Category: dying

Control

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Can this be how it works? I’m 57 years old and see more life in the rearview mirror than the open road ahead. With that perspective, I find it’s become essential to reflect on what I’ve done with my time on this planet. Blissfully ignorant of the repercussions of news events growing up in bucolic suburbia, adulthood, parenthood, citizenship demanded my attention as I aged. I’ve experienced events no one wants. People summarize it as “life” when you see death. I’m not special. Just frustrated.

After the massacre at the movie theater in Aurora, CO, I began to write. Not with the expectation of affecting change, but rather to give my anger, my emotions, an outlet, an offramp for the toxic blood poisoning my body. I saw gun violence stealing a generation. While some social issues had moved the Overton Window, political intransigence (keep cashing the NRA’s checks!) and eventual American ennui accepted gun violence as baked into the American fabric in the name of “freedom.”

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, CT, I began to speak. Surely, a tragedy of this scale would shock Americans (and politicians) out of their stupor. Nope! I talked to groups in Texas as the lone spokesperson for the Brady Campaign in Texas. The only one. That alone tells you all you need to know about the calculus of “I NEED my gun, dead kids and teachers be damned.” Thoughts, prayers, and sad face emojis flooded social media until America’s fruit fly attention span moved on to the latest “tragedy” affecting Kim Kardashian.

My anger peaked with the death of my wife. Fuck cancer makes a great tweet, a guttural reaction without consequence. Utterly suicidal and dying with my wife, I could not yell at the tumor. I took it out on God for a while (also useless) and even turned to God for a bit (utterly meaningless). There was no one to blame, no revenge to be had. No offramp for my anger.

And then Americans, in the obvious next step for a society that had abdicated all personal responsibility and suffered no consequences, elected a narcissistic moron president—a billionaire (if you believe him) speaking for the uneducated rubes. Merit and logic were dead. With each lie, with each crime, I expected consequences. None came. Robert Mueller fumbled the ball with no defenders anywhere near him. Facts were relegated to the trash bin. Tweets became governmental edicts. And I waited. Furious.

When I get angry (when I get down), it is because things should be easier. “Keep the simple things simple; the hard things are hard enough.” But nothing was easy. Changing a light bulb resulted in the glass bulb snapping off the metal base, a trip or two to Lowes, and a call to the electrician. Nothing was easy. Ultimately, I realized it was an absolute lack of control. There was nothing I could do about any of it. My wife was dead, guns were more important than life, freedom from fact and responsibility replaced actual democracy, and rabid evangelicals believed in Trump as the messiah. Stop the world; I want to get off.

And now we have Ukraine. Again, one man brings the world to the point of a world war—one man. Ukrainians are fighting to survive- as a nation and a people. “Denazifying” Ukraine? Really?

I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech as I watch an army destroy entire cities. Stepping back for a second, it seems bizarre that NATO and the UN watch the massacres with tepid financial penalties because Ukraine doesn’t belong to their club. It’s like a high school clique turning its back on a less cool student getting beaten up because they don’t wear the “right” jeans. I understand the political ramifications of engagement. But on a human level, it seems callous and impotent.

So here I am—no one special, poisoned with anger and unable to control or change anything. Hell, I can’t even watch baseball now! The billionaires are too busy fighting with the millionaires. I get the feeling that if aliens did visit earth, they’d look down and say, “Nah, they’re petulant adolescents with nascent technology and a penchant for killing each other. Keep driving.”

So, my clock continues to tick down, and I’m not ignorant enough for its promised bliss. I’ve read Viktor Frankl and Thomas Paine but still cannot find reason or acceptance. How do I accept all of this? How do I “let it go?” No, seriously, I’m asking.

Sunshine

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We are a broken nation. Short of another insurrection, we are living in a cold civil war. One side is armed with guns, bullets, and hatred. The other side is armed with reason, truth, and awe at the dissension one man (Trump) could release. Republicans will win at any cost, including the nation’s destruction, if it means Democrats win a skirmish. Democrats eat their own and want a group hug with Republicans.

It is difficult to find the silver lining, the momentary oasis from hatred and paralysis during these times. It is hard to imagine “normal” life existing outside our echo chambers. Stochastic terrorism and dog whistles from the right. Infighting and inertia on the left. However, I found it about six months ago.

While scrolling through the division and vitriol on Twitter, I came across a neuroscientist at Concordia University in Montreal. Yes, Canada, where stereotypes abound of civility and courtesy. Dr. Nadia Chaudhri posted about a fundraiser she had organized, called the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award. It awarded scholarships for minority and historically marginalized students in neuroscience. It was inspiring to see in the age of Black Lives Matter, Oscar’s so White, and other diversity and inclusion awareness campaigns.

Dr. Chaudhri was more than a neuroscientist and associate professor. She was also a wife and mother. And she was Pakistani. Born in Karachi, she attended Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, becoming the first woman to win the Williamson Medal for outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburg and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of San Francisco. She was also dying of ovarian cancer at age 43.

