Regarding Tom
Tom Dowdy was definitely unique, one of those guys you don’t meet everyday.
The first time I saw him was at a church service. The staff was worried about cultural changes that were affecting the church, that is, the way younger people weren’t buying in to the tried and true way things had been done for years. Tom, a sociologist, academician, university professor at Oklahoma Baptist, avid reader, author, and student of the science of religion, was called in to help the staff and congregation try and make sense of it all.
Watching and listening to him, I remember thinking, this guy’s smart; damn smart, or at least the sanitized church version of that opinion. Tom seemed to have a thoughtful answer for every question posed, no matter how difficult. He didn’t always have the solution, mind you, but he never felt the need to tell ‘em what they wanted to hear. He was a straight shooter who answered their questions without any hesitation. Sometimes the answer was “we don’t really know.”
Over the next couple of years, I’d meet Tom in different situations, usually related to church. On one occasion he was delivering a thrashing to a friend of mine on the racquetball court. Another time I had volunteered for a few hours on a church-sponsored Habitat for Humanity project and Tom was there. That’s when I learned he was a regular, I think he was even on the Norman Habitat for Humanity Board. He believed religion should be about what you do, rather than what you think or say.
“I never feel more alive or closer to God when I’m out here working on a home,” he told me.
Our paths crossed more during a brief period of time when I had agreed, for some bizarre reason, to serve on a worship planning team (an oxymoron I suppose), a group/think-tank that met weekly in order to come up with creative ideas that could be used in church. I was asked, I think, because I had written a lots of skits and videos that had been used in services. Tom was asked because we needed someone to tell us when we were veering off track.
“Nah, that won’t work,” he’d say. And we usually just figured he was right and moved on.
After I was diagnosed with cancer, I played the cancer card and left that team, for I didn’t really belong there. I focused my time and attention instead on a book idea I’d been working on, a humorous memoir that covered my craziest cancer experiences, entitled I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France. I consulted with Tom on the book several times, and he even wrote a review for me in support of the project.
As the book was coming close to fruition, Tom called me one night, right out of the blue. That’s odd, I thought. Tom never calls.
“Hey Jim,” he said. “Did you hear the news?”
“News?” I replied. “I guess not.”
“I have cancer. A tumor in my brain. Can you believe that?”
Tom was never one to mince words.
The details fail me now, but I seem to remember that Tom had lost consciousness and fallen or something over the weekend. Follow-up tests had revealed he and his wife Beverly’s worst nightmare. A very aggressive tumor in the brain, I think stage four. The outlook was dismal.
I was stunned and didn’t really know what to say.
“Oh my God, Tom. This is awful!”
“I know. It’s crazy.”
Up till that point, Tom and I had been teetering on that strange fence that lies between friends and acquaintances. We knew each other. We liked each other. We just hadn’t had the chance to move beyond that point. But when cancer came calling, a friendship was forged.
Tom had called me because I had been battling cancer. Shoot, I’d even lost my arm to the disease. So he had called me, first, because he needed some answers to some very practical questions, and, second, because I had been there and could empathize.
We were in very different places though. Although I had been through some very dark times, I hadn’t (yet) been given the type of news he had. I think six months was the number they put on it. He was going to be immediately searching for a medical trial, a journey you didn’t go on unless you were terminal.
Over the next few months, as Tom’s trials grew darker and darker, we spoke probably five or six times on the phone. Plus, we sent emails to each other, and I went to see him several times. And on each occasion, Tom and I would have these deep conversations. About life. Cancer. His concerns for Beverly. His dreams, accomplished or not. His friendships. God. Religion. The meaning of life. His writing projects. His book collection and what the heck he was going to do with it if he died.
Incidentally, I didn’t love talking with Tom about books. I read a lot, so this is usually a subject I’m comfortable with. But not with Tom. For every book I’d read, he had read three. And his selections weren’t light. They were nonfiction books on philosophy, sociology, science, religion, history and many more fiction classics than I had been able to knock out.
Tom, of course, was never braggadocios about his reading accomplishments. He was instead factual about it. He’d read and considered it, he’d say. That’s all.
