Little Black Dots
My father-in-law is dying. His wife called and told us he’d had a stroke, and we rushed to the ER. Techs ran scans that showed little black dots around his brain, and those little dots are cancer.
Amadeus and I were planning to spend Christmas with his father and the woman he calls his “sorta stepmother.” I was going to cook dinner and bring it over, and we had little gifts and our secret plan was to inject a little happiness into the lives of a sweet, curmudgeonly old man and his dour new wife. They’re typically a glass half-empty kind of couple, and Amadeus and I wanted to fill that glass for a little while.
I love my husband’s daddy. He’s eighty-three years old, visually impaired and for months, he’s had trouble walking. He’s a bona fide grouch, but as I think I’ve said here before, I’m somewhat enamored of grouches. It’s the challenge of cracking that hard shell, the reward of seeing a smile cross a stern and gloomy face. My father-in-law is as tough as an oyster shell, but inside that shell is a Sta Puft marshmallow. A year or so ago, I told Amadeus that I hoped that I’d know his dad for a very long time, but that’s not going to be the case.
Our hospital holiday was sad, and it was hard. Amadeus, Sr.’s wife screamed and raged at the staff in a thick Germanic accent. In her eyes, she was surrounded by incompetence. The food sucked and the doctor’s orders were nonsensical. My father-in-law was sometimes confused, sometimes lucid, often agitated and very, very sad. He cried a lot, and I dabbed his tears and fed him pears. Amadeus sat by his bedside and although they talked little, it comforted them both.
I see rivers of history running between father and son. Amadeus Sr. sometimes can’t remember the names of friends and family, and he couldn’t see the people who were coming in and out of his hospital room, but he always knows when my husband is near. Their skin is the same, pale and smooth. They share many mannerisms and they speak in much the same way, though Amadeus’ voice is gentler. Their relationship has been complicated, and they’ve suffered greater losses in the past five years than most people could endure, a silent bond that no one else can fully understand. The blood they share is about to evaporate from the old man’s body, and it fills them both with grief.
Five Decembers ago, Amadeus’ mother died after a long illness. Three weeks later, the day after Christmas, he lost his only child, a sixteen-year-old son. It was Amadeus’ fifty-third birthday. Last August, his brother (his only sibling) died of cancer.
Five Decembers ago, Amadeus Senior’s wife died after a long illness and more than fifty years of marriage. Three weeks later, he lost his grandson. Last August, his eldest child died of cancer. And now he’s leaving too. It’ll be just Amadeus after that. Well, Amadeus and me, but he’s the last branch on that tree.
We brought our little Charlie Brown Christmas tree to the hospital, determined to infuse some joy into that sad and sterile room. It seemed to work. We placed the tree where Amadeus’ dad could see the ornaments and the tiny twinkling lights, and on Christmas Eve we brought presents and pie and he seemed delighted. For a short time, his wife stopped Gestapo-ing the staff and bitching about everything and it was lovely to see the two of them smiling. Amadeus and I force-fed them a big old IV bag of love, and they didn’t mind a bit.
During his entire stay, Amadeus Sr. kept thanking Amadeus and me for being there. He apologized a million times for things we didn’t understand and cried with regret about his impending death. He became obsessed with funeral plans. Cancer cells pressed on different areas of his brain and his personality changed in accordance. He was gentle one moment, angry and frustrated the next, and in a split second he’d be crying. He was confused. Pointing to a tall visitor, he asked, “Do you play basketball for Oklahoma State?” He wanted to run ads advertising his passing in the newspaper—sort of a pre-death announcement. For a while, there was a football game going on in the room that only he could see. No matter how out of it he was, the indignity of not being able to pee without help humiliated him. He was and is very, very tired.
There’s nothing left to do but wait. The other day, he was sent home to die. Amadeus and I can see their house from our yard. It’s a forty-five second walk from ours, and we’ve already worn a rut between the two places. Their domicile has been invaded by hospice ladies and V.A. workers, though Amadeus and I are a bit amazed at how little assistance they actually get. There have been no workers to help him in and out of bed. He’s a sofa kind of guy, not a bedridden one, and lifting him is a major operation. Amadeus’ back aches and I’m a little pooped myself.
