Crazy Weekend
“So… how are you guys doing?” people ask, somewhat tentatively, as if they’re anticipating a really bad answer.
They know the Chastains have a gloomy cloud floating overhead, one that is dark and threatening to drop a nasty storm on us at any time. And as a result they think we’re much sadder than we are.
Truth is, however, we’re doing well. We’re not walking around with our heads down, kicking rocks and stepping on spiders. We’re not all sad and gloomy, obsessing on the future.
Maddye doesn’t wake up and think, “Oh no, Dad!” LeAnn isn’t, I assure you, overwhelmed with thoughts of ”poor Jim.” Ford isn’t writing melancholy tunes with overtones of death or metaphors of a disintegrating father figure.
I’m not thinking about ”it” all the time. For where does that get me, really?
For now, we’re happy. We have each other. We have today. We have a crazy busy weekend, packed with fun things. And that’s more than enough.
Tonight, Ford will play an acoustic set or two at the Second Wind Coffee House on Buchanan Street in Norman, starting at 8 p.m.
On Saturday, LeAnn will be coaching Whittier’s Math Counts team at the State Finals, held at the Embassy Suites in Norman. Once again, she has one of the best teams in the state, and she’s very excited about their chances.
I’ll be speaking to a writer’s group on Saturday morning, then heading to Dallas to do a big house concert on Saturday night. It will be a night of music and poetry with my friends Billy Crockett and Nathan Brown. Several of my friends are heading that way, and I can’t wait to see them!
Maddye’s weekend looks a little less exciting. She’s got a senior paper to work on. But Maddye has a way of finding fun.
So the Chastains are not sad. We are doing well, thank you. And we hope you are too.
Regarding Me
Due to my lousy health, my life as a writer, and this “Life is Real” series, I’ve been fortunate to hear from many people I knew long ago. Within the last month, I’ve probably exchanged messages with at least thirty ”blasts from the past,” people I hadn’t heard from for way-too-many years (and likely wouldn’t have heard from again if it weren’t for my situation). They found out about my story somehow and wanted to reconnect.
I love this part of my life, talking to old friends. It’s so interesting to hear how their lives turned out and how they’ve diverged from mine. And it’s surprising to see what they’re up to now, how many kids they have, where they work, what they’re reading, what their religious and political points of view are, etc.
But in doing all of this reconnecting, it occurred to me that many who are following this series (or beginning to follow it) do not know me at all.
“Who is this guy?” you’re probably thinking. “And why is The Oklahoman following him?
I guess it’s Ken Raymond’s job to tackle those questions in his newspaper articles. But I thought I should probably help him out a bit. I mean, it couldn’t hurt to give you a bio, at least a fairly brief sketch. Besides, I need to start practicing on my obituary.
I was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma on December 9, 1963 to Jim and Sharon Chastain. I was their second child, the only boy out of four children. My sisters are, in order of their births, Lori, Cindy, and Karyn, who died tragically in a car accident at age twenty-one.
My family moved to Bartlesville when I was one, and we stayed there throughout my childhood. In fact my parents still live in “B-ville” to this day, in the same house we lived in since I was in fourth grade. I attended Will Rogers Elementary (about fifty steps from our back door), Madison Junior High, and Sooner High School. I graduated from Sooner High in 1982, the last year of its existence.
While I was growing up, my father worked for Phillips Petroleum Company in the computing division. Phillips employed about half the town it seems, and prospered as a result of having one of America’s great corporations located there. However, during my high school years, we went through those same job-related concerns so many people are having today, as Phillips seemed to have a new round of layoffs every Christmas.
My mother was, for the most part, a housewife, although she had a side job selling Luzier (a lesser-known brand of cosmetics). She also volunteered a lot at Highland Park Baptist Church where we attended services. But beyond that, she chased four kids around the house, took care of Dad, and did the sort of hard work moms do. I know for a fact that she made a heck of a lot of French toast for me over eighteen years.
