IT’S NOT LIKE THE MOVIES

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(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

I WENT to visit my father today. The cancer is taking its toll. Six months is what the doctor has given him, as if doctors are the givers of life. That was almost a month ago. Don’t do the math.

I brought a funny movie with us so that we could all watch it together. The movie was one that I saw at my friend Pete’s house recently, “Along Came Polly” with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. I thought that maybe it would lighten the mood and create a happy memory. Deep inside I was hoping that enough laughter would shield me from the reality of my father’s disease. With enough merriment maybe time would stand still. Maybe the shared hilarity would be enough to drive time backwards and my father would be all better again. They always say that laughter is the best medicine, right? Part way through the film my dad was holding his belly. That would have been a normal motion during a funny flick. However, my stepmother’s question, “Do you need some percocet, Pappy?” became the non-funniest line during the movie. Somehow, Ben Stiller’s farting noises in Aniston’s bathroom were no longer funny either.

My father appeared evidently weaker than the last time I saw him a few weeks ago. He was noticeably thinner. He has reached that point of looking unhealthily thin. I know that next will come feebly thin, and then… He has become too weak to take the dog, Murphy the black labrador, out to the back yard. True, a black lab is a large, strong dog. But my dad was always a big strong guy. No dog ever intimidated him. Murphy is so used to my dad taking her out that they now have to trick her by having my dad walk part way down the steps and then my stepsister takes her the rest of the way. Then Dad walks back up the steps and is exhausted.

At dinner, my father’s suffering was further displayed. The poor guy can hardly eat. It’s mainly a side effect of the chemo. He went through heavy chemo treatments since he was diagnosed in February. When that proved to be ineffective, the doctor recommended a milder chemo treatment in order to improve his quality of life. To watch a man, who once loved to eat, sit at the table and poke at the tiny portion of macaroni on his plate was depressing. He left the table at one point. As my stepmother watched him go down the hallway she said, half to herself, “It just gets a little worse each day.”

Two years ago, my dad’s brother died from cancer. His remains are interred at Arlington Military Cemetery in Washington, D.C. I was not able to attend my uncle’s funeral service at Arlington. My dad went though. Last year he went again to visit his brother’s grave. This year he has cancelled his trip to Arlington. The bumpiness of the car ride makes the pain from his tumor intolerable now. For the same reason, he doesn’t drive into town to have coffee with his buddies as much these days.

There is no reversing this for my dad. I knew that as we said good-bye this evening. With much effort, he walked us to the car on our way out. He patted my shoulder a few times and told me he loved me. I saw the tears in his eyes as he turned away. He stood on the lawn and watched us. I couldn’t drive off right away, just started the car and waved. He waved. I thought that maybe if we just stay right there and wave back and forth to each other, it would never happen. We would never lose sight of each other. He would never leave.

But I know that one day there will be a last wave, one last good-bye, one last, “I love you,” and a pat on the shoulder. No matter when exactly it happens, it will always, always, always be too soon. Even if there was some bizarre quirk in the space-time continuum and we somehow found ourselves sitting on the couch doubled over in laughter at Ben Stiller’s antics for a few more millennia, sooner or later the movie will end. Movies always do. Sadly, so do lives.

I feel that I should wrap up this entry with something positive, something upbeat or happy. You see, that right there is one of my faults. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, been too conditioned by Hollywood. Life is not like the movies. There is real pain in life, real sadness. People do die. True, there are plenty of good and pleasant things in life: love, peace, joy. There is faith to connect us with things that transcend this life. But tonight, what I sense is the frustration of humanity’s mortality. That sense is just as valuable as faith, in its own way.

Wasps on the Goldenrod

(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

Wasps on Goldenrod
Wasps on Goldenrod

There is plenty to see as I walk down the road each day to take a photo for THIS PROJECT. For a while, the thistle was the big attraction. Now the thistle is all gone. Today I noticed that the goldenrod had quite a few wasps eagerly combing its bright yellow tresses.

KAYLA MAKES IT BETTER

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(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

AFTER more than two months of not posting a journal entry, it feels awkward doing so now. Where should I begin? What should I tell everyone about? Much life transpires in two months.

One significant change in circumstances in our household is that my son Joel’s girlfriend has been living with us for the past month. Her name is Kayla.

Kayla is a nice girl, kind and easy to get along with. She’s respectful. She is thoughtful. She cares about our family, especially Joel, of course.

Joel needs that. He has had to face life with hefty disadvantages right from the start. By the time he reached school age, it was apparent that he had difficulties in learning. His speech was below the average level for his age. He was sometimes unruly and had tantrums for no obvious reasons. By first grade, it was determined that Joel had certain learning disabilities, especially in areas of communication.

It was explained that people with his kind of disability have a very hard time interpreting the communicative stimuli that we are all bombarded with. They may have difficulty understanding audio stimuli. Sometimes they may not be able to decipher facial expressions or body language. They may totally misread a person’s facial expressions and think that a person is angry when they are not. They may be dyslexic. As if all of that isn’t enough, they may also have severe difficulties in communicating their own thoughts, not able to speak or write as they would like.

Joel was in specialized classes all through his school years. Of course, kids in his situation are often made fun of by their more fortunate peers. I know. I did that to kids like Joel when I was young. I was one of the ones pushing them around in the boys’ bathroom, calling them “retard,” “sped,” or “spaz.” What I thought was “coolness” I now know to be merely cruelty.” Since those days, I have been humbled and broken in heart as I have watched my first child endure that type of abuse. I learned my lesson. But I digress on a tangent that deserves an entry of its own. Perhaps one day I will write that.

In addition to learning disabilities, Joel had to deal with other tough things early on. He had one hernia operation when he was only two-years-old, then another when he was four. Yet, perhaps hardest of all, was his mother’s drug and alcohol abuse, which ultimately brought about the disintegration of our marriage and family. We separated when Joel was only six. At the age of 12, he began to have seizures. Now at the age of 20, he still has them. He is unable to get a driver’s license and lives with the daily anxiety of the possibility that a seizure could happen at any time without notice. There have been lots of tough breaks for this boy.

I am happy that Joel has someone like Kayla at this point in his life. He is having difficulty holding a job. A local vocational agency for disabled people is helping him to find appropriate work. That is good and necessary. But Kayla adds a comforting, inspiring dimension to his life. It is good to see someone caring for him, enjoying his company and respecting him as her equal.

That leads me to something to mention as an aside on this issue. We say that people like Joel have a “disability.” They are not “able” to do things as most other people are. We find it hard to understand and live alongside people like this. We marginalize them because they don’t fit into our system well. We send them a message that says, “You can’t. You are not able. We don’t have time for you, to understand you and respect you, because we have to keep our big machine running. You just don’t fit in. So, step aside.” Thankfully, not all people are like this. There are those who devote their lives to researching the disabled, those who work hard to help them function in our society, those who are kind and patient, those who make it better for people like my son.

Kayla makes it better. Not for Joel alone either. She has touched each one of us. She bought hair ties and loofahs for all the girls. She brings coffee and bagels home after work for us. Today when I arrived home from work, Kayla greeted me on the porch with the words, “I promised that I would buy Chinese food for everyone tonight. I didn’t have enough money. So I MADE it myself instead!” The whole house smelled delicious! She made chicken stir fry with elbow macaroni and buttered rolls. Not quite the traditional Chinese dinner, but it tasted great. It saved a lot of work for me and even gave me the inspiration to write… finally!