But I loved talking about the other stuff. Tom spoke my language. We never discussed trivial matters. There was no mention of sports or cars or hot babes or great restaurants. We spoke about the real stuff, period. What it’s all about.
What a refreshing gift that was for me. Sometimes, during conversations with friends who hadn’t been experiencing health crises, I’d been told that I’m intense or deep, that I should lighten up a bit. But with Tom, we headed the other way, into the deepest depths of the human experience. At times during our talks, it seemed to me like we were on the verge of a new discovery, some enlightenment that neither of us had ever experienced. A thought that no one else had ever had.
And he didn’t do this with just me. No, he was having conversation after conversation like this with friends, coworkers, students, family and acquaintances several times a day, if not more. It was as if Tom had this urgent need to communicate his deepest thoughts with people while he could, for their sake and for his. For when we share, the hope is always that we will connect, that we will meet that other person in a new place where we both can learn.
Toward the end, things were going less than well. Tom and Beverly had left for a promising treatment, in New York I believe, but Tom’s condition quickly worsened and he had been unable to travel. When we spoke over the phone, he sounded tired and told me he didn’t know how much more he could take. His brain was foggy, he said, and the cancer was affecting his fine motor skills and ability to walk. He spoke of possibly foregoing anymore treatments and letting nature take its course.
I urged him to hang in there and fight on. What else could I say? For if Tom couldn’t do it, where in the heck did that leave me? He told me he’d try.
Within the next month, Tom was bedridden, and hospice was called in. He was lapsing in and out of consciousness. At times he was lucid, but other times he was not. I visited him a couple of times during this period. Tom would tell me a story, then he’d repeat it five minutes later. It was difficult to watch, this great brain diminishing.
The last time I saw him alive was a few days before he died. Beverly had called and asked if I could come over. She needed me to stay with Tom for an hour while she went on a much-needed walk and then on a quick grocery run. I was surprised by her request, thinking how stupid I was for not realizing how messed up her life had become.
When I entered their home, Dorothy urged me to brace myself. Tom was no longer there, for all intents and purposes, she said. He had been in some different place for several days and no longer recognized anyone or attempted to communicate.
Somebody, perhaps hospice, had brought in a bed, which they had set up in the living room. Tom was lying there in some state that is difficult to explain. His hair was gone and his head was a bit swollen, I think due to steroids. Whether or not he was asleep, I cannot say. His eyes were open, but he was snoring, or attempting to breathe. And he was muttering some gibberish that sounded like it had a repeating pattern. It was a haunting noise.
Dorothy left us alone. Not knowing what to do, I pulled out my journal and began composing a poem. I was fascinated, horrified, sad, scared. You name it. And in times like this, all I know to do is to try to capture the experience with words.
At some point Tom abruptly stopped his struggles with breathing and muttering, and he sat up a bit for a second or two before falling back onto his pillow. Startled, I walked over and spoke softly to him. His eyes were rolling around as I spoke.
“Tom? Hey Tom! It’s me, Jim Chastain. I’ve come over to see you.”
His eyes stopped rolling for a moment and focused briefly in my direction.
“Oh?” he said.
And then he was gone again. His eyes rolling. Back to the muttering. Then the snoring and that rattling breath.
I’m not sure if Tom really knew I was there for that two seconds. But I want to believe he did. I want to believe I was the last person he recognized, besides Beverly. Why? Well, as Tom might say, “We don’t really know.” I just wanted it.
That night, with the Oscars on, I worked some more on the poem, then finished it the next day, just three days I think before Tom died. So here it is, for my friend Tom Dowdy, who died young at the age of 50. The world lost a wonderful man and a terrific brain when he left us.
Memorial Day
Tom is dying.
I’m at his little house
sitting in his living room,
where he’s sleeping
in a donated hospital bed,
for it’s my turn
to keep watch.
Tom’s breathing is labored
and thick and slushy.
He gulps for air, groans
and speaks gibberish, as one
trapped in a bad dream.
Then he quiets
and the process repeats.
So this is how we die.
Last night I stayed up
watching the Oscars.
All the beautiful people
in beautiful clothes
congratulating each other
for rising to the top
of fame and fortune.
I’m trying to balance
the madness of these
two contradictory worlds
in my cluttered attic mind,
the real and the unreal,
the ugly and the gorgeous,
the unseen and the seen.