Bartlesville was a pretty wealthy town, but my family lived in modest homes and drove unspectacular cars. My dad was what you might politely call ‘thrifty.” We were your typical middle income family, I suppose. We weren’t particularly churchy, but we did attend church regularly. Like most kids, I tried my best to avoid it.
I was a sweet kid, they tell me, with a kind heart. I got along well with people for the most part, and I made friends easily. I believed strongly in fairness, so it bothered me when somebody was wronged. I had a soft spot for the underdog, still do, and I loved animals (the movie Bambi nearly killed me). I especially loved dogs, and therefore we always had a dog at the house.
Sweet or not, I was also a stinker. That’s true of lots of boys I guess, but I seemed to consider stinkering a fine art. I loved pestering my sisters. I got spanked a lot at home and in elementary school, and, even though we don’t do that anymore, I usually deserved it. In junior high, I was too busy trying to keep my butt from getting whipped to get into too much trouble, but in high school I returned to my prankster ways. Whenever anything happened or went wrong, I was one of the “usual suspects” who was called to the principal’s office for questioning. Some of my high school exploits became rather notorious, I’m afraid to say.
I was a competitive kid when it came to games, grades, and sports. As most kids growing up in a fairly small town, I played sports throughout my youth. What else was there to do? I was pretty good during the early years, but less so during high school when it really counted. I was fast, but I didn’t particularly care for running. At Sooner High, I lettered in baseball, basketball, and football, but I only played football as a senior, choosing instead to work (first at Braums, then at Barlow Interiors) and put gas in my car.
I was a reader from the beginning and spent a lot of time at the Bartlesville Public Library. I was one of those kids who was always reading a new book. One of my earliest memories was having my picture in the local newspaper for being a first grade “bookworm,” meaning I’d read something like one hundred books. Some of my favorites were My Side of the Mountain, Mr. Pudgins, the Henry Huggins series, the Hardy Boys mysteries, The Last of the Mohicans, Tom Sawyer, The Chronicles of Narnia, and anything by Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss, who continue to be two of my heroes to this day.
I also loved the movies. In fact from a very young age, I used to pretend my life was a movie. (Perhaps this explains all the troublemaking–I was searching for conflict to move the film along.) I remember walking down the street to the local theater regularly for Saturday matinees. I loved eating a giant green apple Jolly Rancher while watching a film.
I’ve always been a social person and a firm believer that friendships are key to happiness. Fortunately, I was blessed with a great group of friends in junior high and high school. I hung around with about twenty guys and several girls from my class, along with some notables from the cool class ahead of me. On most weekends you’d find me with Greg, Kevin, Ghent, Terry, Gary, Sheldon, Polly, or whoever else happened to be tagging along with us. Meanwhile, I joined as many clubs as would have me. I went to every party I could find. I dated as much as the next guy, but I only had a few “girlfriends.”
After high school I went to Oklahoma State University. I spent my freshman year in the dorms with several high school buddies. I made straight A’s that year, but met almost nobody and spent way too much time at Eskimo Joes. By the end of the year, I was so frustrated that I packed bags and went to live with my grandmother in Tahlequah. I attended summer school at Northeastern State, watched the Chicago Cubs on TV and contemplated staying in Tahlequah for good. But I decided instead to return to OSU for my sophomore year.
On a whim I joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and after that my college experience improved dramatically. I began meeting people, including… girls! I became president of my pledge class and later of the entire fraternity. I met some of the greatest guys in the world, several of whom are still my best friends to this day. I still hung around at Eskimo Joes too much and for a time tried setting a world record for having the most fun. But overall I remained fairly balanced in my approach to school and life beyond college. I always took my grades seriously. And I worked at a video store during the last two years at school, which was no surprise to anyone, as one of my nicknames was Mr. Movie.
As far as my post-college plans were concerned, I decided I wanted to be one of three things: a film critic; a writer; or a lawyer. (I’m reminded of the SCTV episode where Martin Short plays a college freshman who wants to be a “hockey player or a circuit court judge.”) As I knew no writers and film critic is not really a career path in Oklahoma, I began steering toward the law.
