Another Anniversary

Easter is also the anniversary of the day Mom sent my brother David to get me from the woods passed Kerry Scott's house at the end of the street.

Aside from Church, school and eating supper, we spent all of our time in those woods.

Still caught up in the Holy Spirit from Pastor Johnson's fiery Easter sermon, David wore his 3-piece J. C. Penny suit.

I'd already changed for the ride to Sunday Easter lunch at Grandma and Granddaddy Carver's house far away in Pooler.

Wearing shorts and tee shirts, I played with

Rob Mixon

and his brothers.

"MIKE, MOM SAYS TO COME HOME NOW," David yells in his suit.

"OVER HERE!" we scream in reply.

David makes his way to the log straddling the canal to where we hid behind trees.

Just as my brother made his way across the canal on the log, we began throwing rocks at him while screaming "WALK THE PLANK! WALK THE PLANK!"

David fell in the canal but literally walked on the water , running towards home, crying and yelling, "I'M TELLING MOM!"

Robert, his brother Ray and me laughed our asses off.

That's all I remember about that glorious Easter day.

Margaret Elliott

probably encouraged Dad to beat me until an inch of my life.

It doesn't matter because I don't remember.

Happy Easter Bubba!

Love you!!

(The picture shows us pretty much at the time this event occurred on that glorious Easter all those years ago.)

Daybreak

Yesterday Che, our 4 year old daughter, woke before light, climbed down from her raised bed in the dimly lit room, and almost made it down the stairs before calling out in the darkness, "DA! DADDY!"

Jerking awake, I'm on the stairs hugging her before my eyes fully open.

"That's another step in her not needing us anymore," I tell Sarah. "Before long she'll take care of herself."

My wife rolls her eyes and walks away.

Today Che makes it the way down the stairs and creeps to my side of the bed.

I'm dead asleep.

Sarah felt Che enter the room, pause and stare for us through the darkness.

"Come to bed," Sarah calls and our daughter scampers across her mother's belly, collapses between us and wakes me up.

For a moment, it is pure bliss.

"Do you want to get up?" Sarah asks.

Che rolls across my belly, grabs my hand, saying, "C'mon Da," and the day's begun.

The time I've got

"You have too much time on your hands," our 16 year old Laurel says staring at her phone sitting on the sofa next to me.

"Au contraire," I answer, scrolling Twitter, snuggled with Che who's watching YouTube videos, "I don't have enough."  

Laurel grins before making a pouty face. 

"You mean you don't have enough to do TikTok," she fires.

TikTok is an App showcasing personal videos recorded on phones, uploaded for your enjoyment of people sharing life as they see it in one minute or less. Laurel lobbies for me to share my life as a weed smoking, 64 year old father with pancreatic cancer of a 4 year old and a smokin' hot wife who's a wonder of a woman.

"It'll be hilarious," she announces.

I checked TikTok out but told her, "It's too much work. I don't have enough time."

Ever since Laurel tells me I have too much on my hands.

The fact is the matter is I'm quite content with the time I've got.

For the most part I play whatever Che wants so my days are filled with Fairies, Pirates, Ballerinas, coloring books, building forts, musical performances, snuggles, endless games of Hide-n-Seek and trying to decipher new words she speaks with conviction.

Che's a lot like her mother.

Everything she does is with the utmost conviction.

Sarah and I walk the dogs and make plans for our immediate (is there any other kind?) future. We snuggle together every night watching television, have lunch dates, and go to the Doctor's office.

My wife works a lot, mothers four daughters and oversees my recovery while I'm building my ultimate play list so I never have to listen to a song I don't really like again. So far it's over 54 hours of songs but Spodify's repetitive rotation drives me crazy so I keep adding more tunes so the number of repeats goes down.

The rest of the day is filled with unresolved emotions, mostly life and death issues predicated upon Sarah living and me dying.

It's not morose. 

It's liberating somehow, though I don't know how.

"When the two of you laugh," my Mom says, "it's the richest, most heartfelt, sound."

That's what happens when the love of your life doesn't let go during the freefall of cancer and we crash into Hell still holding hands but find ourselves still here so there's nothing else to do except laugh.

It's not just the laughter but the talks we have. The silence we share. The knowing glances when someone else is talking. The warmth of her hand in mine. The love emerging from every cell in our bodies when we hug. Everything about the way we're living now is more abundant than before! 

There's an urgency to our marriage that heightens everything we experience living each moment.

It takes all my time.

Now I can't imagine how I've lived life like I did for so long and not like I am now.

Stormy Seas return

"Da, show me the picture from the Doctors," Che asks, sticking her head between the console as I sit behind the steering wheel.

I'd missed taking her to pre-school because of a MRI that morning so I'm picking her up instead.

"It's not that kind of picture," I laugh. "They look inside my belly. It'll take a while before we can see them."

"Oh," she smiles, sitting backwards.

Buckling my seatbelt, her head reappears between the console.

"Show me," she demands.

"What?" My belly?"

She nods, melting my heart.

Pulling up the tee-shirt, she examines the deep scar, kisses it, says, "That'll make it better," sits back in the seat and begins to sing.

The picture comes back soon enough and Sarah studies them intensely.

As suspected, I still have cancer.

Sizes, shapes and locations have changed.

It's not what we hoped though we're undeterred. 

"I hear there's a diet this guy with a cancer like yours and his spots have all diminished," Sarah says at lunch.

We're discussing options, each from our unique perspective, so we talk without listening, holding emotions in check so we feel in control.

