Death Be Not Proud
Senator Ted Kennedy died last night, they’ve announced, and discussions have already started about his legacy. While I’m not a Kennedy expert, his passing does remind me of a great poem and book.
In his famous sonnet, “Death be Not Proud,” poet John Donne argues that Death should not take pride in itself or its power, because it is, itself, a slave to fate and chance and the whims of kings and desperate men. Plus, who are Death’s closest companions? Poison, war, and sickness, to name three. How fun can that be? And Death may be mimicked by other means, say the effects of a poppy or a “charm,” like hypnosis perhaps.
And finally, in the end, Donne argues, Death itself dies when we awake in eternity.
It’s an excellent poem, no doubt, and something we should all read and think about, if given the chance.
But for a real battle between Death and Life, one that borrows its title from Donne’s sonnet, you should pick up Death Be Not Proud, the inspiring memoir by John Gunther.
It’s a short, devastating book. I read it last year, and, man, did it mess me up. But in a good way, you know. The way only sad books and movies can.
In the memoir, Gunther chronicles the incredible fight both he and his teenage son Johnny put up when sixteen year old Johnny is diagnosed, like Kennedy, with a highly aggressive brain tumor. The book brings Donne’s poem to life, as Death, the ultimate villain, strives to snuff out a promising life, a loving family, and joy, perhaps forever. Meanwhile, Johnny, who is a smart, talented, and funny kid, and his resourceful father struggle to stay one step ahead of Death, hoping to somehow outwit or outwill it at a time (the nineteen forties) when cancer resources and medical options were few.
The battle lasts seventeen months, before Death seemingly calls out a triumphant, “checkmate.” But wait, not so fast. For Gunther, in writing the book, captures another way in which Death may be defeated: through story. That is, by capturing the story of a determined and loving father doing all he can possibly do to save his child. And by capturing the story of a young man courageously fighting off agony and despair and physical illness.
It may sound grim, but Death Be Not Proud, despite all the sadness, is a hopeful, inspiring book. For although Death won the battle, the Gunthers won the war. Sixty years later, John Gunther’s story lives on, a portrait of parental love, that special love that fights on despite heartbreaking challenges. And Johnny Gunther’s story lives on too. It is a narrative of that lonely battle so many cancer patients fight, a battle against not only a killer disease, but also against emotions, as they must watch those closest to them hurting.
We are all writing a story, by our actions, decisions, and words. And Death should not be proud, for where is its victory in regard to a life well lived?
The Telephone Call
It had been a long, emotional day of tests at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
First blood work. Then a chest x-ray. Next, I had to gulp down two large bottles of banana-flavored barium contrast. Then an IV was inserted, followed by a chest CT scan. And to top it all off, a lot of waiting with nervous people.
Test days can be hard for anyone, but I think it’s especially difficult for one-armed people like me. There’s lot of changing clothes, putting on this, carrying that, i.e, tasks that I’m not particularly good at. It’s stressful, and matters of privacy aren’t the hospital’s primary concern.
Anyway, I’d managed to get through it once again, and I was standing downstairs in the lobby, waiting for my wife and son to pick me up in the car. They’d been out shopping while I did the lab rat thing.
As I was standing there waiting, a family walked up and took their place on a nearby sofa. A man of 60 years or so then took out his cell phone and made a call.
“Hey. It’s me… Yeah, we just got through visiting with the doctor… Get this. It’s good news. They couldn’t find any cancer on the scans…. That’s right. Mama won’t have to do any chemo for the next two months. Then we’ll come back and check her again.”
As I listened to this call, I found myself thinking about how much I’d give for news like that. Two months without chemo? That sounded like heaven. I mean, really. Sixty days without chemo sounded about as good as it gets.
I had been having chemo every two or three week for 22 months. I’d already endured 35 rounds of the stuff, only taking breaks for surgery or a few days of vacation.
