Bad news

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I wrote a while ago about the lump in my throat.

Well, guess what? It turned out to be serious after all.

I will be starting various kinds of treatment soon: radiation almost certainly, and probably also chemotherapy.

It’s only been a few days, and already Partner and I have been through a whirlwind of emotions. You probably know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages? We’ve done them all three times over, in two days: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

I hate this, kids.

I have an indicator on the wall of my office that indicates I’ll be retiring in the year 2040, and I point it out to new employees, just to show them that I’m not going anywhere.

I hope that I’m telling them the truth.

I am going to try very hard to beat this, kids. I already have four doctors – a GP, an ENT, an oncologist, and a hematologist. And heaven knows what I’ll go through, between radiation and chemotherapy and the illness itself.

Heaven only knows.

I know only a few of you personally, but (just so you know): I love you all very much.

(I’m trying to be pragmatic.)

Let’s get on with this silly treatment stuff (over the next six months or so), and then let’s get on with normal life again.

For my sake, and for Partner’s sake, most of all.

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In memoriam: Adrienne Rich and Earl Scruggs

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I’m having a John Berryman moment.

 

 

Berryman, in his archival “Dream Songs,” chronicled the deaths of other poets and writers: William Empson, Delmore Schwartz. 

 

 

Well, two of the poets of my youth have just passed away.

 

 

Adrienne Rich was a feminist confessional poet and essayist. Her writing was rich and powerful, and she inspired legions of other writers.

 

 

Earl Scruggs was a “banjo pioneer,” and partnered with guitarist Lester Flatt to create the early hillbilly / country sound from which just about all modern country music flows. 

 

 

I still remember when Jack Benny died.  I was a senior in high school.  I felt very solemn.  I realized that he was an old man, but (as happens when we think about celebrities) I felt that he was someone I knew and liked.  And I had a very funny feeling about this whole death business.

 

 

Now, all these years later, I know what I was feeling. 

 

 

I was feeling for myself.

 

 

Here’s Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child”:

 

 

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you,

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! As the heart grows older

It shall come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, nor no mind, expressed,

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

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For a departed friend

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A few months ago, a friend, someone I’d known for almost twenty-five years, suddenly passed away. 

 

 

Friend?  No, it was a far more complex relationship than that.  We were co-workers first; we shared an office back in the late 1980s; there was a big partition between our desks, but we both smoked, so we could each see the smoke rising from the other side of the office, and we could listen to one another’s completely fascinating telephone conversations.

 

 

Then, for about two years, I actually worked for her.  She was irritable and finicky, but we actually got along pretty well; once, however, she refused to speak to me for three days because she thought I’d neglected to say “good morning” to her. 

 

 

It was one of those relationships.

 

 

After that, we were just friends.  We always talked in the hallway.  I used to run into her in the market frequently; her stories were endless, but I enjoyed them anyway.  She was smart, and extremely opinionated, and completely fearless about telling you what she thought.  (My new boss told me several times that he’d like to be rid of her.  I never had the nerve to say it out loud, but I always thought: Good luck.  You will never be rid of her. And good for her.)

 

 

Partner knew her too, because we ran into her in the local grocery store with some regularity.  Sometimes she’d stop and give me a ride, especially in the wintertime. 

 

 

She was intelligent, and very sure of herself, and very stubborn.

 

 

And now she’s gone.

 

 

As always, when someone I care about passes away, I keep wanting it to be a mistake or a joke.  I think: It’s not real.  She’s still around somewhere.  She’ll walk through the door in a moment, and we’ll have a good laugh about all of this.

 

 

(Now, a few months later, I keep seeing her in the street, or going in the door ahead of me.  Naturally it’s just my failing eyesight.  But I think my brain wants it to be her.)

 

 

Hey, you, upstairs, whoever’s in charge of this stuff: this has got to stop.  This has gone a little bit beyond a joke.

 

 

Stop killing off my friends and family.

 

 

I rely on them for so much.

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The reception after the memorial

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I went to a memorial service a few months ago, for a person I’d known pretty well for over twenty years.  It was solemn, mostly, though there were a few moments of levity.


Then there was a reception afterward.


It’s nice to see people you haven’t seen for a while; the mood is always lighter at these things, and people always seem to be laughing.  It’s probably just relief after the sobriety of the service.


But now and then you get this soaring sense of vertigo: you know who would have really enjoyed this?  The deceased.  She really would have liked this.


And then you wonder what kind of reception you’ll get when your time comes.  And then you think about people laughing and eating, and beginning the long road toward forgetting you.


Now how do you feel?


Creepy, that’s how. 


I made my excuses and left.


Rest in peace, dear heart.  You have my love.  I’ll keep your birthday on my calendar.  Your family will remember you, and your friends, and I am proud to call myself one of your friends.  