My wife wants to immediately step up the fight, willing to sacrifice anything to keep us together until I walk our little girl down the aisle. 

“Wounded deep in battle, I stand stuffed like some solider undaunted," feeling the time I have rush downriver as I frantically seek joy in every single moment I'm living now!  

We leave to retrieve Che who's excited to have actually seen a Leprechaun in class today and drive home together under towering billows of dark and stormy clouds.  

Making cancer work for you

"HEY! Go lay in the surf like your body just washed up on shore and I'll take your picture"" 

"OKAY!" our 14 year old Cassidy squeals, running towards the Ocean.

When I get there she's already laying on the wet sand. 

Waves finish their march to shore by softly kissing her cheek and fanning her hair.

She closes her eyes, opens her mouth and tries to look dead.

I snap pictures until we both burst out laughing together.

Sure it's politically incorrect but God it was fun!

Cancer jokes rule at our house and we're constantly working to make it work to our advantage.

Cancer takes everything but, at our house anyway, we taking as much as we can back from the bitch!

"No I can't do that today," I hear Laurel say into her phone, "Mike's got cancer and has a doctor's appointment so I have to watch my sister while they're gone."

She hangs up, looks at me and we cackle with laughter.

We're doing our best to make the cancer work for us!

It's all about how you frame it.

What else you gonna do? 

Accept it?!

I've been fighting for my life, though it was my wife who wrestled the Grim Reaper's grip off my throat breaking three of his fingers while hissing through gritted teeth, "Not yet Motherfucker!" 

That's my version.

Sarah wouldn't have said "Motherfucker" though she certainly feels it too.

After a year  of rogue, treacherous waves, we find ourselves sailing smooth waters for now. 

The skies are blue and, today anyway, it's warm, calm and simply beautiful.

It's not over.

Stormy Seas will return but, for now anyway, we moor in the safe harbor of each other's arms.

Through it all, we've been surprised, often shocked, at people's tangible and real gifts of food, money, live music, hugs, kisses, laughs and love.

And weed!

I feel okay, excited for the future, and anxious about not doing things too quickly, which is my nature, but to enjoy every single moment of this time right now with Sarah and the girls, while we have these few minutes to laugh.

Love in Cancer

 

"You look good!" she says with far too much enthusiasm, as though it makes me feel instantaneously better.

"Shut the Hell up," I snap.

Shrugging her shoulder, the dirty white robe slides down skinny, pasty-white skin, as she takes a long draw from a cigarette, blows smoky hallows in the air, quickly slugs a shot of bourbon followed by a slow, loud guzzle from a tall boy Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

"I think it's pretty funny that Sarah says you've just had a tummy tuck," she grins flashing yellow teeth.

"What do you want?" I snap before preoccupying myself with a Bic lighter and a brightly colored Rastafarian pipe.

"Never mind," I order, "watch this!" and I blow a puff of smoky grey clouds over her head.

"That smells righteous," she grins.

"Yeah," I grin, suddenly feeling, heavenly.

After endless days of rain, the sun hangs brightly in a pristine, deep blue sky devoid of clouds except for those blown by my Guardian Angel and me.

"Ok, let's get to business," she says, spitting a loogy over the porch rail, "you look like shit."

I hit the pipe again and listen to the quiet of a glorious, fresh, new day, before answering.

"So you're telling me that it's alright for Angel's to lie? You told me I look great which is a lie and now you're telling me the truth that I look awful?"

Grinning, oily black hair parted in the middle frames her skinny white face with large brown eyes and a mouth almost too big for her face. If she smiles, which she never does, even with the dirt around her nose, it hints at the beauty she had once been before being assigned the merciless task of watching over me.

My Angel haven't been seen since Che was born 4 years ago. I've assumed she's been busy watching over Jimmy Cochran, her other plumb assignment, who seems to have lost his mind and taken a job in Government at this late stage of life.

I have no idea how my Guardian Angel feels about Jimmy. He ran a white Church out of business then gave the building away to a black congregation which surely got him on a Southern Baptist hit list. 

My Angel loves my wife but doesn't seem care too much for me.

She begged God to assign her to John O'Neill but was told he's got his own special team of tactical interventionists with special training to combat multiple sins simultaneously and wasn't needed.

She exclusively oversaw me for years until Sarah and I married.

"She's as close to an Angel as one can be without dying first," she says of Sarah, "so I can have some time for other things because she takes care of you so well."

"You mean time for Jimmy Cochran?" I grin.

"Shut up!" she snaps.

"Well what-do-ya-want then?"

She shoots the bourbon, clears her throat, spits another loogy, and grins.

"You are so loved," she says.

The deep blue sky suddenly seems bluer.

Che and Sarah are giggling inside the house.

Across the street, our neighbor Ron waves at me with a grin, and it feels like peace on earth for a moment.

"Yeah," I reply, suddenly transcending my scarred stomach, leg and chest to float just outside of my body for a few seconds.

Maybe it was a thousand years.

After putting her through Hell keeping me alive and kicking, my Angel looks terrible, regularly breaks Commandments, drinks constantly and flashes her left breast often because she's lost so much weight that her robe won't stay on her shoulders. 

"Yeah," she slowly sighs, "it's been a terrible year."

Snapping her fingers, another tall boy Pabst Blue Ribbon magically appears followed by an unfiltered Camel cigarette.

"Well, where have you been through all of it?" I demand. "I've had two major surgeries, radical reconstruction of multiple internal organs, in the best effort to get rid of the cancer and they almost succeeded, but didn't, and you're nowhere to be found."