He’s been mostly lucid these past few days, clear enough to realize what’s happening, but not quite with it enough to remember his new wife’s name. He knows Amadeus’, he remembers mine, but he calls the woman he lives with by his dead wife’s name, which infuriates her. Sometimes he calls her Whatsername, and she’s a little more okay with that. He offers her a million apologies for being clumsy and spilling things, and Amadeus wants to scream, “STOP apologizing!!!” He could pour a million gallons of coffee onto the floor and drop five thousand melted chocolate bars. We’d gladly clean it up. What do messes matter when your number’s about to come up? We want him to be at peace. We want him to be content. We don’t want him to go.
Yesterday, we stayed with him for a few hours while Whatsername ran errands. He and Amadeus watched football on his big screen TV. The television set is about the size of an SUV and sits four feet away from his face, but my father-in-law still can’t see which team is doing what, so Amadeus supplied a running commentary. I explained to him about my sports impairment and confessed that I sometimes only pretend to know what’s going on. I confided that I had no idea which team was Rutgers and which was Iowa State, which made him laugh. I love making that old man laugh.
I went for a little walk during all of this, and when I returned, the two men looked a little frazzled and very sheepish. Amadeus had tried to help his father pee, but his dad missed the bottle and urine soaked through his pants and his pads. It’s impossible for one person to lift the man, and when I got there, they were sitting happily, side-by-side, still watching the game. Amadeus Sr.’s pants were halfway down and his Depends was scrunched, but he was clean and dry. At some point during this fiasco, they agreed that as long as he was comfortable, they’d just go with this new fashion statement. So long as they didn’t miss the game, they were fine. It was like watching two old bachelors chilling, without the beer and pretzels and the pants. Amadeus and I managed to lift his father, and we pulled everything up and put a new pad beneath him.
Later, Amadeus went home to make his dad some chili. I stayed and watched a huge Judge Judy with my father-in-law. “You seem a lot happier,” I told him during a commercial. “You were really agitated there for a while.”
“It’s the drugs,” he smiled. “They’re great.”
He spoke of his impending death. He’s matter-of-fact about it, and seems more accepting of his fate with each passing day. It’s odd, witnessing this sorrowful process. Again, he thanked me for all we were doing.
“Well,” I said, “you did give me your son.” I expressed how much Amadeus and I love each other. I wanted to reassure him that we would be okay. “He’s my angel,” I told him, and promised to keep his boy in line. A grin spread across his face and he looked out the window and said, “That’s good.”
Last night, Amadeus and I curled up on the sofa and wrote songs and drank a little whiskey and talked about death. We’d both seen the video of Ben Breedlove, the eighteen-year-old Texas boy who shared stories of his near-death experiences on YouTube before finally dying of a heart defect on Christmas day. In the end, he was ready to go—in fact, he couldn’t wait. He’d seen where he was going, reviewed his life and was proud of the things he’d accomplished. He was completely prepared to leave this world.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone were that happy and accepting of death?” I asked Amadeus. “You know, if we knew that it was going to be peaceful and joyous? Not in that stupid ‘He’s in a better place now’ way, but in a way that makes you thrilled that you’re on your way to this fantastic new place.” I loved imagining that each of the people we’d lost—his mother and brother and son, my father—had experienced the happiness that Ben had felt when he’d met with death, before he came back to tell us about it.
We discussed our own dream deaths—how we wanted our lives to end, and at what point we’d want them ended for us if things became too rough. Amadeus took out a sheet of paper and wrote. “If we lose our faculties, if our quality of life is gone, if we’re a burden and there’s no hope left—do not resuscitate. “
Our dream deaths include a wake by the Buffalo River, and we both hope the weather cooperates. We want people to pass a bottle and tell stories about us, and laugh and cry and sing and play music. I’m going to write a song for Amadeus, and he’s going to write one for me. Our ashes will be scattered in the river, and they’ll mingle and fish will swallow part of us and the rest of us will float downstream. We signed and dated it, and for a minute, we considered having Theo the Wonderdog® witness it, but we had no inkpad for his paw.
There’s something so horrific and yet so beautiful about the demise of the sweet, grouchy old man who raised my husband. He’s had the gift and the curse of knowing that the end is near. He’s surveyed his life, expressed his regrets; he’s making his peace and saying his goodbyes. He got to tell his son that he loved him, and he got to hear it back. That might be the greatest gift of all.