During my junior year, I met LeAnn when we were both participating in Varsity Review, a singing and dancing show. She was a member of Chi Omega sorority, and I knew several girls there. LeAnn was dating someone at the time, and I was dating someone else. But I noticed her. Later, after we’d both had breakups, we began dating. And as my senior year rolled around we became inseparable.
I was somehow accepted into OU law school and moved to Norman in 1986. LeAnn was still a senior and in the midst of completing her studies to become a teacher, so she remained in Stillwater for a semester. After that, she obtained a student teaching position at Norman High and joined me in Norman, where she lived with two of our dear friends. We married in the summer after my first year in law school and moved into our first apartment, along with Winston, our beloved cocker spaniel.
While I was busy at law school, LeAnn decided to pursue a Masters Degree at the University of Oklahoma in Mathematics. Meanwhile, we also got involved with a local church and made many new friends, as most of our college friends had moved. After obtaining our degrees, we decided to make Norman our home. We had our first child, Madison, in 1991, followed by a son, Ford, in 1994.
I began my legal career working at a small, upstart law firm that relied entirely on one client. My job was to write title opinions and to do most of the research and writing, as well as help out with litigation now and then. But that job ended when we lost our main client and my boss closed up shop, before killing himself, accidentally or not.
During this period of time, LeAnn decided to forego a full time job to focus on raising our kids. She did, however, teach math classes at night at various colleges in the Oklahoma City metro. Being a people person, she was always ready to go, go, go when I got home, while I was ready to relax.
I moved on to a medium-sized law firm in downtown Oklahoma City. It was a good job for the most part, and I made some lifelong friends. We had twenty lawyers at one point, but the firm relied a lot on the oil and gas industry and eventually ran into hard times. I was working downtown at this firm when the Murrah bombing occurred, just a few blocks away. Not long after that, my boss and good friend Doyle Bunch died in a scuba diving accident. The firm began splitting up soon afterward and was never quite the same.
As the kids began getting older and were attending school, LeAnn increased her work load. She continued teaching college math classes, but she eventually took a job at our church, where she helped with adult education and organized various small group studies. I also became involved at church, teaching adult classes and serving in several key positions, including, if you can believe it, deacon! (”What in the world was the staff thinking?” I’m sure you’re asking.)
I took a tumultuous job at the Oklahoma Insurance Department in 1996. A year and a half later, I moved on, accepting a position in 1997 as a Judicial Assistant to Judge Gary Lumpkin at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the same job I have today. There I help determine whether or not criminal defendants have received a fair trial in the state district court system.
While holding down a full time job, I began working on my writing career. I’d been writing poetry for a long time, but became more earnest about it after my sister died in 1992. I wrote more, read more, and began submitting poems here and there. I also became interested in screenplays. I took several classes and read all the right books. My second attempt at a screenplay finished in the top ten percent at the Austin Film Festival one year.
I began writing film reviews for The Norman Transcript in 1996 and have continued to do so ever since, although I’ve slowed down quite a bit recently. My reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and at one point I was writing close to one hundred reviews a year. I’ve also been a freelance contributor to the Oklahoma Gazette, Oklahoma Today, and numerous magazines.
In 2001, at the age of thirty-seven, I found a tiny little lump in the triceps muscle of my right arm. That lump turned out to be a very aggressive and rare type of cancer, and it eventually cost me my right arm in 2004. I chronicled my crazy battle with cancer in a memoir entitled, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France, which was published in 2006. That same year my first book of poems, Like Some First Human Being, was published.
In September of 2007, cancer, which had been out of my life for three years, came roaring back. I was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to my, gulp, liver. The outlook was not good. After many rounds of chemo we have been unable to shrink the tumors enough to give me a shot at a possibly life-saving surgery. Cancer has now spread to my lungs, and I’ve been told that my life expectancy is “months” rather than years.
In the midst of these challenges, I’ve continued writing. In the summer of 2008, Antidotes & Home Remedies, my second book of poems, was published. The book is a combination of health related poems and some of my “greatest hits.” I’ve also been working a book of prose, some new poems, and this series.