"You know Jimmy Cochran took a job with the Government," she meekly replies.

"Oh shut up!" 

The world's quiet.

"You don't need me anymore," she smiles and her teeth suddenly seem whiter, "you got this."

Our neighbor Ron waves again from across the street. Kids laugh in the distance. A couple strolls hand in hand. The trees, naked and brown, dance with yellow sunshine bursting through the branches. The aroma of the casserole Sarah's cooking delights my nostrils. For the first time in days, I feel warm.

"Yeah," I say, leaving her alone on the porch. 

"Goodbye Micheal," she smiles, fading away with beer dripping down her chin, "see you on the flip side."

Laughing Last

Having watched every single episode of everything Netflix offers, Sarah and I are again resuming movies. 

My wife's got a gift for choosing great films knowing nothing about them. She does a little research on her phone and, Wha-Lah, another winner's chosen, mostly foreign films but today's is "The Last Laugh" staring Richard Dreyfuss and Chevy Chase.

It's great!

Of course like with everything Sarah and I watch these days, one of the characters has stage 4, pancreatic cancer and is expected to die soon.

Buddy Green, Richard Dreyfuss' character, attempts a comeback as a comedian 50 years after quitting the business the night before he's to appear on the Ed Sullivan show.

He's the one with cancer so time's of the essence to make the return to the big time.

I won't spoil the ending in case you too have exhausted every episode of everything on Netflix and need an alternative.

Watching the movie, Sarah and I find ourselves sanctimoniously smirking or laughing at societal expectations of living with what you're dealt, especially repeated bad hands, to play.

"Did you like it?" she asks from underneath the blanket on the other end of the sofa.

"I did. You?"

"Yeah" her voice trails because she's texting Laurel, our 16 year old, who's volunteered to oversee the birth of kittens for friends and will Facetime each delivery.

Cassidy, the 14 year old, is packing to help Laurel by spending the night birthing cats together.

Che's asleep.

Sarah's in no hurry to leave the sofa.

We're in the time between tests.

The calendar of cancer is measured in tests, ever present dark clouds, and we live from one Doctor's appointment to the next.

I'm healing nicely from the last surgery though continue to struggle with a myriad of after effects.

Sarah's refocused the part of her brain that focuses on the possibility of me dying to concentrate on other things like the future.

Planning for the future's a bitch when cancer's involved!

You have to factor in every possible contingency beginning with me dying and move on from there.

It's a good thing we're both forward thinkers.

But Sarah and I  are increasingly finding ourselves laughing more.

It's not this great hearty, belting sort of laughing but rather the grim, resolved kind, but laughing we increasingly are indeed!

Half the time it's a secret we share hearing or seeing something and immediately catching one other's eye to privately share the glee we've discovered.

The rest of our laughter is subdued audible expressions of joy, with Laurel and I being the most robust while Sarah, Cass and Maddie keep theirs on the sly.

There's no question we delight in each other at least once almost every single day.

For now anyway, it's more than our noses above the water as we're all taking inventory of how far we've come, what condition we're in now and dreaming about the rest of our lives.

It's just a great time!

There's another week before the next round of tests are scheduled and I want us all to have a good time until then, whatever that means! 

I do believe our laughter's representing seeds of our future and, if we keep growing the one then the horizon brightens in the other.

"Is Mike watching?" Laurel yells through the phone.

"I am now," I answer having no interest in Tim and Jess's cats, leaning my forehead against the crown of Sarah's head, we watch Laurel excitedly narrate the birth of kittens.

Collapsing in bed later, we tiredly laugh at the absurdity before falling asleep dreaming again of tomorrow.

I wish there was more

Throughout my life things pretty much went the way I willed them to with few disruptions, going the way I wanted them too, even if they weren't always right.

I've been gifted with Sarah twice in my life, once a thousand years ago when we were both different people, heading in different directions, wanting different things.

Then the miracle happened.

We'd both spent our lives to that point making the world a better place for people who struggled. It's hard work but we attacked it ruthlessly because we believe it was somehow rooted in being part of Christ's love. If we, along with everyone else loved just enough then everyone's nose would stay above the water.

But the day comes, as it always does, "when the wild waves would wet us too, and the winds would lash us, and the great beast browsing it's way up from below, would raise it's head and notice us at last. I concluded that even in Paradise, maybe especially in Paradise, the dark times come" (Frederick Buechner).

Sarah blew up her world by jumping on the breezes of longing for better things grown in love.

Already a wreck, my life was the scattered debris of weak or misplaced dreams.

Then, by the grace of God and fairy tales, it was just us.

It's been hard work and just as everything was coming together just as we imagined, I'm diagnosed with cancer as wild waves hit us repeatedly knocking our feet out from underneath and we gasp for air.

In spite of it all, my wife holds my hand tightly as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

I don't know how but Sarah squeeze's my hand harder, long elegant fingers wrapping around mine, and she smiles.

It's a tired smile but expressions of love and faith always come with a price to pay.

I wish I had more to give her on this Valentine's Day.

Sarah deserves so much more.

But all I have to give anymore is, well, simply me, all tattered and broken.

She doesn't seem to care, quickening her step and pulling me along as we make our way headfirst into the raging wet winds.

The only thing I know for sure anymore is, I'm never letting go of her hand.

Happy Valentine's Day Babes!

I wish there was more.

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Kidnapped from Cancer

Sitting on the porch holding a pipe in one hand and a Bic lighter in the other, I'm taking my pain medication, still excited about my recent break-out!

