This lasted weeks upon weeks, and I didn’t know what to do about it. 

At some point I recalled that a fellow named Doug Manning had spoken at our church about this issue. Manning used to be a pastor, but now he held himself out as a “grief specialist.” In fact, over the years, he had become a nationally recognized expert in this strange field.

I recalled that Manning had spoken on the subject of grief one Sunday, long before Karyn died. I’d forgotten a good chunk of what he’d said I’m afraid, as I had no grieving experience affecting me at the time. But I did recall this: Doug Manning was real; he was compassionate; he was funny (and that means a lot to me); and he had written a book  on the subject of grieving. Being a big believer in the power of books, I hoped Manning might be able to help me out of my funk.

That is how I came to purchase and then read Don’t Take My Grief Away From Me in the summer of 1992. And boy am I glad I did.

Some books speak to us because the author seems to be reading our souls. Others tell a great story that thrills us to no end. Others are beautifully written by someone with a unique voice. Others remind us of some person, place, or event we hold near to our hearts.

Other books come at the exact right time, hitting upon an important subject just when we needed it most. That was what happened when I read Don’t Take My Grief Away From Me.  The book was speaking my language, addressing issues that had been sloshing around in my mind and driving me crazy. I didn’t know what was “normal” when one was grieving. I knew nothing about the stages of grief. I wasn’t prepared for the cruel things people would say in an attempt to help. And I certainly didn’t know about how others would expect me to “get over it” way before I was ready.

Manning’s book addresses these issues and many others, based upon his many years of assisting grieving families. It is a short read, approximately 125 pages, but it is packed with valuable insights and information.

Over the years I have sent copies of the book to various people who were dealing with grief. You never know if they read the book and found it as helpful as I did. But that’s not the point, of course.

Whenever tragedy strikes someone close to us, we often feel powerless and are unsure about how we could possibly help. A book is a great gift in these situations. Instead of saying, “please let me know if there’s anything I can do,” you simply hand them the book and say “I’ve been thinking about you.”

You can obtain a copy of Don’t Take My Grief Away From Me and other books by Doug Manning at www.insightbooks.com .

“Did you go through with it?”

“How’s it look, Kojak?”

“Hair today, gone tomorrow?”

“Post a picture.”

Stuff like that. People are wanting to see the new me. They’re curious. Inquisitive.

Or they want to get it over with.

But I thought I would wait until John Clanton, the videographer/photographer for this series, has time to do something with the raw footage. After all, he was kind enough to accompany me on my strange head-shaving journey to Zen Salon in Norman yesterday. I want to honor his efforts by giving him a little time to do his magic.

Besides John, it was just Skye (who cuts my hair) and me. Oh yes, there was also some other girl watching, with a somewhat horrified look on her face.

The whole shaving experience was, to be truthful, a little awkward. I was slightly nervous and a bit sad. John was professional about it, but I think he was catching my melancholy vibe. Skye was kind, but I could tell she was feeling sorry for me. In fact, she said “I’m sorry” several times, as if she’d nicked my ear with the razor.

Anyway, it was all over pretty quickly. We started with a “3″ razor, but that didn’t look all that great. So we switched to a “1″. That didn’t look so great either, but it was about as good as it was going to get.

And then, as the last hairs hit the floor, my mad scientist look was gone, and I joined the many thousands if not millions who have gone through this same surreal experience. I tried to play the reporter during the ordeal, for the role of disinterested third party sounded much better than the role of victim. But the mirrors made that difficult, and whenever I caught a glimpse of myself I was anything but disinterested.

Now it’s the day after, and I’m still “adjusting.” Most of the time I’ve had a hat on, but every now and then I’ve gone bare, so to speak.

If you’re curious and want to see me, well, you’re probably going to have to wait or run into me somewhere. My wife and kids have seen me, of course. And I briefly took the hat off for the good folks at NorthHaven Church this morning, for they were kind enough to invite me to do a reading. I also showed the neighbors.

But that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

Tomorrow it’s chemo again, and then I’ll be dead in bed for who knows how long. But by Thursday, if you happen to be in Norman, Ada, or Oklahoma City and you see some pale as a ghost guy with one arm, dark glasses, and a hat, it’s probably me. Or else you’ve stumbled upon the longest of long shots.

You can always check by taking off the guy’s hat and seeing if his head has been shaved by a number “1″ razor.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m., the razor will do it’s magic and my hair will hit the floor. And you won’t have to hear me gripe and moan  about what chemo has done to my hair any longer!

That’s a little more than 30 hours from now.

Will I go completely bald?

Hmmmm… I’m still not sure. My plan is to let Skye, the girl who cuts my hair and has been encouraging the “mad scientist” look I’ve been going with for the last couple of years, to make the call.

The question I’ll pose to her is simple: what will look better? Completely bald or a close-but-not-quite buzz? And then we’ll just git-r-done.

I’ve had a call out for solidarity on my facebook page for a couple of days. “Who’s in?” I asked.

But so far the only people who’ve said they’re willing to join me are a couple of already bald guys or wives of already bald guys on behalf of their husbands.

“It’s no big deal,” people tell me. “Get over it.”