I nearly lost it, standing there, considering what my life had become and the relentless nature of my chemo regimen. It had surely prolonged my life, and some of my greatest memories had resulted. But it was grueling all the same, and there was no end in sight.
This is where I live, hating chemo and loving it too. Happy some days, sad on others. Trying to tell you readers out there, as best I can, to go live your life, without sounding preachy or melodramatic.
Upcoming Cancer Survivor’s Conference
On September 10-12, 2009, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will be holding its 21st annual “Living With, Through, and Beyond Cancer” Conference at the Marriott Westchase in Houston. The Conference is open to anyone whose life has been touched by cancer, including cancer patients, family members, caregivers, and practitioners.
The keynote speaker will be Hoda Kotb, a cancer survivor and co-anchor of NBC’s Today Show. Ms. Kotb will be speaking at 10:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, September 12.
The Conference will include several wellness workshops, like massage, Tai Chi, and aromatherapy. Plus there will be numerous breakout sessions with a variety of speakers talking about such issues as fear of recurrence, caregiver’s feelings, diet, and health insurance.
I’ll be leading a breakout session on Friday September 11 from 11 a.m to 12:30 pm. My topic will be ”Writing Your Way Through the Hard Times,” and I’ll be reading from my cancer memoir, poetry books, and at least one essay from this Life is Real series.
If your life has been touched by cancer or if you live anywhere in the Houston area, I’d love to see you at the Conference!
Registration is $75 and includes several meals. Go to www.mdanderson.org for more information.
On Sunday, a Confession
From time to time, perhaps six times a year, I’m asked to speak at a church service. Sometimes people ask me to speak about poetry. Sometimes they ask me to address my experiences with cancer. Sometimes I’m asked to reflect on the “spiritual side” of dealing with serious illness.
This morning it was my pleasure to speak at Unity Church in Norman. I spoke about the similarities between poetry and prayer, and my son Ford joined me to do a couple of songs.
It was a good morning. A bit warm outside, perhaps, but after being cooped up inside all week recovering from chemo and a virus, I’m not going to complain about too much sunshine.
Anyway, during the service, the congregation sang several worship songs, some that I knew and some that I didn’t. This reminded me of my days growing up in a Baptist Church, singing all those old hymns. Over the years I probably sang every hymn in the Baptist Hymnal at least two dozen times. Some, like ‘Just As I Am,” “At the Cross,” and “Amazing Grace,” I probably sang well over a hundred times.
And then I remembered how my friends and I would always change the words in the songs in order to make each other laugh. It wasn’t exactly sacrilegious, we were just kids for crying out loud, but it wasn’t the holiest thing I’ve ever done either.
“Bringing in the sheaves” (whatever a sheave is) became “bringing in the cheese.” “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling,” became “softly and tenderly, pizza is calling.” ”Go tell it on the mountain,” became “go smell it on the mountain.” And “oh how he loves you and me” became “oh how he loves to eat meat.”
I guess we were hungry when we wrote a lot of these.
After the service, as I was driving home, I began thinking about my talk that day and how I got started writing poetry. And then, somewhat ironically, it dawned on me that a lot of my earliest work began there in the pews of that Baptist Church I attended, rewriting words to those old hymns.
”It is swell, with my goat,” I’d whisper into my sister’s ear, rewriting the words to “It is Well with my Soul.” And as she started giggling, I’d sing out loud, “It is swell, it is swell, with my goat!”
Okay, well at least now I’ve confessed.
A Nagging Cough
I woke up a few days ago with a bit of a cough, a scratchy throat, and some congestion.
Perhaps this was the beginnings of a summer cold, I thought, or the aftermath of a fun weekend with friends. I wasn’t sure. Or perhaps it had something to do with chemo the next day–you know, those anticipatory symptoms I’ve previously described.
But these weren’t normal chemo symptoms. Oh, to be sure, my voice comes and goes at times, and I do have a coughing day here and there. But not typically.