Our 16 year-old Laurel kidnaped me from the daily doldrums of recovery during a pandemic where I have too much time to think.

Throwing the car into park at 35 miles per hour, she leaps from an open door as in slow motion, long blond hair blowing in the wind crowing the perfection of a teenager who knows what she wants.

"I'll be right back," she calls rushing inside, as I slowly make my way towards her still moving vehicle.

Laurel returns holding a bag of quarters just as I arrive at the now idling car.

"Hold these," she grins, dropping the bag in my lap as we speed downtown.

Laurel has no idea where anything is so she relies on GPS for everything! Even when I suggest a much shorter route, she laughs, "You have no idea where we're going!"

"I think I do," I grin and it turns out I'm right.

Bobbie's is a 50's style dinner in Savannah, where each table has it's own juke box, hence the quarters. Laurel's grandfather had taken her and she thought I'd love it so she hatched the plan to kidnap me from cancer.

We have a blast munching on burgers, fries and cokes, enjoying the freedom of being out.

"Is something making you uncomfortable?" she fires, suddenly dead serious, eyes intensely focused on me.

"Yeah," I say shifting in the booth bench, "you know 'cancer butt' and all?"

She laughs, but it takes a moment for the caregiver in her to calm down again.

Afterwards she drives me passed her job at St. John's Episcopal Church, around curvy Bonaventure to the islands, where the closer we get to home the faster we talk, trying to squeeze more in, leaving me both exhilarated and exhausted.

I spend lots of time thinking about things because, well, Sarah and I have lots to think about these days, mostly unbearably bad subjects, each one carrying the weight of the world.

Laurel sees and feels it as her mother and I try to prop each other up and her response is completely grounded in youthful determination and joy. These are the absolute best of days and, if we're too preoccupied to notice, then Laurel forces us to ignore anything unpleasant and have a good time!

Somewhere beneath our mountain of isolated healing from a seemingly unending regiment of procedures, most minor but some life altering, not just for me but Sarah too, Laurel wakes up the 16 year old still alive deep down inside.

She makes our world lighter and heavy things are shoved aside for a little while, because she's smart enough to recognize when somebody's in desperate need of kidnapping.

For days now the 16 year old me has been bragging about how great his life was then to every other version of who I've been, but as good as it was, and believe me it was incredible, it's so much better now!

I'm married to a crazy Gypsy wonder of a woman who loves me enough to purposely hold my hand as we stroll through the valley of the shadow of death while making plans to expatriate to Central America to raise our love child. 

Laurel and her sisters watch, challenge and offer encouragement, as we cheer on the launch of their own journeys into the lives they're making.

There's an eery lightness to my life, a series of graceful moments delivered in the nick of time, diverting the unbearable burdens of cancer so Sarah and I can catch our breaths before resuming focus on the monotonous demands of unanswerable questions.

Back on the porch, I watch the puff of white smoke dissipate against a deep blue, cloudless sky. 

It's the living I'm focused on as Laurel's bringing her boyfriend Cooper over for dinner and that's always a ton of fun.

Life's depressing enough during a pandemic but as my wife says, "we have not found our after-cancer--diagnosis - Whipple survivor - now-living-with-cancer, new normal yet" so we're forever grateful for any outrageous tangible expression of the best people have to offer.

Life is indeed hard these days but every single one has an episode of crazy fun that keeps us hanging on when there's every reason in the world to stop.

Who's got time to stop when life is still fun?

Is this what a "brave battle against cancer" looks like, the grasping hold of moments of joy in spite of undeniable weariness?

I don't know. 

It's not something I think about as I flick the Bic lighter and proceed to blow prayers of Thanksgiving to God for how blessed I am.

A Cloudy white vision

I saw Dicky Trotter walking down our street undeath the brightest blue skies with a brisk, cold wind.

It's no small feat because Dicky's dead.

Sitting on the porch holding a pipe in one hand and a Bic lighter in the other, I'm happily taking my pain medication when I see him strolling pass our house on the other side of the street.

Looking like he's lost a few pounds, it's Dicky, seemingly in a hurry, glancing my way flashing that crazy bemused grin of his with the stupid wave.

"Hello Dicky Trotter!" I say out loud.

For a second there we're together again, in sort of a "mash-up" of every moment we'd ever shared bursting like a fireworks in front of my eyes; every feeling exchanged between us exploding and, for a nanosecond, perhaps a million years, he's as alive as he ever was!

Exhaling a long white cloud, the skies are suddenly blue again, the street's empty and I return to the music streaming in my head and wonder what Sarah's doing.

Date night destruction

I

had Whipple surgery in June 2020 and a 3 hour incisional hernia repair earlier this month. Recovery's pandemic influenced and yesterday was the first time since June my wife and I went on a date.

It was nothing big, Pedicures, because I can't bend over to clip my toe nails and Sarah's sick of doing it! So we make a date.

It's so great to be out!

Especially with the love of my life.

Everything's fine until my feet slip into the hot water, an old acquaintance greets me, my hand slides into my wife's, and, I start to cry.

At 7 months since Whipple, my emotions are unfiltered, mostly sentimentality, the unending slide show of life review that my brain seemingly has no control over and taking inventory in case this is  the last time I'll be doing something.

Caregivers know and understand things we don't and Sarah calms me down and we resume enjoying being out.

I finish first and relax as Sarah has her nails painted.

I'm freezing as always, it's hard regulating body temperature since anymore, and I can't wait to stick my feet under the hot white lights used to quickly dry the polish.