As we whittle our list of “acceptable” people with whom we agree on everything, it became clear reading Dr. Chaudhri’s tweets that she was a tireless advocate for the Wingspan Award and an incredibly loving wife and mother. Living in Canada didn’t matter. Being from Pakistan didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was a good person. She was just a good person trying to do the best she could for those she cared about in an impossible situation. I never met her, but she was a good person. And that mattered. I enjoyed reading her tweets about her husband Moni (who she called her Moon) and her son (who she called her Sun).

When the chemotherapy no longer worked and the clinical trials failed her, she tweeted that she was entering the inpatient palliative care program at McGill University’s Health Centre and was meeting with her six-year-old son to tell him she was dying. Yes, memories flooded my brain of my late wife and I having that discussion with our children, but I wept for her, her son, and her husband. My son is getting married in a couple of weeks, and my daughter is recently engaged. I cried because I knew her young son would have to enjoy his significant life events without his mother there just as mine have.

She continued to raise money for the Wingspan Award by having people sponsor her to shuffle through the palliative care ward each day. She posted them on Twitter. As her Twitter account swelled, so too did the donations. She raised over $615,000 (CAD) from 8,600 donors. From her hospital bed, she replied to every person who donated. She posted paintings she did, usually of cards or gifts people had sent her. In one painting, she depicts her husband and son burying her ashes under a tree, hoping that her son would understand her wishes and come to peace with what was to come next in his young life. On September 9th, she was promoted to full professor. She celebrated with her husband, son, and the hospital staff with coffee ice cream.

When her legs no longer supported her daily fundraising shuffle, she danced in place in bed, the focus always on the scholarship.

Even when the inevitable happens, like a fool, I feel caught off-guard. Dr. Chaudhri died on Tuesday, October 5th. I sobbed. I sobbed because I would now be without the sunshine she brought with her inspiring tweets. I cried because the underrepresented in STEM lost a champion. I wept because I knew what her husband was feeling. I sobbed because I knew the world her son would now grow up in without his loving mother. It didn’t’ matter that she lived in Canada, that she was from Pakistan, that she advocated for the coronavirus vaccine for everyone, that she was excited she could vote in Canada’s recent election. It mattered because she was a good person.

Find those that inspire, that bring sunshine into this increasingly dark world. Better yet, be that sunshine for someone else. Thank you, Dr. Chaudhri.

Sandra

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My former mother-in-law, Sandra McIntosh, died on Friday. She had had multiple sclerosis since before I met her in 1987 and finally succumbed to ovarian cancer at age 81. This is a difficult piece to write.

I met her in 1987 when delivering her daughter’s baseball glove after she broke her leg during a company softball game. It was an excuse to see Lisa. Nothing more. We weren’t even dating at that point, but I had my sights set on her. Indeed, with a broken leg, there was not much need for a baseball glove! Sandra met me at the door and was very courteous if confused. That initial reaction held for the entirety of the time I knew Sandra.

Her husband, Doug, was my friend. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999, Lisa, our two young children, and I moved in with him and Sandra to care for him. He and Lisa had similar, effervescent personalities. It was a fool’s errand to try to keep up with them. But, oh, did we laugh.

In December of that year, he died in my arms as I tried to help him to a chair on the one night in all those months that Lisa left the house with her friend Naomi. Telling Sandra to stay in the bedroom while I called 911, and then Lisa felt like juggling cats underwater, my head drowning. Immediately after that, Sandra came to live with us. She lived in assisted living facilities off and on after that, sometimes living with us, sometimes living in ALFs.

Lisa was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. As many of you know, she, the kids, and I moved to Texas to treat her. Forgetting the dye had already been cast, and despite her Herculean efforts, she died in 2015. Sandra was with us in Texas from 2010 until the kids, Sandra, and I returned to Rhode Island in 2016 after the kids graduated from the University of Texas at Austin.

Before Doug died, he made me promise to take care of Sandra. It is a promise I have always tried to uphold. Lisa made me make the same promise. Two peas in a pod, those two. I promised her, too.

I don’t know why them and not me. It makes no more sense to me than knowing why cancer is, ultimately, suicidal, that it kills its host. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, “Why me?” “Why not,” said the universe.

Sandra was an only child. So was Doug. So was Lisa. We used to joke that Lisa didn’t have a family tree; she had a creeping vine. And now, they are all gone. However, the family tree/vine continues in Lisa’s children, my children: Samantha and Cameron. Thanks to IVF, they exist. Thanks to luck, they are not only children.

Sandra did not have Doug or Lisa’s electric personalities and never tried to keep up with them. Looking at family photos (or even photos from her high school yearbook), she rarely smiled in them. Most of the time, she isn’t even looking at the camera. However, that is not to say she didn’t enjoy herself. She loved crocheting, painting, drawing, family get-togethers, “cousin’s parties” at the Cape, and Christmas Eve’s at the DeCesare’s.