It’s not working.
Regarding Donya
This is the second of four tributes I’m writing about people in my life who have died. The first two are about my sister Karyn and my friend Donya Hicks Dunn, who both died suddenly, with little or no time to reflect on it. The final two are about my friend Tom Dowdy and my great-grandfather, who were both diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and had about six months to reflect on what they were facing.
Donya Dunn was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. That she was a physical beauty, the stuff that Miss America pageants are made of, cannot be denied. But she had an inner beauty that matched, or more likely surpassed, what she had been blessed with on the outside. Anyone who knew her will attest to this fact.
I first met, or became aware, of Donya, then Donya Hicks, while I was in junior high school, specifically Madison Junior High in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Donya was in the class ahead of me, but in reality she was less than two months older. She was a cheerleader, so of course I came to know who she was early on. Older, a cheerleader, strikingly pretty. That was pretty much the trifecka for a junior high dope like me.
Some of my junior high friends, like Polly and Mollie, were cheerleaders, and I played sports. So I had the opportunity to interact with Donya fairly regularly. This was especially true in high school, when the sports teams were all one, rather than divided by grade. Basketball and football games. After school practices. Pep rallys. I was there. Donya was there. Before long, she even knew my name!
Donya and I weren’t close friends. We were just friends. She dated a couple of my high school buddies though, so I got to know her a little better through them.
Girls this pretty are often unapproachable, but Donya was not that way. I remember one incident in particular that bears this out. I was a high school junior and was driving around in my car with a friend who lived in Donya’s neighborhood. While passing her house, we saw her outside and stopped to say hi. She asked what we were doing, and we told her. Nothing. Driving around. Thinking about heading over to a local hangout.
“Mind if I come?” she asked.
Was she kidding? Would we mind hanging out with one of the coolest girls in Bartlesville?
“Uh, sure,” I said, as calmly as I could, hoping my voice hadn’t cracked. And then, as she went inside to tell her folks, I’m sure my friend and I slapped high fives.
After high school, Donya’s life and mine had this curious way of crossing. She went off to Oklahoma State for college. I went there too a year later. She became a member of Chi Omega sorority. I became a Delt and started dating one of her sorority sisters, LeAnn Sims, whom I later married. As a result of these connections, I would see Donya at Chi Omega parties or functions, and we’d always stopped to chat for a few minutes.
After graduation I headed off to Norman to go to law school. Meanwhile, Donya did the same thing at the University of Tulsa. That’s right. We both went to high school in Bartlesville, then college at OSU. We both joined fraternities/sororities where we ran into each other frequently. Then we both became lawyers. The similarities were piling up. But our mirror lives would soon cross paths in at least two more significant ways.
During my first year in law school, I roomed with one of my fraternity pals, John Dunn from Woodward. I don’t think John and Donya even knew each other in college. But a few years after I got married, John and Donya began dating. It was so strange. Here were two people I knew really well from completely different parts of my life, and they were suddenly hanging out together.
Anyway, John and Donya eventually married, and LeAnn and I attended their beautiful wedding. I can still remember it to this day, because so many people from different parts of my life were there.
After that, I saw a little bit less of Donya. We’d meet at some lawyer’s event or an Oklahoma State game, and when we did Donya would always stop to chat. She made the time. I admired that quality in her.
Our last meeting was one I’ll never forget, one last Jim and Donya connection that now seems almost too weird to be true. It was just a few weeks before she died. We passed each other at an OSU basketball game, the Final Four in San Antonio. She stopped, of course, to chat. She and John had just had another child, their fourth I believe, and this was one of her first times to get out. She looked a little run down and said she still wasn’t one hundred percent. She knew about my cancer battle and asked about that. I said I had an appointment coming up that concerned me. We then parted ways, ending with a hug and a wish that both of our health situations would soon improve.
Donya’s death was a complete shocker, and, as I understand it, the cause was about as rare as the cancer that had attacked my body. Her infant apparently got scarlet fever, and the strep germ from that illness somehow found its way to her bloodstream, resulting in toxic shock. Donya died within two days.
