Chow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valentine's Day

The other day was Valentine’s Day. It was also the anniversary of my father’s death. I was lucky this year. I got to drive up to Clearwater to spend a few days with my mom and my brothers, Kevin and Pat. On Saturday, Valentine’s Day, we went to Roman Catholic mass together, in remembrance of my father’s passing.

My dad has been dead for 13 years. I’m not sure how old he was when he died. That’s because history seems to show that he was born in either 1906 or 1907, in Ballinahinch, Ireland.

According to my old man, he was born in his family farmhouse on December 26, 1906. That’s the day we celebrated his birthday though we didn’t celebrate much since it was the day after Christmas.

According to his birth certificate, though, my father was born on February 20, 1907. My dad said the difference in dates arose because his birth wasn’t registered until his father, John Doherty, made a trip to Cashel, the town where such things were recorded.

That’s possible. After all, when my dad, Patrick, was born into an Irish Catholic family in what is now the Irish Republic, things like his birth date weren’t so important to the British who ruled the island. Neither were his freedom or his health or his education or his diet.

He loved potatoes. Once, in a fancy restaurant, after the waiter had listed all the vegetables he could order with his meal, my dad asked simply for a few boiled praties. That’s the Gaelic word for potatoes. He loved potatoes. My mom said that if she kept serving him spuds, he’d keep eating them until he exploded. That’s because when he was a boy he was never sure that any praties he ate might not be the last available for a time.

My father came to America as a young man. He worked as a handyman for a time, then as a meat-cutter for Harding’s Corn Beef, then as a salesman, and – finally – as a longshoreman, loading and unloading boats on the Chicago River. He left the house before dawn and never came home before sunset. He was a hard man, big and strong and tough. I heard he was quite a boxer as a young man, the champion of Cashel, taking on challengers from other villages. I know he had huge fists.

He was tough with his family, as well. But he loved us all. In his world, that love was best expressed by putting food on the table in a safe house. He wanted each of us, he often said, to climb higher up the ladder than he’d been able to climb.

My dad and I loved each other, but we didn’t get along well during all those years when booze ruled my life. I became things, drinking, he never wanted me to become. In fact, neither he nor my mom talked to me for more than a dozen years when my drinking was bad. I don’t blame them. Those were years when I couldn’t look in the mirror.

Anyway, after I got sober things improved.

"I don’t understand your being a drunk," my father told me. "I don’t know why you can’t just stop when you want to stop." I knew it would make no sense to try to explain. "Anyway," my father said, "you’re sure as hell doing better these days. Keep the plug in the damned jug." Then he hugged me. It’s the only time I can remember that he hugged me.

At the mass said at my father’s church on Valentine’s Day, I got to sit next to my mother. She’s 93 years old now and a bit deaf and very unsteady on her feet. She can’t kneel any more the way Catholics are supposed to kneel during mass. But she was there. And when the priest announced that the mass was being said in remembrance of Patrick Joseph Doherty, my mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

I’m glad I was there.

A Good Day

I just finished my nightly phone conversation with my mother.

We’re both cold today. The temperature was a very un-Florida-like thirty-seven when I woke this morning and not much higher than that up in Clearwater where mom lives.

We each spent a lot of time in bed today, under the covers to keep warm. I know we have it easier than people in Minnesota but staying under the covers today seemed like a good idea.
So we complained a bit on the phone. We talked about how we were tired, in addition to being cold.

Then we talked about Barak Obama. President Barak Obama. We talked about what a wonderful day yesterday was, seeing Barak Hussein Obama take the toast of office administered by a conservative Chief Justice so shaken that he couldn’t get the words of the oath straight. We talked about how good it was to see Dubya headed off stage and how good it was to see Dick Cheney for what we hope is the last time, smirking in a wheelchair with all the confidence of the truly venal.

"I’m glad I lived long enough to see that," my mom said.

"I’m glad, too," I said. And I am. It’s about time. It’s about damn time.

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.

Hopes

Yesterday, I watched – online – an interview Barbara Walters conducted on Patrick Swayze, the actor who is battling pancreatic cancer.

I've only seen a few minutes of Swayze as an actor. Lynne and I went to see "Ghost" the very first time we dated. We were shy - hard to believe, right? - and we were both embarassed by some scene I don't remember. I also don't remember Swayze as a particularly impressive actor. That may have more to do with my memory than with his talent, but it’s a fact. As a consequence, I was not much interested when I first saw a link to his interview. But for some reason, I clicked on the link. I’m glad I did.

Swayze has – like me – already outlived his prognosis. Like me, he has some goals he wants to accomplish before the cancer wins its fight, as it surely will. Like me, Swayze is questioning his faith but not abandoning it. He is feeling angry but hopeful – not for a cure, but for meaningful days. He wonders what is on the other side. He’s scared sometimes. Me too.