She learned to cover her not knowing something with wit, exaggeration, or obfuscation. She was either a graduate of a nursing school or any number of four-year universities to listen to her talk. Over the past twenty years, I’ve spent many hours with her in Emergency Departments. Invariably, she tells the nurse that she spent many years at that hospital as a nurse. Once, at dinner, she bonded with the waiter, who told us he was Hungarian. “I’m Hungarian, too!” she said. She put other’s minds at ease with her exaggerations and obfuscations, blending into conversations rather than dominating them. She made everyone feel they belonged indeed, that she belonged.

She did attend and graduate from a nursing program in Boston in the early 1960’s. After that, she worked briefly at a psych hospital. She then spent her adulthood watching Doug’s meteoric rise through the business world, attending board outings, professional dinners, and weekends at the Cape. She settled into life as a quiet wife and mother. She taught ceramics out of their basement and signed her works “Sugar.” Lisa never acquiesced to Sandra’s request that she sign her pieces “Spice.” Indeed, signing them “Oil” and “Water” might have been more appropriate. Mothers and daughters.

Now she is gone like Doug. And like Lisa. The family I married into, all gone. I feel bad for my kids. The unlived memories and stolen years with their mother and grandfather hurt more than the memories and years stolen from Doug or Lisa because the kids still exist to feel the pain. I can only offer stories and hope I did right by their grandfather and mother and the promise they made me make.

Funny thing about promises: anyone can make them to anyone else. I know Lisa made Naomi promise to look in on me occasionally, to see how I was doing, to see how the kids were doing. I appreciate it and, like everyone else, am doing the best I can to live a meaningful, productive life. I have remarried and am allowing myself to be happy. May we all have a reprieve from grief for a while? I wish I could promise.

Delbow

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We lost Delbow Ploppers today. He has gone on to live with Lisa in heaven.

Throughout his life he endured a number of medical procedures, none of them easy. He tore the CCL ligament in both back legs and had to have them surgically repaired. He lost one eye to a detached retina and had to have emergency surgery in Chicago to save the other eye. He endured three different battles with cancer. And he lost most of the remaining eyesight to a cataract. Our little bionic dog saw it all. And he never showed anything but love to us.

And now he is gone. The house, already silent because of Lisa’s absence, is now doubly silent because Delbow is gone. The loneliness I felt after Lisa’s death was mitigated somewhat by Delbow always being there for me. And now he’s gone too.

Will Rogers famously said, “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” I couldn’t agree more.

The lone male in the litter of five Coton de Tulear puppies, we brought him home with us and he slept in Lisa’s elbow the entire ride home. We had just seen Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V with the kids and were reminded how the French princess, preparing in case her father’s army lost to the English, learned the new English language. Instead of saying “elbow,” she kept saying “d’elbow.” And that’s how Delbow got his name.

He lived to be twelve years old and encompassed most of the kid’s childhood. An era is gone. The kids are seniors in college now and will be off on their own soon. First it was my father in 2014, then it was my wife in 2015 and now cancer has taken my dog too. This continues a difficult time for us and closes another chapter in our lives. Cancer sucks.

No Autopilot When Spiraling In

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spiral

As we continue our corkscrew toward the ground, we took another turn today. My wife can no longer easily swallow, causing her to cough when taking medications. Because she is so short of breath, she cannot cough up that which she has aspirated and she begins wheezing which results in her vomiting. Because she is not eating, the only thing she vomits is green bile from her stomach. It is a vicious circle as we spiral in.

The kids are convinced now that something will happen the day I drive them back to college. Given how we have tightened the spiral, I’m not sure I disagree.

Looking outward from inside this corkscrew is disorienting. As soon as I am convinced that something has settled, the wings tilt inward still further and we spin that much faster toward the ground. But one can find focus in this spin. When I least expect it and am most ill prepared, the gravity and magnitude of the situation (essentially the finality of it all) clubs me with a mighty blow after which I find myself gasping for breath, crying and floating directionless in the air until the reality of current circumstances force me to see the spinning and rapidly approaching ground through the windscreen.

There is no peace when spiraling in. Life’s obligations and daily tasks still require our attention: the dog needs to be fed and given his meds, the laundry never stops, groceries still need to shopped for, bills still need to be paid, work still needs to be done. However, there is a certain feeling of mechanization about it all. We go through the motions of shopping, eating, dressing, sleeping, as we have all summer, but there is no soul in it. Put your seats in the upright and locked position, return your tray table to its stowed position, tighten your seatbelt tight and low around your waist. The captain has exited the aircraft and will not be returning. Cancer is now piloting the aircraft. Thank you for flying the terminally ill skies.

The insanity of the situation is that all but one of us will survive the inevitable crash. We will survive but in what condition? And as hard as this flight has been, I cannot imagine how we will carry on after we bore into the ground. And it is approaching ever faster and filling my field of view. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I cannot see it clearly, because of the blinding rage and constant tears.