I’ve spared you some of the gory details, but that’s basically it.
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.
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?
Chemo Today
I’m sitting in bed, having endured another round of chemo today in Oklahoma City. I’m barely hanging on. I have zero energy, my brain is fogged up (as Ray Davies might say), my stomach is churning, and I’m on the verge of barfing.
But I had a brief moment of semi-okayness, so I checked my email. Some wonderful notes were in there, and they cheered me up, despite how crappy I feel. I heard from two of my best friends, one who was best man in my wedding and another who is on the short list of the kindest, most giving people I know. A family who doesn’t know me, but knows LeAnn, wrote to praise her. A friend from college wrote to encourage me and to tell me how this series had helped her reconnect with someone dear. My sister sent some good news. Someone I don’t know offered a small act of kindness. Someone else wrote about Maddye. And I heard from a writer friend who wrote a moving note about making memories.
Chemo days are not the best ones for making memories. I’m challenged by my own words to remember that life is real and to do your best to make a memory every day.
But I’ve done pretty good with this today. For today my wife drove me through a sleet and ice storm so we could get chemo over with. And today I reminded my son of a song he started the other day, but never finished. He started working on it again and it has great potential. And today I received the notes I’ve mentioned, which were memories for me and hopefully for those who sent them.
The Calm After the Storm
Following our rather stressful trip to M.D. Anderson last week, I’ve spent the last few days in quiet reflection. I began by finishing up the last of four blog entries I’d been writing about my family (please go back and read them if you have the chance). But then I went into contemplative mode, pondering what had just happened.
The news from Houston could have been awful. I shudder to even think about how bad it might have been; it’s so unhealthy to let the mind go there.
But instead, much to my surprise, the news turned out to be pretty good. Although the tumors hadn’t shrunk in the last three months (during which I received five more chemo treatments, a total of twenty-five since this nightmare began), they hadn’t grown either. The treatments I had endured kept the cancer at bay, for a time at least. This can only last for so long, but for now my body is holding its own.
Of course our two-day trip to Houston was much more than just having tests and awaiting results. There were travel arrangements to make (this time we flew), hotels and restaurants from which to choose, and transportation options to consider. The Oklahoman team was there, and we had to coordinate their coverage with an M.D. Anderson publicist. In addition, representatives from the hospital’s survivorship group wanted to meet with us, because their magazine is doing a story on me.
And then there were the complicating stresses. LeAnn spent a lot of her time on the phone attempting to work through numerous crises back home. Maddye, our high school senior who plans on going to Oklahoma State next year, was enrolling in a math class at OU in order to make next year a little easier. My wife wanted so much to be there to help Maddye through that process (you know how difficult finding your way around a college campus can be), but alas she was stuck in Houston with me. Then Maddye got sick. That meant getting medicine to her and finding a way for Ford to get home from school.
This is how it is for LeAnn. When she goes with me to Houston, responsibilities back home are always calling. When she stays home, she can’t help but worry about me, miles away. It’s a lose/lose situation.
So even with good news, it was an exhausting trip, both mentally and physically. I was glad, upon our return, to see the kids, along with our dog Gracie and our fat cat Ginger. I was thrilled to climb into my own bed, turn on the tv, and fall to sleep. I was thankful to wake up to a good cup of coffee and the Today Show.
This was the beginning of the calm after the storm. A time when you quietly consider what has just passed, knowing that you were lucky, knowing that another storm will soon be heading your way.
Maddye
Soon after our daughter Madison was born, people began stopping LeAnn and me to tell us how unbelievably adorable she was. I say this not as a matter of pride, but as a matter of fact. It happened all the time.
“Oh my,” they’d say. “That’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.” Or words to that effect. These weren’t friends, mind you, but complete strangers we’d pass at the mall or grocery store.