Gravitational Grimness
For years, I was a tumbleweed, rolling around rootless, never living in one place for more than a blink. I attribute this to a very unstable childhood. Every time we’d get semi-settled into a residence, the deck of cards would be thrown into the air and we’d scatter again. I started tallying the number of times I’ve moved throughout my life, but I stopped as the number neared forty.
I think I’m adjusting nicely to Married Life. Amadeus and I are happily entwined. We’re blooming like buttercups, and for the first time in my life, I feel rooted. Occasionally, I get a tiny bit confused about the fact that this is home. It feels tenuous at times, and my husband will remind me, “This is your house too.” For some reason I have little eye puddles, writing this. I’m going to say it again– this is home.
Though roots are sprouting, I’m fortunate to have wed a fellow tumbleweed, a musician who’s toured a lot over the years and seems to share the itch I get to hit the road from time to time. We did it last week, in fact. We’d bought tickets several months ago to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings in Nashville. As the concert date drew near, we didn’t think we’d be able to go, because of all my stoopid health issues, because I’m unemployed, and because we’re now married, over insured and broker than the Ten Commandments. But Amadeus is a cool, spontaneous sort, and last Monday he texted me: “Let’s just go. It can be our Christmas present to each other.” On Wednesday, we were in the car, headed for the great state of Tennessee. The Gillian Welch 2011 Road Trip– woo hoo!
I’ve logged a lot of miles in my life. My internal odometer’s turned over at least three times. I’ve run from things, toward things, but now I’m just sitting beside this guy I love, enjoying every minute of the ride. The road stretches out in front of us like a lazy yawn, and because my foot once got tangled in my skirt when I was driving and I almost mangled us on some highway, I’m now relegated to the passenger seat, free to look at the trees and the rivers and the road kill. Amadeus is a great driver, and I like it when he cusses at bad ones. It’s a rare occurrence, but it breaks the monotony.
Mostly, we talk. Well, you know, I talk. Amadeus will ask me a question, and I take it from there, because my brain is a crazy highway map of twists and turns and exits, and before you know it, a great deal of time has passed before maybe, just maybe I’ve reached my mental destination. A lot of our conversations end with some variation of the words, “So, in answer to the question that you asked thirty minutes ago…”
I’m a storyteller, and I find that these road trips provide me with a delightfully helpless, captive audience. I told Amadeus tales from my weird-ass childhood and the family skeleton closet all the way from Little Rock to Memphis. He listened quietly and (I think) with interest, and finally he said, “You should be writing about this.”
I have to take a detour here and say that this is reason number 579 that I love my husband. He talks to me about my writing, knowing full well that he’s opening an industrial-sized can of worms. I tell him where I am with things. I spill stuff that’s been agitating in my head, share ideas and stories I’ve plotted. I whine about where I’m blocked and what my worries are. It’s like writer therapy, and it helps, it really does. I think he’s lost some hearing through his decades of playing loud music, so it all works out pretty well.
So on our Gillian Welch 2011 Road Trip, I talked to Amadeus about my recent writing roadblock: How to share the stories I want to write without making readers suddenly yearn to drink Clorox, or smother themselves with their own pillows. It may be interesting, but it’s pretty dark stuff. Anyone who’s non-military and has moved forty-plus times probably has some grimness in their past.
I was always drawn to the morbid and morose. I loved B horror movies from the minute my eyes focused. In first grade, I’d run to get the newspaper from the porch. I’d turn first to the obituaries, then I’d search for crime stories, followed by a reading of the sad and hopeless letters to Ann Landers. I chased it all with the comic section. This daily reading ritual foreshadowed my worldview– we inhabit a harsh and grievous planet, but there’s Nancy and Sluggo too.
“So, I’m trying to figure it all out,” I told Amadeus. “I want to write these stories, and it’s easy for me to tell them, because they’re my stories. They don’t shock or depress me, but I feel responsible to my audience. I don’t want to be self-indulgent or sensationalistic. I want readers to feel uplifted, because really, it all has a happy ending.” He seemed to totally get my dilemma, and we sat quietly as he drove through the darkness while I mulled it over. I imagine he was on to other things, like how great it would be to sleep after driving for ten hours straight.
My sister and her husband live just outside of Nashville, and we stayed with them, which was wonderful, in part because she and her family are extremely sweet and funny and in part because she lent me her very cool $350 Michael Kors leather jacket to wear to the concert. My mind is nimble, and I deduced that it was $350 Michael Kors, mostly because she kept saying, “You’d better not let anything happen to my $350 Michael Kors jacket.”