Later in the day, I was running a slight fever. That was odd, because I’m usually a degree or so under.
As chemo day arrived, all the symptoms were gone, except the cough, which had grown worse. That was bad because they won’t let you do chemo when you’re sick. But my numbers were all normal, so, yea, I received the poisons once more, for the 37th time!
The cough seemed to bother some of my chemo neighbors though. I kept waking up the woman beside me, a pancreatic cancer sufferer, and the wife of another patient kept giving me this look that said, “I hope you don’t have the swine flu!”
Cough suppressants helped a little, but not much. By nightfall, back at home, I was coughing consistently, once or twice every minute. Today, things are not better, but worse.
This freaks me out a bit, to tell you the truth, because I have developed lung cancer this year. Indeed, during my last visit to the doctor, I was informed that the lesions in my lungs had grown slightly during the last three month stretch, despite receiving five chemo treatments.
“The liver’s what’s going to get you,” a doctor once advised. When asked what dying of liver cancer is typically like, I was told that it wasn’t the worst way to go, at least as far as cancer is concerned. Patients usually get weaker and weaker, sleep more and more, then eventually slip into a coma.
I’ve never asked, but from my life’s experiences, I get the sense that death by lung cancer isn’t very pretty. And this is probably even more true for someone like me who has claustrophobic tendencies. (By the way, if you have experience in this death-by-lung-cancer area, I really don’t want to know about it.)
It’s ironic. When I go the see the doctors about my latest scans, I sometimes worry that the liver cancer will have improved while the lung cancer will have gotten much worse. For if anything, I don’t want to be suddenly told, “The lungs are what’s going to get you.”
It’s like going to the race track and worrying that your horse, which is in the lead, has miscalculated the end of the race and will soon be passed by the underdog.
Or something paranoid like that.
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!
We opened our newspapers this week (or, perhaps, turned on the TV to the morning or evening news) and were greeted by another awful story. A man named George Sodini entered a Pittsburgh aerobics class, took out a gun and began randomly firing upon a group of defenseless women, none of whom he apparently knew. He killed three before turning the gun on himself.
I find stories like this, well, disturbing and tragic of course. But I also find them ironic. For here is a healthy man of 48 who decided that life was not worth it, that murder and suicide was the answer. Meanwhile, my health is completely whacked out, and I’m searching for anything that will increase my numbered days.
Sodini’s tragic and troubled story is not about me in any way, shape or form. But I can’t help but wonder about that gulf between our two lives, how he came to such a desperate point while I have not. What causes one house to stand and the other to fall?
It seems like the best answer to that question is loneliness, for Sodini’s chilling blog and videos have described an isolated life. Sodini hadn’t had a meaningful dating relationship in decades. And friends did not play a significant role in his life either, as far as I can tell. On most nights, he apparently came home to an empty house and spent the night alone.
I don’t want to judge George Sodini. Others will do that, rather relentlessly I’m afraid. And I’m sure additional frightening facts will come out and help explain some of the reasons why he acted as he did. He was quite possibly mentally ill. To be sure, not all lonely people take such drastic measures.
But I do want to want to formulate a healthy response to that story by being thankful for the relationships in my life and for all those people that have helped me keep my head on my shoulders. For terminal cancer is a lonely road, and I don’t know where I’d be without family and friends.
First and foremost, I’m thankful for LeAnn, the best wife in the world (or at least one who’s tied with many others for first place). With someone like LeAnn at your side, almost anyone could find their way through.
I’m also thankful for my family, extended family, and in-laws. They’re always trying to find some way to make life a bit easier.
And then I’m thankful for my great group of friends. For if there’s one thing I can point to in my life that has made the biggest difference whenever times have gotten tough, it has been my friends.
“Make new friends, but keep the old,” advises an old song. “One is silver and the other’s gold.”