It was something about her big eyes, tiny voice, interesting hair, and one-of-a-kind personality that did it, especially a bit later, when she was one or two. Madison would look at you with those eyes and then say something uniquely Madison-like in that little voice of hers, and it was all over. She’d hung the moon, it seemed.
Later, when she was a bit older, but no less cute, I was asked to come up with an Indian name that suited her. Dances with Wolves was a big movie of that era, so it had become trendy for a time (but perhaps politically incorrect) to decide what name was the right fit for those in your family.
“Full of life,” I said. For with Madison, no specific characteristic stood out. It was the overall package that made her who she was, something about her positive spirit and gung-ho approach to life. Madison was the opposite of melancholic. She was joyous, happy-go-lucky, fun.
During elementary school we noticed something else about her, something that played right into that full of life personality. Madison couldn’t stand it when stories had unhappy endings. She didn’t like it when people suffered. It just didn’t seem right.
I read to her a lot back then, and, as a film critic, she saw more than her fair share of movies. So I saw this reaction time after time. If a book or movie did not end “as it should,” it was a failure in her eyes. For life was good, not bad.
When cancer descended upon our family, Madison was only ten. I’m not exactly sure how hard it hit her, but it must have had some impact, to suddenly discover that her dad and her family were not infallible. Her world-view must have adjusted, however slightly.
But you wouldn’t know this by watching her. While others in the family might get down from time to time, Madison would have none of it. “You’re going to be fine,” she’d say while smiling, humming a happy tune.
Madison is one of those people who doesn’t dwell on the what-ifs when things are going wrong. Instead, she expects things to work out. I’m not sure if she adheres to a “power of positive thinking” belief-system, but in a practical way that’s who she is.
But then, year after year, it was bad news, worse news, awful news. Life has a funny way of surprising you like that. So you think that’s how it is, do you? someone seems to be asking behind the scenes. Well then, let’s see what you think about this! BAM!
During the last year, after they told me I had stage four cancer with little hope of survival, I’ve noticed a few more adjustments in Madison, now Maddye. She gives me long hugs, the kind that can change your mood from bad to good. She comes to me, not infrequently, and curls up on my lap, just as she did when she was that adorable big-eyed baby, and she simply holds on. She apologizes quicker than she might with a dad living under the seventy-year plan. And she tells me she loves me before going to bed each night.
One day, when I was feeling particularly awful, sick as a dog from chemo, Maddye surprised me by taking my hand and saying, “Dad. You don’t have to do this. If the medicine’s making you feel too sick, you can stop taking it. It’s okay.” Like those lousy movies from her childhood, she couldn’t stand to see me suffer.
“No, I’m fine,” I told her. “I want to be here with you for as long as I possibly can. So if that means being sick for a few days every other week, then that’s okay.” She thought about my answer for a few seconds and seemed satisfied.
It’s strange how a spontaneous conversation like that can become so big. Because a few days later, she tells me this story, right out of the blue.
“Hey Dad. I was in class today, and our teacher asked us this question,” she said. “Get this. She asked what we would do if someone in our family was extremely sick and going to die and wanted us to give him a pill that would make him die, so he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said, or perhaps something a little stronger.
“I know,” Maddye said. “Awkward. So a bunch of the kids in my class are saying that they wouldn’t do it, that’s it’s wrong, that it’s not up to us to decide when someone should die, stuff like that.”
“So what’d you say?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.
“Well, I stayed quiet. But everyone kept giving the same answer. So I finally raised my hand and told them that I’d do it. I told them you’re very sick, dying from cancer, and how I’d told you that if the medicine and chemotherapy was making you too sick that you should stop doing it. And then I told them how you’d said it was worth it to keep taking the medicine and be sick sometimes if it helped you live longer.”
Meanwhile, as Maddye spoke, my heart was beating like a heavy metal band’s drums.
She continued: “So I said that if you asked me to give you a pill, then you must really be suffering, because you wouldn’t stop taking the medicine before when it was making you sick. So I told them if you asked me that I’d know that it was really bad and I’d give it to you.”
“Gosh Maddye, what did everyone say?” I asked, trying to maintain control.