Quickly standing, Sarah and the salon staff watch me, wondering what I'm doing since the drying station is a casualty of COVID. 

Sarah rushes to finish and follow me outside. Quickly paying, we climb into the car, Sarah smudges her big toe and I drive home as fast as possible for some reason.

Our first date in almost a year last 32 minutes!

Home, we're frustrated at how things turn out and it takes me a 3 hour nap and Sarah diving into another world wind of household needs, to get over the frustration.

Later we talk alone about what went wrong.

Things always seem to go wrong with Whipple that require a great deal of focus and concentration to learn from so as not to repeat the experiences. 

Circumstances are such that we may have another opportunity to day.

Whipple dating is just the latest in obstacles to overcome as my wife and I continue our dance to find footing in this new crazy world we occupy.

Anyone else have a Whipple Date experience to share?

Our best selfie

 

Sarah wants S'mores so she builds a fire in the back yard pit, knowing full well, I'll stay the Hell away from it unlike last time.

I love a fire!

I'll pick up a stick and poke it forever, lost in thought, staring in the flames.

In a previous life, Sarah was forbidden from doing "manly" thinks like building fires.

She blew that world up and started over.

Taking great pride in her pyromania, she'll yank your arm off if you mess with her fire.

One of my arms is about half and inch longer than the other now. 

Che meanders out, grabs a Marsh Mellow starts cooking.

It's a magnificent day!

A round yellow sun blazes in the deep blue, cloudless skies of a 63 degree day, and I am so happy to simply be here, with my wife and our 4 year old daughter, roasting Marsh Mellows over an open fire.

Heaven can't possibly have anything better than this!

Wanting a selfie with Sarah, I whip out my phone and snap photos.

Sarah has one of the greatest faces of all time commanding a thousand different smiles, each hinting at whatever's going on inside.

Cassidy, our 14 year old, makes one of her rare excursions out of her room for something to eat, careful to carry her phone so the teacher can see she's actively enjoying the benefits of COVID public school learning where, unless you're in private school or a charter institution, every child is losing a year of education.

Nothing changes in Savannah, Georgia where we live.

Spying us, we're shocked as Cass actually walks outside under a full sun while maintaining her vampire countenance!

Using her free hand, she grabs my phone taking one last picture of Sarah and me.

Later, scrolling through the images, my wife and I are quiet.

"I look like I have cancer," I sigh.

"It's your glasses," Sarah deadpans.

We take a selfie without my glasses on and, well, I look like I have cancer.

"It's not the cancer," Sarah plows ahead, "you're less than two weeks out still recovering from another surgery."

"That may well be," I say, "but we look awful."

"Tired," Sarah agrees. "Look at the bags under my eyes!"

There's no time to rest as Sarah cooks supper, Cass disappears again into her room, Che snuggles beside me on the sofa and we watch "The Rescuers" on Disney. 

Around 9ish, Sarah closes her laptop signifying the end of work, leans back on the sofa beside me, and yawns.

Handing her the remote, she flips to one of our shows, and sighs, "I don't care which picture you post."

"They're all awful," we laugh.

So here's our best selfie from yesterday, carefully considered, cropped and colored.

I deleted the rest.

Sarah and I are both hoping it's a start.

We’re in a hurry to get rid of all the bad things, hold on tightly to the things we love and realize how few other things there are left to manage.

Living in the Heartbreak Hotel

Name the year you were born without using numbers.

"Rock and Roll" changed the world!

Whatever song was number one defines the rest of your life.

"Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis was exploding on the charts the day Mom delivered me at Telfair Hospital.

"When I need you" by Leo Sayer was number one when Sarah was born.

I tell her but I'm not certain it registers because she's doing a couple of hundred things at the same time.

I've got lots of time on my hands recovering from yet another cancer related surgery to ponder such things endlessly scrolling Facebook or Twitter.

My wife works her ass off, snapping from one persona in real time to another depending on the context; big smiles playing with our 4 year old daughter in the floor, over exuberant enthusiasm talking to one of 40 people with development disabilities, acting as first responder to 3 teenage daughter's with a knack for needing her just as she's ticking something else from her ever growing list of things to do or making sure I have lighters so I can effectively take my pain medication. 

Sarah has no time at all.

I have tons.

I've leaned it doesn't go well if I try to share my overabundance of time with her.

It makes things worse so I try to stay out of the way, no small feat for a results-oriented caregiver with a Messiah complex, so I self-regulate to the calm eye in the middle of a Hurricane of activity.

I watch, comment and occasionally, marginally, participate.

Having always been incredibly active, it's frustrating to still be in the game of life but directed to sit on the bench!

I've always been "the starter" in my life but cancer and multiple surgeries leave me indeed seated.

Things get a tad better every day.

Well, physically anyway.

I drove for the first time since the latest surgery, following Sarah to drop off the Beach Wagon for new tires. 

Sarah's in a hurry because she's got shit tons to do.

I drive the precise speed limit because I'm enjoying every second of being outside our house and not at a Hospital! 

An home, Che's at pre-school, Cassidy's asleep in bed laying in front of her computer logged in with the Chatham County School system to learn and I'm sitting on the sofa staring out of the window on a rainy day. 

Beth Orton's "Oo Child" streams in my ears

It's hard to heal.

It's a struggle finding the balance between rest and exercise, remaining mentally engaged with nothing to do, focusing on healing from surgery while wanting badly to help and, most selfishly, knowing I'm meeting none of Sarah's needs, physical or otherwise, and watching Che struggle with her Daddy who's never well.