At one point in the interview, Walters asked him how long he thought he’d live. At first, Swayze was reluctant to answer. I understand that. After all, that’s a hell of a question to have to answer, isn’t it? Finally, though, he said he hoped to live five years, perhaps long enough for science to find a cure. Then he hedged his bet. He said "averages" gave him about two more years.

It would be wonderful if, somehow, some magic bullet was found to cure Swayze’s cancer – and mine. Meanwhile, he wants to work, to film a television series, to ride horses on his property out west. He hopes to spend some quality time with his loved ones. I hope he realizes all these goals.

I hope the same things for me. There’s a book I want to finish. I want to have a few good months with my wife. I want to hold my grandchildren and share some more stories with my good friend, Mark. I want to go to a few more meetings of the writer's group I've been part of for more than ten years. Maybe there’s some way I could take the helm of a small sailboat again, just for a few minutes. Or read another book that just knocks my socks off.

But there’s a problem with having a lot of hopes when you have cancer. That’s because this disease doesn’t care about the averages. A doctor, asked about Swayze and his illness, put it right. The cancer could kill Swayze quickly, at any time, he said. All it needs is an excuse.

This morning – January 10 – when I went online, I saw another link to a Swayze story. It seems that at about the same time that I was looking at his first interview, he was hospitalized. In the lexicon of cancer, his condition isn’t serious. He has pneumonia. That frequently happens as a side effect of chemotherapy because the same chemicals that fight cancer destroy a body’s ability to fight off infections.

That's a reminder, if one was needed, just how tenuous hopes have to be, how important it is not to link hapiness to specific goals. Sure, it’s wonderful to have a positive attitutude. It’s nice to have plans and hopes and goals but the truth is that the path any terminal cancer patient is on is full of tricky turns and unexpected dangers. There are some wonderful vistas to be seen, but the road can end at any moment.

I hope Swayze is okay. I hope he gets back to his goals. I hope I do, too.

Tree

I took our Christmas tree down earlier today. The living room looks empty without it.

We had a fake tree. We’ve been using it for almost 15 years now. I could claim I bought the tree because I didn’t want to cause a real tree to be chopped down, but that’s not true. I bought it because real trees are too much trouble. They smell good, sure, but they shed needles. They’re expensive. I saw a tree outside the grocery store going for $65.

That’s too much money. Years ago, I bought a Pontiac station wagon for $50. This was back in my drinking days. Though it shimmied at anything over walking speed, it was big enough that I was able to live in it for a few weeks I don't much remember. It ran for almost a year. That’s a purchase that made sense. Not a tree.

Of course, when I was little, my family had real trees. And I loved them. When I was little. Now, they seem to be too much work.

I do love Christmas, though, and the decorations and the good cheer. I’m a bit sad that today is Twelfth Day, the day that marks the official end of Christmas. This is the day, tradition has it, when the three wise men brought gifts to the Christ child.

I just found out that in Ireland, Twelfth Day is sometimes celebrated as "Women’s Little Christmas." This is a day when, by custom, men do all the household chores while their wives and mothers and sisters take the day off. In County Cork, I read, the pubs are full of women while the men are home washing dishes and taking care of the kids.

I thought I knew a lot about Ireland. I guess I don’t. My dad never told me about Women’s Little Christmas. I guess my mother didn’t know about it either. I can’t imagine my father washing a dish while mom was out getting a pint of Guinness.

In fact, my dad didn’t much like Christmas. Maybe it was because his birthday was December 26. When I was a kid, I always thought that was a bum deal. But that’s not why he didn’t like Christmas. He didn’t like spending time or money on what he figured were frivolities. He didn’t walk around saying "Humbug" to everybody but he wasn’t exactly full of good cheer.

For years, after my parents built a motel not far from Tampa, our only Christmas tree was an aluminum number illuminated by a spotlight that flashed red and blue and green. It wasn’t even in our living room. It was in the motel office, behind the registration desk.

It was a terrible tree. But not long ago I learned those old, aluminum trees are rare and selling for hundreds or in some cases a thousand dollars or more. I asked my mom what happened to ours. "Oh, your father threw it away thirty years ago," she said.

I glad my dad didn’t live to find out he threw away a valuable antique. That might well have caused him to give up on Christmas all together.

Lynne and I are throwing our old, phony tree away today. It won’t stand straight. It’s worn out. Some of its branches are almost bare. She wants to get a real tree next year. I’ve thought about it and decided we should, if I’m celebrating Christmas. For one thing, it’s what Lynne wants. For another, I’d enjoy it.

I would like to smell a tree one more time. But I’m not going to tell Lynne about Women’s Little Christmas.

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.