And we will all miss you.

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Birds at the window

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The people in my family are maybe a little psychic.  Mom generally knew when I was sick, even when I was far away.  At the moment my father died, I felt an odd jolt, even though I was about 250 miles away.  Partner and I also share a psychic link; it mostly involves food, however.  I suggested pancakes for breakfast, and he gaped at me: “Oh my god!” he said.  “I was just thinking of that!” 

 

 

If only we could make money with this.

 

 

Here’s another odd thing: birds come to our house when people die.

 

 

A few days after Dad died in 1976, at the old Venersborg house, there was a bird at my window.  It was banging its head against my bedroom window like mad, trying to get my attention.  I mentioned it to Mom and she looked somber.  “I know,” she said.  “It’s been at every window in the house. It’s as if it’s trying to get in.”

 

 

Fast-forward to late November 1999, when Mom died, all the way over on the West Coast.  A cardinal was pecking at my apartment windows for almost a week after that happened.

 

 

I don’t know where this comes from, but I’ve heard and read other references to it.  Birds just seem to be attracted to houses in which there’s been a death, one way or another.  They’re not attracted to the deceased, mind you; they’re attracted to the bereaved.

 

 

Strange.

 

 

I remember a reference to this kind of thing on a TV show some years ago, but I don’t remember the show, so I can’t look it up.  I tried a Google search, and found things like this.  It’s not unknown; it’s butterflies, and animals in general.  This website makes it clear that the deceased is trying to communicate with the living through animals.

 

 

I want to believe this, but I think this is wishful thinking.  I have no trouble believing that birds might sense some kind of disturbance in the house, but I don’t think the dead are guiding them.

 

 

But if only.  It would be lovely to see some of my departed relatives and friends again. 

 

 

But I don’t think I ever will.

 

 

Ah. This whole death thing sucks.

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Preparing for the end

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A lot of my friends have told me that, when it comes to be their time, they want to die in their sleep. “I don't want to know about it,” one of them said. “I can't do anything about it, can I?”

 

 

Well, hm.

 

 

I like what Rue McLanahan said as Vivian on “Maude” a long time ago: “When it's time for me to die, I'm just going to be somewhere else.”

 

 

This is a good plan, but I don't think it would actually work.

 

 

Some of my friends have said, much more specifically, that they want to be spared the knowledge that death is coming for them: they don't want a bad diagnosis, or a wonky heart that might go kaboom at any moment, or a nasty lingering complaint that just keeps picking away at you until you give up and lie down and die. They don't want those months or years of misery, waiting for Mister Reaper.

 

 

But we are having those years right now, n'est-ce pas? I predict, with absolute certainty, that you will die, and so will I, at some point in the (indeterminate) future.

 

 

There! Just like a doctor might have told you.

 

 

Now: what are you going to do about it?

 

 

I have watched friends and family members go down the road to death:

 

 

Mom was nine years from diagnosis to death: for more than eight of those years, she kept active and vital and managed to get some enjoyment out of life.

 

 

My sister Darlene, who had six years from diagnosis to death, spent her time taking care of neighbors' kids and cooking and gardening and doing everything she could think of. She was never my favorite person, but you know what? She spent her last few years nobly and profitably. Good for her.

 

 

Dad had less than a year. His cancer wasn't diagnosed until late, because he'd ignored the pain inside him – he thought it was his hernia. Diagnosed in October, died in May. Miserable most of that time. Tried radiation therapy, but it was 1975, and radiation therapy in those days was primitive and humiliating and painful.

 

 

My friend Bob caught the flu in 1992. It never quite went away. Then he began to lose weight. Then came the HIV diagnosis. He wasn't surprised: his partner back in New York had been HIV+, so Bob had always assumed he was positive too, without being tested. He lasted about three years (he died within a month of the death of my sister Susan, about whom I will tell you later). He got tired a lot, and depressed a lot, but he was still funny and smart and outrageous most of the time.

 

 

Oh, yes, my sister Susan. She was diagnosed soon after Mom, also with ovarian cancer, but Susan's cancer was very aggressive. She lasted three years.

 

 

She spent those three years living.

 

 

I visited her about a month before her death. She had just come home from coffin-shopping. We'd be talking, and she'd be picking through her closet, or her jewelry-box, looking for – guess what? - the right outfit for her funeral. “I don't want them to worry about it,” she said. “I can take care of a lot of that now. Then they won't have to worry. They'll have other things on their mind.”

 

 

I can't tell you all about Susan here; there's not enough room.

 

 

But, more than any other person in my life, Susan taught me how to think about death.

 

 

I hope, when my time comes, I can be as brave and tough as she was.

 

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The world is coming to an end, you stupidheads!

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A report was recently released on the health of the seas.

 

 

Here's a quick summary: it ain't good.