It's hard keeping my nose above the darkness when I lose balance and I can feel the cancer and hear Death's knock in the distance.

I live to dance with my wife in a nighttime surf under a full moon rise over the Ocean; for both of us to scuba dive with Che and to excitedly tremble when the girls are away or asleep in their own rooms and Sarah and I both are ready!

Sometimes, not too often, we can reach across the chasm of our crazy lives to clearly see and understand each other as we are and believe we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun but, for now anyway, there's just our love giving the other occasional clear moments of understanding.

We're controlling as much as we can while admitting, without saying it loud, that we're the ones seemingly being controlled.

We mostly react.

Sarah spins endless plates on sticks only rarely losing one while I work to heal and keep the Grim Reaper at bay.

But in the rare moments when we do connect, without words, we let each other know there'll never come a day "when we put it together and get it all done."

Some day, our heads are not going any lighter.

The world is definitely not getting brighter.

It's extremely possible that right now is as good as things are going to get!

Our world is insanely crazy with no end in the forecast, beams of sunlight only occasionally break through massive dark clouds and we've gone accustomed to the heaviness of cancer, how it sucks life out of everyone in our family, and not just me keeping my nose above water or Sarah's exhausting never ending dance through each day.

But there are these moments, Holy seconds when there's only Sarah acknowledging me and me totally zoned on her, and we both know that when "I need love, I hold out my hands and I touch love".

For now anyway, this is our new normal  

It's all we've really got.

What Really Normal Anymore?

Opening my eyes in the darkness of predawn, a tiny nose touches mine and two moon size, deep blue eyes stare at me. 

“Dad,” she asks slurring so it comes out “Da.”

"Hey," I smile through sleepy eyes, grabbing her towards me.  

“I was afraid you would never come home from the hospital,” our four year old explains.

Snuggling beside me on the sofa I've spent the night on, we cuddle and I hold her tight.

"What day is it?" I ask myself.

"I dunno," she says, focusing her attention on a video.

A pandemic makes it difficult to know but adding my cancer diagnoses, "slime" drained from my body, a stint placed inside, a radical Whipple surgery, followed by repair of "incision Hernia" resulting in the sad conclusion I still have cancer so who cares what day it is?!

On the sofa I recover from surgery after never being actually admitted to the Hospital!

Everything started normally enough but what's really normal anymore?

Checking into Day Surgery, Sarah's now a seasoned professional navigating the treacherous waters of American Health Care, joking with Nurses before taking us to seats to wait.

Neither of us want this.

Just half way through recovery from a ten hour Whipple operation, here we go again.

After a few hour delay because I prefer a shot of cream in my coffee, I'm wheeled away for another three hours under the knife, waking to see my beautiful wife sitting staring lovingly at me.

"Still here!" I comprehend.

It wasn't as smooth a recovery as I remember because according to Sarah I wake screaming "I HAVE TO PEE!"

I don't because the catheter they've inserted is working fine.

"Hey Babes," I ask in my version of waking, my smoking hot concerned wife's seated beside my recovery bed, "Did they get it all?"

Sarah rolls her eyes like I'm an idiot, tell me she loves me, makes certain I'm alright, sits with me for an hour before leaving at 9:45 pm, and goes home to the girls.

At some point, my surgeon's residents breeze through, rip out the catheter and tell me I'll be admitted for my 2-4 day hospital stay soon.

The next morning at 9am  Sarah arrives and, along with Rose, the receptionist, is perplexed why I'm still in the same Post Anesthesia Care Unit. 

An hour later, Rose leads Sarah back to the same spot she's left 12 hours earlier.

We sit, holding hands and talk for an hour. 

Things get busy in the PACU area as lots of people are being wheeled in to wake up from their surgery. 

My nurse tells my wife she will have to leave. 

"When can I see him again?" 

She is not given a specific answer. 

"When will he be moved to his hospital room?" 

"We don't have any open rooms," my wife is told. 

"That's not true. As I was waiting to come back here someone else was moving from here to room 355."

The nurse immediately sits at her computer and looks up the room, giving Sarah no response. 

My wife continues ... "I will go, but you need to tell me what you are monitoring here. His BP is fine, his overnight blood work is all within normal range besides his glucose which was a little high, but that is typical after surgery, he is able to pee on his own, he wants to sit up, but you won't even let him hang his feet over the side of the bed, he has physical therapy scheduled for this morning which hasn't happened because you can't do that in the PACU area, his compression socks are not even on to help prevent blood clots ... you are delaying his recovery! When will he get a room?"

Every patient, in every recovery bed, regardless of the severity of their condition, raises his or her head to watch my smoking hot wife, who knows how to command a room.

Other than the beeps, gurgles and buzzing of machines, it gets very quiet.

"We're looking for a bed," the Nurse meekly replies, but hospital rooms flash "occupied" as soon as they're vacated on her screen.

"All Night?" Sarah continues. "I think it's time we call his surgeon. I have his personal cellphone number."

"You can't call  the surgeon, he might be in surgery. You have to leave," the Nurse says.

"He's not," my wife replies, who happens to have a quite endearing relationship with our surgeon, "He only operates on Tuesdays and Fridays."

My wife is escorted by three staff to the door. 

Hitting his name on my phone, I call the surgeon from my bed.

My horrified Nurse flees to a Supervisor's desk.

I explain the situation to my Receptionist who promises to convey the information to the Surgeon

"Surgeons don't make rounds down here," my Nurse later explains as my Surgeon leads two residents into the PACU area.