I attended the funeral, and it was a heartbreaker. Those same friends I’d seen at John and Donya’s wedding, people I knew from so many parts of my life, were gathered again, and everyone looked completely devastated. I’ll never forget the bagpipes that played.
Soon after, I was facing a battle of my own, the same one I’d discussed with Donya. The cancer had returned, and doctors were now recommending the amputation of my arm.
I wrote a poem about Donya in the wake of these events. I say it was about Donya, but it was also about my own health issues and the loss of my sister. The poem contemplates dying at a young age, before your time as it were. I thought about how certain deaths become almost larger than life itself. And as I wrote it, I kept thinking of Donya, now gone, but frozen in time. I couldn’t help but think of all of our connections, our parallel lives, and then wonder how it would all turn out for me.
Now, as I too face death at a relatively young age, I read my Donya poem and it takes on a whole new meaning, as if I, who had once sent it out to her, am now receiving it back.
So here it is:
To Die Young
(in memory of Donya)
To die young is to stay young forever,
remembered fondly at your peak,
a distant mountain on a hazy horizon.
To die young is to be revered,
a tribute to the pain of life and love,
a thorned rose for those who walk the garden.
To die young is to be forgiven of all sins,
absolved of mistakes or hint of failure,
beneficiary of doubts, big and small.
To die young is to stir the emotions,
making loved ones weep as never before,
yet smile with bittersweet reminiscences.
To die young is to become poetry,
to inspire music, literature, theater, art,
the echoes of hard truths revisited.
To die young is to be mourned
by those who before did not understand
and somehow then a catalyst for change.
To die young is to go on a journey,
exploring faraway places pondered for ages,
looking back and waving in that silent way.
Regarding Karyn
Yesterday was my sister Karyn’s birthday. She would have been 37, but she died in a tragic car accident at the age of 21.
It’s hard to imagine Karyn at 37. She seems instead to be frozen in time. To me she’ll always be that smiling, somewhat naive 21 year old who was just beginning to find her place in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how fortunate I am to be able to participate in this series, to put a voice to this strange journey I’m on. Few people have had an opportunity like this. It’s a big responsibility though, to be a sort of representative for people who are marching knowingly toward death, so I’m giving it all I can.
We’re all going to die, of course. Every last one of us. Oh, medical science might delay that for a few years, but still the end result is pretty much a sure thing.
Our deaths seem to fall into two distinct categories. Some people–folks like me, my friend Tom Dowdy, and my great-grandfather–are told that we are heading in that direction, that our time on earth is drawing to a close.
Others, like Karyn and my friend Donya Hicks Dunn, just die. Suddenly, painfully quick, without any real time to say goodbye. I’m sure many of you who have experienced that sort of jarring loss would give anything to have what I have, just a little more time.
Over the next few days, I’m going to be writing a tribute to four people who have left us. Starting today I’ll talk about Karyn. Next, I’ll turn to Donya, Tom, and my great-grandfather, Bige Hensley. For those of you who knew any of these people, stay tuned.
Karyn’s death was as tragic as anything I’ve experienced. She was my little sister, eight years behind me, last of the Chastain family singers as it were. She was also one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. I’m not sure if she had a bad bone in her body. I was protective of her, as big brothers are, but I didn’t really have to be. Almost everyone who knew Karyn liked her. What wasn’t to like?
At the time of her death, she had just been accepted to nursing school. She had an appointment in Muskogee that particular day, so she said goodbye to her husband and twin girls and headed off from their home in Tahlequah. On her way back she apparently fell to sleep, veered over the center line, and ran head on into another car, dying instantly. (The other folks lived, thank God.)
I was picking up Maddye, who was then just one year old, when I received the news. My mom had called LeAnn, and LeAnn had to tell me. She did it quickly. “Jim, your mother just called. Karyn was in a car wreck this afternoon and was killed.”
Bam! Just like that, she was gone. To this day it remains the biggest shock of my life.
The next few days were a blur, like the remnants of a nightmare. My parents. The twins. A Hearst. My sisters. An awful car ride. The funeral home. The funeral. The trip to the cemetary. A police salute. The burial. Then left alone, trying to make sense of it all.
I’ve never been able to make much sense of it. And if you think you have, please do me a favor and don’t share those thoughts with me.