I’ve always taken that advice quite seriously. In high school, I surrounded myself with as many friends as possible. In college, I formed new friendships, first in the dorms, then in my fraternity, and then with many others, including of course LeAnn. After that it was law school friends, neighbors, friends in my church and community, and work friends. Lately it’s been writing friends, poets, and people who have read something I’ve written.
“Never trade away a friend,” I tell my kids. “Life is hard and you’re going to need as many as you can get.” I’m not sure they fully understand how earnest I am when I say that, how strongly I believe that friends are the key to happiness. But I keep saying it anyway.
My family has had a couple of hard years, and this summer has been particularly difficult. But our friends have rallied and helped us stay on course. In June some friends threw a party for me at the fabulous home of a high school friend, who now lives in OKC. It was a great night of eating, drinking, catching up, and renewing some old relationships that had drifted a bit over the years.
The next month another group of friends held a similar event, dubbed Jimfest, in Bartlesville. Again, it was a great evening of visiting and seeing friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while. We laughed, told stories, sang, and had some meaningful exchanges. What a great memory!
And just last night I gathered with some of my closest college buddies and their families for a swim party at our house. One friend flew in from California. Another was in from Singapore. Others drove from Texas and Kansas. Some traveled fewer miles, from Tulsa, Edmond, Stillwater, and Norman.
As they left, I found myself getting choked up, for my health is bad and you just never know. I wanted to tell them so many things, about they’ve played such a big role in making this a wonderful life, despite the challenges we face. About how much I love and appreciate them. About how proud I am to have known them and to have had them in my life.
But I couldn’t. It was too hard, and I’m a crybaby.
So I’m telling them now.
All About Eyebrows
I’ve been thinking a lot about eyebrows lately.
Yeah, I know. Too much time on my hand.
I guess girls think about eyebrows a lot more than I ever have. They’re always messing with ‘em, it seems. Plucking ‘em, smearing cream on, laser removal.
But eyebrows don’t usually don’t make it high up on a guy’s list of concerns. Nose hair? Yes. Back Hair? Oh yeah. But eyebrows? So long as we don’t have a unibrow, they are rather easily forgotten.
My only real run-in with eyebrows over the first 44 years of my life concerned a few wild hairs that grow in mine. And boy do I mean wild.
One of these hairs in my right eyebrow is crazy long. About every couple of months from the age of 15 to 44, I’d notice it was on a personal journey again, snaking its disgusting way up my forehead or trying to say hello to an eyelash. I’d grab the durn thing between thumb and forefinger and yank it out, causing tears to burst forth from my eyes every time. That sucker was so strong that it might take me four or five tries to have a successful extraction.
“Don’t yank your eyebrows out like that,” Mom would say. “It causes brain damage.”
My left eyebrow wasn’t home to “the King,” but it did have several copycats that also tried to express themselves every few months. My right eyebrow had one of these pretenders too.
God, how I hated those four or five wild hairs. I couldn’t get rid of them. Like that obnoxious rattle coming from beneath one’s car, they followed me everywhere. And plucking them only seemed to make them worse, stronger, thicker. I eventually had no choice but to switch to trimming, knowing I’d been defeated.
At the age of 45, after weeks and weeks of chemo, the hairs on my body began weakening. The thinnest hairs, like those on my fingers and toes, were the first to say adios. Next it was the hair on my arms and legs. Then, my underarm hairs hit the road. Eventually, those thick curls on my head couldn’t take it anymore. They turned a dead grayish color then fell to the floor.
Now, only the strongest hairs have survived. My beard. Some of the tougher strands on my head and chest. Those troubling ear hairs, which seem to have an odd sense of humor.
And, yes, those four or five “wild hairs” in my eyebrows are still with me, showing no sign of weakening. They’ve joined a few never-say-die survivors to form two jagged brows that look more like a row of rooftops than eye decor.
The good thing is that those suckers are still so long I can do a comb-over and shape them into whatever form of eyebrow I desire.