"You ready to go home?" he asks.

"Hey yeah before that," I ask, "can I get a prescription for medical marijuana?"

"Is it legal in Georgia? Find out!" he orders the horrified Residents. "Now let's get my favorite patients out of here."

He leaves signing papers and grinning.

"Nobody's ever done this before," my Nurse murmurs, returning to the Supervisor's Desk.

In no time at all, she's wheeling me back to Day Services where another Nurse, pats me on the shoulder orders to dress, call my wife and give her a minute.

I do so and she returns with papers for me to sign, then wheels me down a lonely hallway through a nondescript door to the getaway car my wife's driving.

"What just happened?" she asks speeding away from the Hospital.

"I dunno," I reply just happy to be with Sarah driving home, still high on morphine.

"We are going to keep you as high as kite the next few days," Sarah smiles squeezing my hand.

Unbeknownst to me, she has my PCP and a nurse friend on standby should a problem occur at home.

Laying on the sofa, snuggled with Che, watching cartoons, I'm firmly convinced recovery occurs best at home and I know for certain Sarah agrees.  

Home Remedies

Just as everything was getting better they're suddenly getting worse.

Soon I'll be rolled down a hospital hall, leaving Sarah alone in the pre-surgery room so I can be the absolute center of attention as they slice my belly open.

It shouldn't be that hard because the Doctor has a scar to go by, just follow the healed stitches while carving.

A few months ago I survived major surgery to remove a mess of cancer happily growing everywhere except my lungs and they almost got it all.

Under my organized wife's instructions I healed nicely for five months when it suddenly stopped.

An "incision hernia" means my intestines are poking outside of my newly constructed stomach, pancreas and liver.

Luckily, I'm still under warranty. 

The only thing I know for certain is it's going to "hurt like Hell."

Dr. Senkowski doesn't believe in sugar coating things.

Luckily for me, there's Morphine at the hospital! 

When I'm released, treatment consists of copious amounts of home remedies naturally grown and widely enjoyed by people flying under the radar.

I must admit the best thing about more surgery is the naturally grown leafy substance to enjoy during recovery which, of course, will last for the rest of my life, however long that is!

No one knows, especially the doctors, how much time I have but I'm feeling alright most days. I focus on the moments I have because worse times are coming. It's going to be bad but, in the scheme of things, we have a moment before another operation. Afterwards we'll survey the damage and work to heal.

Like most care-givers Sarah doesn't receive Morphine or engage in home remedies making hers a much heavier burden.

She doesn't want this.

Sure as Hell, she doesn't deserve it, but love makes you do things you'd never consider.

Squeezing my hand, she walks beside me down the wicked, lonely road, out of love, or insanity. It's hard to tell the difference.

She's strong. I'm strong. But my best fights are behind me and Sarah's in her prime.

Sarah makes certain we're never hungry or thirsty.

Lord knows I'm not the snappiest dresser but Sarah buys me new tee shirts, running shorts and is introducing me to cold weather clothing which I seem to suddenly need every day this time of year.

I enjoy the home remedies, listen to good music, talk to the girls and play with Che as she struggles to find time for everything.

We both care for the entire world, helping the causes of peace, love and understanding, which are the roots of the Gospel, but Sarah's gifted at boiling things down to the basics whereas I, as my old friend Will D. Campbell once said, "design global sprinkler systems" offering water to whoever needs it while my wife combines tenderness with expertise passing out one cup at a time.

We compliment each other struggling to not compete. the greatest example of opposites attract!

We are "like prisoners' appointed for death, we have become a spectacle for the whole world. To Angels as well as people we are fools for Christ" (I Corinthians 4:10).

We don't care.

Against all odds we're in this together.

Sarah believes everything's going to be alright.

I believe that when I die one of two things is going to happen. Either everyone who doesn't believe in God's right and I'm dead. That's alright. I won't know. I won't care. It'll be like sleeping with morphine or something.

Or I'm going to wake up and immediately be confronted with choices.

The very first thing I'm going to do is look at my hand to see Sarah's hand in mine.

Afterwards I'll check out what's next.

Mom's Birthday

I'm a 64 year old man who still calls his Momma with regularity, several times a week, because, well, I don't know, I cannot imagine life without her.

Oh we both have impending issues with death but we don't let them get in the way.

We talk about health a lot these days, mostly mine, but we cover family, friends, on rare occasions politics and Mom tries her very best to keep up with our girls which is, of course, impossible but fun.

There's something about my Mom.

She's special.

I mean everybody's special, unique wonderful gifts to life, but Mom's a special concoction of love, patience, determination and  grace. People easily trust her. She quietly does little things with big consequences.

An uneducated southern woman, Mom blasted through glass ceilings at the disgust of her male bosses, ending her banking career on top, leading the way for women to occupy top floor corner offices.

After that she got into antiques with her friends and spent another decade enjoying success.

After Dad died, she remade life again, quieter this time, focused almost entirely on family, friends and the house.

If she's not working in the yard she's fixing or painting something to keep the last home they built together working in top notch order. She got our sister Nanci to move in with her amending family structure so that Angie's no longer the only sister.

Mom didn't make it when Sarah and I got married but hasn't skipped a beat since, relishing everything about our family now, which is far more significant to anything before.

Happy Birthday Mom!

What a life you're living!

 A couple of weeks ago, Mom, David, Age and I sat together with no one else for the first time in, well it's been so long none of us remember.

We were all different then.

Dad was still alive.

We couldn't fathom the end of things.