But whether or not there was any point in it, I can tell you this: Karyn’s death played a key role in my becoming a writer.
I had been writing poetry since junior high, if not before. Most of my poems were the sort of stuff you’d expect from a teenage boy: love poems about this or that girl who made my heart go pitter patter. They may not have been great, in a literary sense, but I loved writing them. And I loved thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’d share them with the right person someday.
Only remnants of those poems remain. This was before we all owned computers, and nobody had ever shared with me the wonders of journaling. The poems were handwritten on single sheets of paper and stuffed into this folder or that, the thought being that I would someday get organized. But that never happened. Perhaps if you carefully went through my old bedroom closet, or the bottom of some desk drawer, or the boxes in my parents’ attic, you might find some of them.
But as time went by and I got married, became a lawyer, and had kids, I put poetry aside to become “serious.” For a time, poetry disappeared from my life. But then Karyn died, and poetry, that old friend, came back into my life and tapped me on the shoulder.
It had been nine months since the accident, and Karyn’s birthday was coming up. My folks were still in deep grief, even though the rest of the world had moved on. I myself was still processing it all, and so I began working on a Karyn poem to help in that regard. My thought was to keep the poem from being overtly sad, but instead to write a tribute to Karyn and to how important she had been to others.
I finished the poem, called “The Rainbow,” then gave it to my mother as a gift. She loved it, and shared it with family and friends. Rather than having to tell them something to remind them of Karyn, she now had a poem to do that work for her. And every year on Karyn’s birthday, she sends it out to friends as a tribute to her youngest child, her dear friend whom she lost suddenly and without warning.
“The Rainbow” is not my best poem of all time. It has a sing song rhythm, it rhymes, and it is a bit sentimental. But I’m not sure that anything I’ve written has had a greater impact. Plus, the response it received helped to remind me of my own writing dreams. Soon afterward I made a conscious decision to start moving my career from that of lawyer to that of writer.
For what it’s worth, here it is.
The Rainbow
As a child, you were a present,
A gift from God above,
A promise full of sweetness,
A package filled with love.
As a daughter, you were an angel,
A companion from on high.
With pride we watched you mount your wings,
and take off toward the sky.
As a wife, you were a diamond,
A sparkling, precious stone,
A treasure worthy to display,
A priceless jewel to own.
As a mom, you were a blanket,
A cover for the night,
You gave us warmth and calmed our fears,
We loved to hold you tight.
As a sister, you were a flower
A bloom in life’s bouquet
From a tiny seed, we watched you grow
And blossom on your way.
As a friend, you were an anchor,
A foundation in the gale,
You held us fast when storms came through,
You enabled us to sail.
As a memory, you are a rainbow,
Shining high above the plain,
An eternal sign of beauty,
Which follows after rain.
On your birthday, oh my sister,
Mother, daughter, friend and wife,
We take a moment from our tears
To celebrate your life.
Doggone It!
I’ve always had a dog.
In the early days it was Sparky, Bimbo, Sabrina.
Then Winston (still in the Dog Hall of Fame) and Daisy.
And now it’s Gracie, our beloved Golden Retriever.
I have a great group of supporters who’ve ”been there for me” throughout my cancer trials and tribulations, and Gracie sits (or perhap lays, snoring) at or near the very top of that list.
She’s always there, waiting to brighten up my day. All I have to do is call her.
She’s my steadfast friend who stays by my side when I’m sick in bed, following chemo.
I often wonder about people who have cancer, but don’t have a good support group. I see them from time to time at the Cade Cancer Center in Oklahoma City or at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, making their way to the next appointment, and I wonder how they do it alone. I’m not sure I could.
I have no great advice for these people. Cancer can be so God-awful lonely even when you’re surrounded by friends.
But I can say this: I hope they have a good pet. Or to be more specific, I hope they have a pet like Gracie, a companion who’s never, ever in a bad mood, never too tired to play, never too busy to give you the time of day. Gracie may not make it all the way up to Winston status, but if she keeps cuddling up by me after chemo, she has a shot.
She’s cuddling up next to me right now, but she seems a little less peaceful and serene than normal. That’s because Gracie had a really bad day.