I forgot to mention that I bounced in my passenger seat most of the way to Nashville. I’m very annoying, but Amadeus and I are huge fans of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and I just could not believe that we were actually getting to see them! I’d like to add about sixteen-hundred more exclamation points here, but I’m holding back for the sake of space, and to act sort of nonchalant about the whole event. But Gillian Welch is whip-smart and lovely and her voice is as pure as a bar of Ivory soap. I’m in love with her lyrics; she crafts songs that often transport listeners to different eras and places, and introduces us to characters that we long to meet. She tells truths about the world, and they’re often bleak and harsh, though somehow hopeful. I’m equally enthralled by David Rawlings, her partner. He collaborates, harmonizes like a breeze through the trees and plays guitar like a man possessed. He’s fascinating to watch, and I’d have a mad crush on him except for the fact that I’m newly married and I still have a big crush on my husband. Besides, Dave and Gillian are partners in life as well as in the music world, and I want them to stay together forever and make 20 more CDs. They’re perfectly synchronized angels, those two. We bought The Harrow and the Harvest, their latest release, and listened to it non-stop from Arkansas to Tennessee, then back again, becoming more enthralled with every repeat. I know I’m gushing, but it’s such a gush-worthy CD. Our ears have been given a huge gift.
So there we were last Thursday, in section MF3, row V of the Ryman Auditorium. I looked very sporty in my sister’s $350 MICHAEL KORS 
LEATHER JACKET. The Ryman is a dream venue for most musicians, and the acoustics are said to be second only to the Mormon Tabernacle. It’s a historic landmark, a former church and home of the Grand Ole Opry. Being in that old building made me feel reverent about every song that ever featured a steel guitar and a twangy voice.
I can’t even talk about the concert, because I still haven’t shaken the stardust from my ears. Well, I have to talk about it just a little. The Harrow and the Harvest is Ms. Welch’s first album in eight years, and the concert tour coincided with its release (it was just nominated for a Grammy, by the way). There were just the two of them on that old stage, singing one dark, bleakly beautiful song after another. Topics included hard livin’, death, drug addiction and heartbreak. Somber subject matter, but the audience was joyful. The floors of the Ryman are wooden, and the whole building vibrated while we stomped our heels in time. I was really glad that I’d borrowed my sister’s spike-heeled leather boots in addition to the $350 MICHAEL KORS LEATHER JACKET, because they really made a swell racket.
I never wanted the evening to end, but of course it did, and we woke up early the next day and headed home. I popped the CD in once again, feeling all wistful and quiet. Gillian Welch’s lovely, plaintive voice filled the Honda and hit our hearts. We cranked it up on this one particular song, and it was as though I was hearing the lyrics for the very first time.
Take me and love me if you want me
Don’t ever treat me unkind
‘Cause I’ve had that trouble already
And it left me with a dark turn of mind.
Now I see the bones in the river
And I feel the wind through the pine
And I hear the shadows a-calling
To a girl with a dark turn of mind.
But oh, ain’t the nighttime so lovely to see?
And don’t all the nightbirds sing lovely?
You’ll never know how happy I’ll be
When the sun’s going down.
And leave me if I’m feeling too lonely
Full as the fruit on the vine
You know some girls are bright as the morning
Some girls have a dark turn of mind.
You know some girls are bright as the morning
Some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind.
I suddenly got the kind of clarity that can only come from a sleep deprived, three-day, thousand mile road trip. Gillian Welch makes millions of people happy with her music. She’s unapologetically drawn to the sad, twisted, seamy side of the street. As of yet, I haven’t heard of one person smothering themselves with their own pillow while listening to The Harrow and the Harvest. I realized that I have tales that I need to tell, words I have to write. They burn in my brain while I’m penning other things. And while some of them are happy and new pony shiny, some are horrific and heartbreaking and twisted and grim. It’s embedded in my DNA. It’s what I know. I have to stop editing myself, and I’ve got to stop worrying about my readers. It’s all about trust. Sitting there in the passenger seat, watching the trees and the rivers and the road kill, I suddenly felt blessed with a dark turn of mind.
BLAM!!!
Thankfully, this post isn’t going to be nearly as dramatic as the last one (translation: Prepare to be bored).