Now we can and it makes us appreciate everything we've lived though, the Holy and the profane, to get to now.

We laughed a lot, and whenever David stopped talking, the rest of us caught each other up on our lives now, so different from when we lived in that little house in Port Wentworth.

Mom has a gazillion kids and grandkids, too many really for someone her age to keep up with.

That's really going to irritate her.

According to my Mom, there's nothing she can't keep up with.

Laughing at Dying

 

"Mike, we got you really good presents because this is probably your last Christmas."

It's Laurel our sixteen year old, precocious, maybe-I-can-work-you-in-my-schedule but maybe not, dynamo of a social butterfly.

We're sitting on the sofa as the rest of the family spread out to enjoy their gifts and have some alone time after the craziness of family exchanging gifts.

"Well," I answer, already grinning, "then I'm just gonna have to live another year just so you have to buy me good presents again." 

"That's the plan," she deadpans.

I burst out laughing.

"You really killed it that time!"

"Slaughtered it," she grins.

Laurel's the only one who laughs with me  at Cancer while the rest of our family takes it very seriously, especially Sarah who takes dead aim at anything that may even remotely jeopardize my health.

Doctor's orders often takes life a little bit at a time so you can extend your stay even if it cost you joy.

That's not how we want to live!

Living's finding joy and love and immersing yourself in them regardless of where they take you, stopping often enough to appreciate what it takes to know what you've been given.

Sarah and I are finding joy again, inside the colliding worlds of care-giver and cancer-fighter where hopes constantly crumble and as we embrace the darkness down the lonely, wicked road, we laugh at what we can't control.

It's hard because embracing darkness scares the Hell out of us!

The vast hordes of unanswered questions easily overwhelm us, almost pulling us off the road into, God only knows.

So we laugh as best we can.

Because laughter is the best medicine!

Unless you're a diabetic.

Then insulin's the best medicine. 

Laughter sometimes comes in second.

Excited About Christmas Anyway

Every day I get up determined to live joyfully, get better physically and regain my usual zest for fun, food, and love.

Sarah points out my expressions of affection and helpfulness continue to slide into a series of clueless decisions on my part.

My wife tenderly and carefully prepares special wedge salads for dinner with our sixteen year old Laurel and her boyfriend Cooper. I tell her I do not want one. Just before the meal, I add blue cheese and bacon bits to Sarah's salad, which I proceed to enjoy immensely.

"Why in the Hell are you doing eating my salad?" my loving wife asks.

"This is your salad?" I ask. 

"You said you didn't want one," she wearily replies. 

Laurel and Cooper laugh but it's become too common an occurrence,  adding exhaustion to permeate our lives.

A bowl of Tater Tots Sarah prepares for Che rests on the counter so it's one less thing to take care of later. She tells me this. Entering the kitchen I absent mindedly begin to clean and throw them away, frustrating my wife because it seems I do this a lot, though I have no idea.

Sarah opens a soda, lays it on the counter, leaves to attend to something as I enter the room, spy the Coke, drink it, and leave the empty bottle. Returning to enjoy her refreshment, she discovers it gone. She tells me I drank it though I have no recognition.

Regardless of how far I walk, exercise, climb stairs, eat well, refrain from excess and follow doctor's instructions, I've stopped getting better, though I'm not getting worse.

Walking the wicked, lonely road of cancer beside me, by choice nonetheless, Sarah tirelessly works managing the mountains so I can fight.

We're so tired.

But it's Christmas and we're excited anyway choosing to focus energy in what's bound to be one of the last gatherings of all of us.

Maddie's in College so trips home grow infrequent as she spreads her wings flying to the world she's creating.

Cassidy's 14 and we rarely see her, though she often shows up for dinner, sometimes converses and on rare occasions eats but they'll be presents involved Christmas so she'll be with us for that part anyway.

Che's as excited as she can be, wrapping most anything she can find to immediately unwrap presents, singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" without being able to pronounce all the words and even taping her own Christmas cards to the wall a foot from the rest.

In  no time at all everyone won't be able to make it home anymore for Christmas, even if we celebrate in exotic locations.

Meanwhile, I perpetually shut doors meant to be open.

Sarah opens them again focusing on her cell phone to shop while talking to a client, tossing seasoning into supper and effortlessly feeding the animals.

The other kids ... Jeremy, Kristen and Chelsea ... are off creating their own worlds, raising a boy and three girls, our grandchildren, and doing quite well as they work to make things better than what our generation's leaving behind to fix.

Sometimes I wonder if it's like this for God, if you believe in such things. 

I've done my best to be a good Dad but, Lord knows children grow up and leave, which is what kids are supposed to do and parents, understanding we've relinquished control, kick back and watch what we've created.

I'm sure God kicks back with a cold one watching Her children do whatever it is we're doing, though even the Lord Almighty must find it hard not to meddle.

We give our kids life and it's theirs to live without us hampering their creativity or chaining them to the past because we can't bare to give away what we love most.

But that's what parents do.

Even when we don't want to.

Mary and Joseph lost control of Jesus by the time he was 12! 

He must have been a hellion during his pre-puberty years.  

So Sarah and I won't see the kids or grandchildren this year but we've got four girls, a gay dog and three cats, plus my Mom's coming over.

We're going to make it as easy as we can with three teenage girls and a 4 year old. 

It's been such a rough year and, I have more damn surgery scheduled right after New Year's so, our plan is to enjoy the Hell out of Christmas!

I don't think it's my last but you never know.

You should approach it that way too.

Happy Christmas Everybody!