“After I said that, everyone was completely quiet. No one said a word. But after class a bunch of them came up and told me they were sorry about my dad.”
There she was, happy-go-lucky Maddye, so beautiful, so full of life, having to think about making one of the hardest calls of all. She was so grown up now, a high school senior, heading off to college next year, and I was so proud of her.
A few days later, our family was thinking about going to see one of the holiday films. When LeAnn mentioned Marley and Me, I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maddye might not like it. I heard a rumor that the ending is ’sad’.”
Funny. I was still trying to protect her from the imperfect world out there, that place that can be so big, so scary, so sad. Meanwhile, Maddye had moved beyond that dream into the real world, where someone, every day, has to decide whether or not to pull the plug.
LeAnn
I met my wife LeAnn while we were attending college at Oklahoma State University. She was a sophomore, and I was a junior. We had both signed up to be part of Varsity Review, which is a singing and dancing show, and her sorority (Chi Omega) was paired up with my fraternity (Delta Tau Delta). I was there to meet girls, and she was there, I assume, to meet guys, bond with girls in her house, and have fun.
I asked her out a couple of months later when the opportunity arose. She hesitated at first (her friends said I “wasn’t her type”), but she eventually agreed. Our first date was for coffee in March of 1985, almost twenty-four years ago. We began dating steadily a few months later. During my senior year, we were inseparable.
Upon completing my degree, I was accepted into law school at the University of Oklahoma. LeAnn still had one year to go. So I headed off to Norman, while she stayed behind in Stillwater. This “long-distance” relationship (a one hour and fifteen minute drive) was tough, but it only lasted one semester. I asked her to marry me during Christmas break, December, 1986, and, incredibly, she said yes.
LeAnn joined me in Norman after Christmas. She completed her degree by doing her student teaching at Norman High. That semester she lived in an apartment with our friends Polly and Shellie. We married in the summer, on July 25, 1987, and have lived in Norman ever since. I was twenty three years old at the time, and LeAnn was twenty-two.
We spent the remainder of our twenties like most other young marrieds do: getting used to married life; completing our education (I received my law degree in 1989, while LeAnn obtained her Master’s Degree in Mathematics at OU that same year, earning straight A’s); scrambling to find jobs; getting established in our community; and starting a family. Our daughter Maddye was born in 1991, and Ford was born three years later, in 1994.
As we hit our thirties, LeAnn and I were still living a fairly normal life. It was a crazy time, of course, as we were busy raising kids while balancing marriage, work, friendships, church, and our personal interests. I was working as a lawyer at various places and attempting to establish myself as a writer. LeAnn was multitasking, as wives/mothers tend to do. In addition to her mom responsibilities and volunteer duties, she taught night classes at several different colleges. And she worked for a time at a church, organizing women’s book studies.
But while we were in our middle thirties, during the hustle and bustle of life, cancer came and knocked on our door. I was thirty-seven years old. LeAnn was only thirty-six, which is way too young to be suddenly thrust into a new role, the wife of a seriously ill husband.
I have described those early years and how they affected me in my memoir, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France. But as with practically everyone who steps into the unenviable role of caretaker, LeAnn’s story is lesser known.
It would be nearly impossible for me to tell you that story. I’m too close to it, to be honest, and I’m pretty sure LeAnn wouldn’t want me to anyway. But I can tell you this: it’s as heroic as any story I know, much more so than mine.
I can give you a brief sketch of LeAnn, however. That is, I can tell you about some of her best qualities and a few of her primary interests, the stuff that helps make her the incredible person she is.
In addition to being easy on the eyes, LeAnn is smart. She’s hardworking and tough. She’s adventurous and fun. She’s generous and kind-hearted. She loves people deeply. She’s a devoted wife and a wonderful mom. She’s my best friend and has been for nearly a quarter of a century. I don’t know who or where I would be without her.