I got my second opinion on the whole am-I-dying-or-is-this-just-a-paper-cut thing. Actually, it was a third opinion. Maybe a fourth. The ER doctor, then the gynecologist, then the gynecological oncologist and now, this fabulous new doctor lady.
If you want to stop reading here, I’ll cut to the chase: I’M FINE!!! If you want the details, read on.
I immediately fell in love with New Doctor, because A: she’s from Memphis, B: she has great credentials and C: she agreed with everything I said and seconded my opinion of the other doctor’s opinion, which went along the lines of “Whoa there, bucko. Not so fast .”
If I had listened to that oncologist, I’d be writing this while recuperating from a complete hysterectomy. I’d be ovary-less, uterus-less and possibly cervix-less. I’d also be useless for quite some time.
This new doctor listened—really listened to my concerns. She was almost as puzzled as I was by the fact that Doctor Oncology was so eager to remove my lady junk, instead of just having a look-see and removing the offending cyst. “But,” she explained, “he is an oncologist, and when they see elevated tumor markers and high white counts, they just want to quickly get everything out of there. It’s what they’re trained to do.” She agreed that it was overkill though, and thought that I was right in waiting to see if things would level out. And they did!!!
New Doctor sent me for a new ultrasound. I lay there on the little table, squinting at the screen, looking for the tangerine-sized cyst that had nested near my ovaries. The technician searched high and low, but there was no fruit-sized growth anywhere to be seen. Not even a raisin. Poof! It was gone!
I almost danced back to the exam room, and had to hold myself back from hugging the doctor. She said that sometimes, cysts rupture and actually eat themselves. I can’t think too hard about how that works or my head will start hurting, but I’ll go with her explanation.
In layman’s terms, my cyst went BLAM! As Ricky Ricardo would say, it “sploded.”
A week prior to this exam, we had some friends over for a cutthroat game of Monopoly (we’re so wild). I swear I’m not just saying this because Amadeus was winning, but late into the evening, I became extremely ill– faint and nauseous and I think I frightened our guests. Amadeus and I discussed whether or not to go back to the ER. Again, I’m thankful that we didn’t, because I’m thinking they’d have hysterectomized me on the spot. But looking back, I think that’s when the cyst ‘splosion took place. I was really sick for a few days afterward, but gradually I began feeling better. Wow.
I got my blood test results a few days ago. My CR 125 (tumor markers) came back perfect. My white count is perfect. I’m in menopause, which sucks, but I’ll take hot flashes over cancer any day.
I have to post some happy words here. Joy!! Delight!! Yay!! Yippee!! Cake!!
The last order of business is seeing a gastroenterologist. My new, amazing, Memphisy doctor says that although things look good from a stirrups perspective, my tummy’s still messed up and we have to figure out why. I promise not to update you with the details of any procedures that might take place.
I’m so ready to get back on track. It’s been a depressingly horrible couple of months, save for that whole marrying-the-best-guy-in-the-world deal. For a while there, I considered the ironic nature of my life, and how àpropos it would be that I married the Love of My Life, then kicked the bucket two weeks later. Kind of the ultimate good news/ bad news situation.
I don’t recommend waiting out a cyst, because cyst ‘splosions can be life-threatening. In my case, it worked out fine, but I was lucky. Stupid, poor and lucky.
But here’s what I’ve learned: Go with your gut. Don’t risk your life, but listen to that little squeaky voice inside. Do research. I felt at the beginning that this was gastro-related. We got sidelined by the cyst and the fever, then those pesky tumor markers and white counts. In reading about all of this, I found that tumor markers can be elevated by infections (had one) and endometriosis (got it), and that the Mirena IUD (had that too) can cause cysts and infections. I was prescribed four types of antibiotics (a couple so strong that they’re given to people who’ve been exposed to anthrax), and I wondered if the tumor markers and the white count would return to normal after I completed those rounds. They did. In the end, I’m glad we had to wait for my insurance coverage. It bought me time, and time heals some wounds. It healed these.
My husband has given me many gifts since we met. Some are tangible, some are not, but one of the best so far was this gift of a second opinion. I’ll never be able thank him enough. It confirms my belief that I married the kindest man in the world. I don’t need a second opinion on that.
Thanks for taking this latest ride on the rollercoaster with me. I’m sorry if I scared you. We were scared too.
