesting things are sold in grocery stores now, things that weren’t sold in the store my I went to on the south side of Chicago with my mom when I was a kid. This morning, in the aisle where the dog beds are sold right next to the butane candle lighters, I discovered a kind of air freshener I’ve never seen before. I won’t go into details, but I stood there and read the instructions for about ten minutes. I enjoyed that.
I also enjoyed saying hello to the men and women I see every morning stocking shelves and working behind cash registers or just walking around looking for something I guess they never find. There’s one guy, James, from Jamaica, who’s about my age and he smiles as soon as he sees me and then we compare our aches. And I buy treats for myself.
And every day, at some point, Lynne thanks me for going shopping. That’s good because it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something. So this morning I left the cave and, just like the hunter-gatherer I am, I went to Publix and brought home the cottage cheese and frozen pizza.
It’s nice, sometimes, to have somebody wait on me. For some reason a tuna sandwich always tastes better when someone serves it to me, on a plate, with a pickle slice or two, and tomato soup is great when I don’t have to open the can myself.
My wife is not real handy in the kitchen but she has been known to make me sandwich or a hot dog and she can mix a mean glass of iced coffee and that’s really okay. My mother taught me to take care of myself, so I know how to bake a strawberry pie and Yorkshire Pudding, iron a shirt and hem a pair of slacks all with the same masculine hands. I think my mom figured my personality would keep me from getting married so I’d better learn how to fend for myself.
Anyway, I believe I’m pretty easy to care for. I don’t like to be fussed over. When I’m in pain or sick I find comfort in being left alone. I think I got that from my distant ancestors who handled illnesses and hurt by crawling into some cave in Donegal, hiding under a pile of skins and trying to tough it out.
Of course, when I’m hiding in my cave I don’t get to do some of the things I’m still able to do. I can’t, for example, go to the grocery store. And that means I don’t feel very useful.
I enjoy the grocery store. I go to the big Publix not far our home early in the morning almost every day. I walk the nearly empty aisles and I almost always find something I’ve never seen before. A lot of interesting things are sold in grocery stores now, things that weren’t sold in the store my I went to on the south side of Chicago with my mom when I was a kid. This morning, in the aisle where the dog beds are sold right next to the butane candle lighters, I discovered a kind of air freshener I’ve never seen before. I won’t go into details, but I stood there and read the instructions for about ten minutes. I enjoyed that.
I also enjoyed saying hello to the men and women I see every morning stocking shelves and working behind cash registers or just walking around looking for something I guess they never find. There’s one guy, James, from Jamaica, who’s about my age and he smiles as soon as he sees me and then we compare our aches. And I buy treats for myself.
And every day, at some point, Lynne thanks me for going shopping. That’s good because it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something. So this morning I left the cave and, just like the hunter-gatherer I am, I went to Publix and brought home the cottage cheese and frozen pizza.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Enough
I got the call at about 8:30 Wednesday night. As soon as I heard Jacky’s voice, I knew.
"Kevin died this afternoon," she said. "Thank God it’s over."
I heard her catch her breath.
"At least he’s out of pain," Jacky said. Then we spoke for a few moments about what a great guy Kevin was and about how I wished there was something, anything, I might do. Of course, there wasn’t. Jacky cried and I tried not to cry and failed and then we hung up.
You remember Kevin? He’s my friend, the one who came down from Georgia last month so we could go to a Chicago Cubs/Florida Marlins game together. He’s the guy who learned just a few months ago that he had incurable pancreatic cancer.
When my father died about ten years ago, I barely wept. He was ninety and had already had bypass surgery. His death was no surprise. It made me sad, of course. It should have. But my dad’s death made sense, it was part of the natural flow, as proper as a tide or a sunset.
Not Kevin, though. He was too young by far. He left not just his wife but three little boys, the youngest of whom is only three years old, so young he’ll never remember this wonderful man who was his father.
And that’s why I cried when I heard the words. "Kevin died this afternoon." That and because of the truth that he may have been the best friend I’ll ever have and I miss him already, can’t believe I’ll never see him or hear him again, never laugh with him again.
Believe me, I grieve for Jacky and the three boys. I also grieve for me. And, dammit, I feel like it’s not fair and I want to tell God to lighten up. No more pain for a while, hunh?
How terrible is it when a wife finds herself saying, "Thank God" when her husband dies. To find relief – if any can be found – in the truth that "at least he’s out of pain."
Enough, God. Enough, already. Cut us some slack. Kevin’s family. And my friend Brian, the one I wrote about Monday. And Brian’s daughter. My friend Greg who just learned he has cancer. And me, too. And my wife.
Enough for a while.
"Kevin died this afternoon," she said. "Thank God it’s over."
I heard her catch her breath.
"At least he’s out of pain," Jacky said. Then we spoke for a few moments about what a great guy Kevin was and about how I wished there was something, anything, I might do. Of course, there wasn’t. Jacky cried and I tried not to cry and failed and then we hung up.
You remember Kevin? He’s my friend, the one who came down from Georgia last month so we could go to a Chicago Cubs/Florida Marlins game together. He’s the guy who learned just a few months ago that he had incurable pancreatic cancer.
When my father died about ten years ago, I barely wept. He was ninety and had already had bypass surgery. His death was no surprise. It made me sad, of course. It should have. But my dad’s death made sense, it was part of the natural flow, as proper as a tide or a sunset.
Not Kevin, though. He was too young by far. He left not just his wife but three little boys, the youngest of whom is only three years old, so young he’ll never remember this wonderful man who was his father.
And that’s why I cried when I heard the words. "Kevin died this afternoon." That and because of the truth that he may have been the best friend I’ll ever have and I miss him already, can’t believe I’ll never see him or hear him again, never laugh with him again.