LeAnn enjoys book clubs, for she reads dozens of books each year. She’s genuinely interested in other cultures. She’s a certified scuba diver and loves to go diving in Mexico. She’s the Math Counts coach at her middle school, and her team is one of the best in the state. She’s also a runner, having completed her first half marathon last year.
And as for the cancer years, those years that have stretched from her mid-thirties to the age of forty-three, well, what can I say? She’s been severely tested, that’s for sure. No one steps into a marriage expecting to deal with the kinds of issues LeAnn has had to deal with at such a young age. In addition to all the craziness that comes with being a mother, teacher, friend, and human being with dreams of her own, LeAnn has had to drop everything in her life, time after time, in order to help me.
It’s a lonely, thankless job, being the “caretaker,” a job that’s so big and exhausting and overlooked that it’s nearly impossible to describe it in words. The best I can do is to give you a sense of it from a poem I wrote in 2007.
The Caretaker
If I told you how many needles
they’ve stuck in me
in the name of making me well
you’d probably never believe it.
If I told you of the drugs
I’ve ingested or the poisons
they’ve pumped through my veins,
you’d wonder if it was possible.
If I told you of the radiation
that had seeped through my body,
via x-rays, scans and “therapies,”
you’d call me a monster.
If I told you of the surgeries
I’ve endured and the scars I wear,
you might question God
or, more likely, your faith.
If I detailed the vomiting, the bills,
and how often I’ve been told,
“I’m sorry, it’s cancer,”
you’d call me a hopeless cause.
If I told you of the conversations
I’ve had with my wife, my kids,
my parents, family and friends,
you’d walk away.
If I told you these things,
if I counted them all up
and then disclosed the final tally
you’d give me up
because life wouldn’t make sense anymore.
So I’ll keep all the counting to myself,
because I need you to hang in there
with me, playing that major
or minor role in the screenplay.
But if you wanted to know more,
if you somehow convinced me
to reveal the things I’ve seen,
to divulge those horrible numbers,
and then if you needed confirmation,
you could fact-check with my wife,
who witnessed and endured
these same things.
She brought the cold rags
for my forehead, the pans
to throw up in, the pills
I was to take with my meals.
She bandaged my wounds,
emptied my drains,
made impossible phone calls
and arrangements for the kids.
She cried over the bills,
set up impractical payment plans,
drove me to my appointments
and slept by my hospital bed.
Ask her. She’ll tell you.
She was the one who remained
ever-so-patient when people asked,
“So how’s Jim?”
Family
Two years ago my memoir, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France, was first published.
In the book, which is kind of a common man’s introduction/guide to the absolute craziness that is cancer, I included poems between each chapter. The poems were written during the thick of the battle. One of those poems is a favorite of mine, but it is also one of my most difficult. During the few times I have tried to read it out loud to audiences, I have choked up every time.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, here it is.
family
four will be
three
three will be
two
two will be
one
three bury
one
two bury
two
one buries
three
cruel world where
four
can’t just be
four
and always be
four
That’s a pretty painful poem, because almost all of us have experienced it in some way, and all of us will experience it eventually. That is, the loss of someone in our immediate family. My family, growing up, consisted of six of us: dad, mom, my three sisters, and me. We lost my sister Karyn to a car accident at the age of twenty. So six has become five. If I leave, five will become four.
My other family (the one in which I’m the husband and father) consists of four people: my wife LeAnn, my seventeen year old daughter Maddye, and my fourteen year old son Ford. I wrote the poem “family” while thinking of them, along with my own mortality and the loss of my sister.
It is sad when one of us has to leave. But it may be even sadder for those left behind, especially for that last person, the one who buries all the rest of his or her family.
Although this “Life is Real” series has primarily been about me up to this point, I want you to know that there are three others who are just as much a part of the story as I am. They are, in fact, up to their necks in it. Those people are, of course, LeAnn, Maddye, and Ford. They are my inner circle, the three people I love the most in the world.
Over the next week, I will be writing a tribute to each of them. I want to show you a glimpse of the incredible people that they are. And I want you to know that they too are doing their best to find hope and meaning and guidance during these difficult days.