LeAnn had booked her for a shampoo at a local pet place I’d rather not name. I dropped her off in the morning, then headed off to work. The plan, which we’ve done many times, was a shampoo, nothing more. The kids would pick her up after school, and Gracie would be all fluffy and smelly-good when we all met at home.
But things didn’t go as planned. It was just after 4 p.m. and I was still at work when my cell phone rang.
“Is this Mr. Chastain? Mr. Jim Chastain?” the caller asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you the owner of Gracie?” she asked, a bit too formally.
“Gracie? Yes….”
“Well this is Geena (not her real name) over at Pets Marred (not its real name).” (I’m paraphrasing too.)
“Oh yes. My kids should be there any minute.”
“Okay… Well we have a problem.”
My heart sank.
Please God, I begged. Whatever it is, just let her be alive.
“A problem? What is it?”
“Well, you see we had another Golden in here and, uhh… they kind of got mixed up.”
I’m nearly hyperventilating while she’s speaking. Was Gracie okay, that’s all I wanted to know.
“I was in the middle of shaving her when we figured it out,” Geena explained.
“Shaving her? So she’s okay?”
“Oh yes. She’s fine. But I thought she was the other dog and I started shaving her. I’m really sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“So she’s shaved?” I asked. ”Like really shaved?”
Who shaves a Golden Retriever?
“Well partially shaved. But when I figured it out I stopped. I’m so sorry.”
“Well, it is what it is,” I philosophized. “Nothing we can do about it now. I hope you’re not charging me.”
“Oh no,” she said.
I can’t remember how we finished the conversation. I was too busy wondering how bad Gracie looked. I mean, being terminal, I was able to keep things in perspective. It certainly wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It was just hair. People make mistakes. They had even offered a free grooming.
But then again, Gracie is such a beauty. It was going to be a little sad to see her “partially shaved.”
Maddye called a bit later as I was driving home.
“You’re going to have to see this,” she said.
“Is it bad?” I asked.
“It’s kind of like she has a mullet.”
I arrived at home just after five and found Gracie lying in my bed, looking puzzled and a bit sad. Her long beautiful coat was gone, except on her front legs, the only place where she hadn’t been sheared. It was like Gracie’s head and front legs had been placed on a sheep. If it had been July or August, this “partial shave” would have at least kept her comfortable. But this was early February.
Like I said, it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened. So she’d lost some hair. I’d been losing hundreds of ‘em during the last few weeks. So she’d look a bit silly. I, the hairless, one-armed, near albino, look a bit silly too.
At least we’d give people something to talk about when I took her out for a walk.
By Comparison
So I’m having lunch with a dear friend/former coworker this week, one of those people who has been there for me through thick and thin, when she tells me a little story (I’m paraphrasing here):
“I keep a picture of you by my computer,” she said. “That way, whenever things aren’t going my way and I start feeling sorry for myself, I just look at you and think about all you’re going through. And I realize how petty my little problems are.”
“Well, I’m glad I can be your role model for how life can go wrong,” I joked. And we laughed, because we both knew what she meant, even though it’s hard to put those sentiments into words.
She was thanking me for my role in helping her keep things in perspective. She had come to understand, as a result of my trials and many of her own, that life is short, that we must live it to the fullest, and that we should never take anything for granted. She realized, by comparing our lives, that most of the things we worry about are not worth the time or energy. She knew, by comparison, that we should count our blessings and that we shouldn’t get too sidetracked by the inevitable trials that come our way.
I get this comment a lot, or some close version of it. “Whenever I get down,” they say, “I just think about you and know things could be a whole lot worse.”
Or “I wake up everyday and thank God I don’t have to deal with the stuff you do.”
Or “Man, I was feelin’ like the world had it out for me, but then I thought, well at least I’m not that guy.”
In Charlotte Lankard’s blog entry a week or so ago, a man wrote with his own version of this by comparison observation: ”Well, shut my mouth. I mean that literally. Here I am feeling sorry for myself and then I read today’s column. I literally shut my mouth, my whining and my self pity and once again reminded myself that my life could be a hell of a lot worse!”