Believe me, I grieve for Jacky and the three boys. I also grieve for me. And, dammit, I feel like it’s not fair and I want to tell God to lighten up. No more pain for a while, hunh?
How terrible is it when a wife finds herself saying, "Thank God" when her husband dies. To find relief – if any can be found – in the truth that "at least he’s out of pain."
Enough, God. Enough, already. Cut us some slack. Kevin’s family. And my friend Brian, the one I wrote about Monday. And Brian’s daughter. My friend Greg who just learned he has cancer. And me, too. And my wife.
Enough for a while.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Soda Bread
I’ve been part of a writers’ critique group for a dozen years or more. There are half-dozen of us, give or take one or two, depending on our schedules. We meet once a month, always at someone’s home, and read and critique some of our recent work.
Sometimes it’s not a lot of fun to be part of a group like this. Egos can clash. Feelings can be hurt. If, as sometimes happens, you’re forced to sit and listen to really terrible writing at every meeting, violence may ensue.
I’m lucky. The group I’m in is comprised of writers who’ve already published or who deserve publication. We’re good for each other.
I haven’t been able to attend every meeting over the last year or so. Sometimes chemo has gotten in the way and sometimes I just haven’t been up to it. But these friends have steadily let me know of their love, with phone calls and e-mails.
I went to a critique group meeting yesterday. There were only a few of us there: Sylvia and Linda and Donna and Peter and me. I was asked to read first. So I did. A couple of sections of the memoir I’m working on. And then we talked. Sylvia told me how much she’d learned about me by reading this blog and by hearing parts of my story. Donna and Linda and Peter agreed. They told me they were happy I was finally opening myself up a bit.
I know I’ve spent most of my life not disclosing anything real about myself. Some of that is cultural. Irish men aren’t known for sober displays of emotionalism. It’s easier to hide behind a façade of toughness or to tell a joke or sing a song or just act as if it – whatever it is – doesn’t really matter.
Some of it is because there’s some stuff that’s always been too painful or embarrasing.
But I realized as we talked yesterday that I was glad I’d found a way to open up. This is new for me, but it’s okay. It’s not so bad having people know how I feel, that I’m afraid or sad or happy or whatever. As important as these people – Sylvia and Peter and Donna and Linda – have been to me they’re more important now.
We snack at these meetings. Yesterday, there was cheese and fruit and crackers. Since it was Linda’s birthday, there was a cake. And before I left, Sylvia gave me three small loaves of Irish soda bread.
I’d never eaten soda bread until I met Sylvia, who’s from Ireland. My mother didn’t bake much. Only an infrequent pie or one of her noteworthy cakes that always seemed to be listing slightly to port or starboard after they were iced. She didn’t bake bread because that wasn’t something one did with one’s rare leisure time. When she was a girl, baking bread was a time-consuming and necessary chore. Buying bread already sliced from a bakery was, for her, the beginning of women’s liberation.
Anyway, I’m not used to soda bread, but I love it. Served with what the Irish call a thick "lashing" of butter it’s good enough to make me close my eyes. I had some this morning for breakfast. And as I ate it, I thought of the group and of how lucky I am to have these friends and of how it’s really okay with me that they know more about me than they used to.
Sometimes it’s not a lot of fun to be part of a group like this. Egos can clash. Feelings can be hurt. If, as sometimes happens, you’re forced to sit and listen to really terrible writing at every meeting, violence may ensue.
I’m lucky. The group I’m in is comprised of writers who’ve already published or who deserve publication. We’re good for each other.
I haven’t been able to attend every meeting over the last year or so. Sometimes chemo has gotten in the way and sometimes I just haven’t been up to it. But these friends have steadily let me know of their love, with phone calls and e-mails.
I went to a critique group meeting yesterday. There were only a few of us there: Sylvia and Linda and Donna and Peter and me. I was asked to read first. So I did. A couple of sections of the memoir I’m working on. And then we talked. Sylvia told me how much she’d learned about me by reading this blog and by hearing parts of my story. Donna and Linda and Peter agreed. They told me they were happy I was finally opening myself up a bit.
I know I’ve spent most of my life not disclosing anything real about myself. Some of that is cultural. Irish men aren’t known for sober displays of emotionalism. It’s easier to hide behind a façade of toughness or to tell a joke or sing a song or just act as if it – whatever it is – doesn’t really matter.
Some of it is because there’s some stuff that’s always been too painful or embarrasing.
But I realized as we talked yesterday that I was glad I’d found a way to open up. This is new for me, but it’s okay. It’s not so bad having people know how I feel, that I’m afraid or sad or happy or whatever. As important as these people – Sylvia and Peter and Donna and Linda – have been to me they’re more important now.
We snack at these meetings. Yesterday, there was cheese and fruit and crackers. Since it was Linda’s birthday, there was a cake. And before I left, Sylvia gave me three small loaves of Irish soda bread.
I’d never eaten soda bread until I met Sylvia, who’s from Ireland. My mother didn’t bake much. Only an infrequent pie or one of her noteworthy cakes that always seemed to be listing slightly to port or starboard after they were iced. She didn’t bake bread because that wasn’t something one did with one’s rare leisure time. When she was a girl, baking bread was a time-consuming and necessary chore. Buying bread already sliced from a bakery was, for her, the beginning of women’s liberation.
Anyway, I’m not used to soda bread, but I love it. Served with what the Irish call a thick "lashing" of butter it’s good enough to make me close my eyes. I had some this morning for breakfast. And as I ate it, I thought of the group and of how lucky I am to have these friends and of how it’s really okay with me that they know more about me than they used to.
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