 

 

Marine species are dying. The chemical composition of the sea is itself changing. There is reason to believe that we are in the first phases of the sixth great extinction in the Earth's history, and that we – human beings – are responsible for it.

 

 

There are so many man-made disasters, big and small. A recent episode of Halogen's “Angry Planet” gave us the death of the Aral Sea and Chernobyl, in one brief half-hour program. Oh, and just for laughs, there's a lab on an island in the Aral Sea where the Soviet government stockpiled – and weaponized! - things like bubonic plague and anthrax. Except that it's not an island anymore; the drying of the Aral Sea (see above photo) has connected the island to the mainland. Rats and mice and vermin in general are probably carrying bits and pieces of all those deadly things to land.

 

 

Charming.

 

 

I'm always pleased to bring you news of the apocalypse. One of these times, it's bound to be true.

 

 

And it's always best to be prepared.

 

 

So put your crash helmet on, buckle your seat belt, and start screaming now.

 

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Remembering the dead

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I had lunch with my friend Moira the other day. Her mother, who suffered from severe Alzheimer's over the past couple of years, passed away about a month ago. Over a turkey wrap, Moira told me the story of her mother's last few months: they'd finally found an assisted-living place for her, and then she fell, and broke both her hip and shoulder. The choices at that point were all bad. Operation: dangerous. Put her in traction for six weeks: she'd never walk again. Do nothing but medicate her: she'd die of infection.

 

They operated, and Mother made it through. But then she went to rehab, and she grew tired, and she stopped eating. And a few weeks later, she passed away.

 

Ah.

 

 

Moira and her mother had always been close. But the Alzheimer's had made Mother petty and mean and insulting and confused.  A few years ago, over yogurt at Ben & Jerry's, Moira told me somberly: “She's dead. I lost her. She's another person now.”

 

We talked about the conflicting emotions that come after a parent's death. Grief, naturally. Then guilt: you could have been a better son/daughter! You should have visited more! You shouldn't have put them in assisted living! Then relief: someone you love isn't suffering anymore, and you aren't suffering anymore. Then (worst and most penetrating of all): guilt about feeling relieved!

 

“I'm not guilty at all,” Moira said as we left the restaurant. “I know what I did, and why. I think my brother feels guilty. I don't.”

 

“I still feel guilty about my mother, even after sixteen years,” I said. “I know it's silly, but I still do.”

 

Moira looked at me. “I'm gonna tell you what I told my brother," she said. “Snap out of it.  You know better than that.”

 

 

And that made me feel better.

 

My sister Darlene passed away a few years ago, of the ferocious ovarian cancer that runs in my family. Darlene and I didn't get along. She thought I was a spoiled smartass; I thought she was a stupid stick-in-the-mud.

 

When the news came that she'd passed away, I sighed and put it aside. I didn't go to the funeral. We weren't friends, I told myself, just siblings.

 

But the morning after I received the news, I had a sudden recollection: I was – what? Maybe five years old. And I was running out of the house, and my two sisters were walking home from the bus after school. And I was so glad to see them.

 

I was so glad my unconscious had unearthed that memory: one simple quiet happy image, for me to file away.

 

Now everybody can (maybe) rest in peace.

 

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In memory

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I came to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the office was still pretty quiet; a lot of people were still out. One of my friends, just down the hall, was out too. I missed her, but she often took Mondays off, and she'd been sick a lot lately, so I didn't worry too much. I looked forward to seeing her on Tuesday.

 

I found out on Monday afternoon that she'd died. Quite suddenly. She'd had something like a massive stroke on Saturday night, and had lasted perhaps a day, and that was that.

 

Ah, me.

 

She was so funny. She had a deep very droll voice, and a very dry sense of humor. I'd come up behind her, and she'd turn in her chair and look at me for a moment, and say: “What do you want?”

 

And we always cracked up.

 

A few days before Halloween this year, a lot of the parents in the office brought their kids in for trick-or-treat through the hallways. I could hear her from my office. She didn't know what the costumes were. One little girl was Wonder Woman. “Are you Super Woman?” my friend asked her. I could just hear that little girl fuming at her, from fifteen feet away, through the door. And my friend was giving little bags of chips to the kids for their treat. And with every kid, she'd say: “Do you like chips?”

 

During a quiet moment between trick-or-treaters, I finally went down the hall and told her: “I know who you are. You're that woman in the neighborhood who doesn't know what the hell is going on at Halloween. I'm surprised nobody has egged you yet.”

 

And we cracked ourselves up again.

 

The last words I ever heard from her were as she left on Wednesday night: “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said as she passed my office door.

 

God, I miss her.

 

Listen, kids: do not miss an opportunity to tell people you care for them, and do not miss an opportunity to be kind to them.

 

Because you just never know.

 

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