This stuff doesn’t bother me. Honestly. Oh it might have been a bit disconcerting way back when, after cancer took my arm and people began comparing their lives to mine in a “glad I’m not him” sort of way. But now, it’s just funny. And I’m truly pleased to have an opportunity to remind people that life is real, that fortunes can change in an instant.
So in a way I’m fine with being that “thank God I’m not him” guy. Somebody’s got to do it.
You may be interested to know, however, that I do the same thing, i.e., comparing my life to someone else’s. Oh, the pickings may be a little slim, but if I look around long enough I can eventually find someone who makes me feel a whole lot better about my place in the world, by comparison.
I start by thumbing through the obituaries and newspaper headlines.
“Hmmm. I see Mabel Potter had a massive stroke last week and died in bed. And here I was feeling sorry for myself….”
Or “Say, Jebediah Rushmore accidentally fell into his water well. Jeez, some people have all the bad luck.”
Or, “Did you hear about that golfer they found out on the course yesterday? Looks like it was lightning, poor guy. When it rains it pours!”
Sometimes I think about others who died at a younger age than my current 45 years. Edgar Allan Poe was just 40 when he ceased to be. Van Gogh was 37. Jesus was 33.
Rock stars are particularly useful on this point.
“Elvis died on the toilet when he was just 42. Such a shame, to go so young.”
“John Lennon was shot right there. He was only 40 years old. Whenever I get sad about my life, I think about how much those five extra years have meant.”
“Buddy Holly had such a promising career ahead of him, but he died when he was only 23. I’ve lived nearly twice that long.”
My comparisons don’t always come from the dearly departed, mind you. Cancer wards sometimes provide obvious examples, as do hospitals in general. After that, you must get a little creative with your comparisons. Death row inmates are useful in this regard, as are disgraced politicians, fallen CEOs, and dishonest investment brokers.
“I see _____’s conviction was affirmed this week. You know what that means….”
“Rob Blagojevich? Yikes! Thank God I’m not that guy.”
Or “Man, that Bernie Madoff. You couldn’t pay me to trade places with him.”
Of course for someone who is terminally ill, these “still living” comparisons keep getting harder and harder to come by. At some point in time, I suppose it will be best to just give up on such comparisons and focus my thoughts on the wonder of memories.
Thankful
I awake to a beautiful February morning. The sun is out and warming up the day. Ice from last week’s sleet storm is slowly melting on my back patio. Spring, a figment of my imagination just one week ago, now seems like it may be strolling our way.
On days like these, I can’t help but smile. Yes, I know, I’m terminally ill. But what does that matter today? Even though the future looks cloudy, I can still pause to be thankful for what I have right now.
So what am I thankful for today?
I’m thankful that we made it through another round of chemo last week. Chemo days are hard on our family, especially my wife, who must play the role of single parent, but we somehow managed once again. And now, a non-chemo week is awaiting with plenty of sun and opportunities to enjoy life.
I’m thankful we survived last week’s ice/sleet storm without any major catastrophes. No splintering trees. No power outages. No car accidents. No slip and falls. It could easily have been otherwise.
I’m thankful for my neighbors, the Hawleys, who brought my family a great meal last Wednesday despite all the ice and despite the fact that they’ve endured another loss in their family. Good neighbors (and friends like the Normiles who brought us a meal today) are such a blessing during hard times.
I’m thankful for my kids. Raising teenagers is far from easy, but these are pretty good days in that regard (knock on wood). Maddye is making plans to leave us soon. She’ll head to Stillwater in the summer for college. I’m proud of her, and I’m thankful for every second I get to spend with her. Ford will play at the Norman Music Festival this summer, and he’s in a good place right now with friends. He’s a good friend to me.
I’m thankful for a letter I received this week concerning this series. I won’t get into it here, but the letter encouraged me tremendously.
I’m thankful for my father-in-law, Terry Sims, who calls us every weekend with an offer to fix whatever has broken in the last week and then, after the call, follows through. That is one of the biggest blessings I can name.
And I’m thankful for three more months of life. (After my trip to Houston two weeks ago, I’m reasonably sure that I have at least that much time.) That’s ninety days of memories. Yes, some of that will include bad chemo days, but during the rest of the time who knows what wonders may come our way?