But where are they now, these big talkers, these naysayers, these pooh-poohers?

They’re hiding.

My plan was to have a hat party following the shaving, but alas it looks as though mother nature has decided to drop a major snow storm on the area right about showtime. (Yes, that’s snow in Oklahoma City, about a week before April.)

But my friend Kyle did drop off a hat at my house yesterday, and another friend is promising to send one from Michigan.

And I’m hoping to score an Elvis wig soon. And maybe a Farrah wig too.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. “So… how’s life?”

“Life is a curious mixture of wonderful and awful,” I said.

I wasn’t being philosophical. Right now, life seems to bounce back and forth between breathtaking mountaintops and scary-dark valleys.

My writing life couldn’t be much better. With this blog, as well as new prose and poetry projects, I have more work than I could have ever hoped for or imagined. As far as creative writing is concerned, I’m exactly where I once wanted to be. 

But my health couldn’t be much worse. In the last year, I’ve had cancer in three vital organs. Large tumors remain in my liver, and they are inoperable, according to one of the best doctors in the world. Chemo, which I have every other week, is zapping my energy like never before. Last week, it took me five days till I began feeling good enough to resume normal activities.

However, as a result of my books and this blog, I’ve been fortunate to connect with many people in a very real way. People I don’t even know write and say some of the nicest things, the kind of notes that are good for hours and hours of happiness. Just today I received an email from someone who said they’d passed my cancer memoir on to about ten people. Yesterday, someone wrote encouraging words about the blog and how they enjoy all the stories with humor blended in. An old childhood friend wrote me a nice note, thanking me for the video about a tree we all used to climb. A dear friend from high school sent me a long letter filled with wonderful memories of days gone by. And I chatted with another dear friend who encouraged and cheered me up. 

But there’s another side to all this connecting. Believe it or not, people write mean letters too. They are almost always religious in nature and accuse me of awful things. Today, it was from some guy lecturing me on prayer. He had completely misread or misinterpreted one of my blog entries and felt “compelled” to respond, i.e., he needed to teach a dying man a lesson or two.

Oh well… you get used to it.

But on the positive side, I continue to get a steady stream of speaking opportunities. A couple of weeks ago, it was a fun writer’s group in Norman, then an incredible house concert in Dallas with my friends Nathan Brown and Billy Crockett. This weekend I’m speaking at a church. After that I’m reading at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, OU Law School, a local business, and the Edmond library. Future house concerts and readings are in the works in Wichita, Bartlesville, Austin, and Houston.

Of course public appearance require me to, well, appear in public. This means people I know get to see me slowly disentegrating before their eyes or, if they don’t know me, to form a first impression. This is a bit of a challenge, as my right arm, gall bladder, and hair are gone. I now wear hats as a matter of course, and I’m already dreading the naked mole rat look I’ll be sporting outdoors in the coming months.

Oh well, at least I’ve been able to spend some wonderful time with friends and family recently, collecting what amounts to many years of priceless memories during a short amount of time. At times I’ve wanted to pinch myself and ask, “Does it get any better than this?” Like when I watched my wife lead Whittier’s Math Counts team to the State Championship a few weeks ago. That was a thrill, for she will now coach Oklahoma’s team when it goes to Nationals in Orlando this May. Yea!

But, to be honest, I’ve also been at the end of my rope several times in this same time period. At least three times I’ve sincerely questioned how much more a person can take.  

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Highs and lows.

Up on the mountain. Down in the valley. (Valley so low)

Of course I’m not the only one in the world experiencing pain. I know many of you are too. You’ve written. You’ve called. You’ve told me, face-to-face.

And I’m feeling your pain.  

Why?

Because life is real.

Really good and really bad. 

A curious mixture of wonderful and awful.

Plus, this blog is really about the subject of dying, not religion.  

But it is difficult to completely separate one issue from the other. As I’ve said many times, cancer is by and large a spiritual journey. It will test everything you believe about life, love, God, prayer, meaning, and the seemingly random nature of this world. It will force you to reevaluate where you stand on the most challenging questions life throws at you.

And terminal illness? Even more so. 

The word “spiritual” has a lot of baggage that comes with it. It does not necessarily mean religious, of course. And being a spiritual person is certainly not tied to one particular faith. I come from a Christian background, and my writing will inevitably touch upon that part of my life. But hopefully it will never exclude readers from other faith backgrounds, or agnostics for that matter, for if it does then I would view my writing as a failure.  

Here are two poems from my book Antidotes & Home Remedies that touch upon some of the “spiritual” issues I wrote about last week and hopefully help illustrate my point. Although each springs from my religious experiences to a certain degree, the subject matter of each poem is fairly universal, something that people from all religious faiths could potentially embrace.     

Beatitude

In the chemo room, the wife,
now bald, still serves her husband.
Rising from the infusion chair,
she walks dutifully to the food cart
and selects three juice varieties,
then wobbles back to present them
to her man, who’s there for “support.”

I want to say something mean.
This is my nature in such situations.

But maybe she finds servanthood
soothing, even now when she’s at risk.
Perhaps a sudden switching of roles
would swallow them whole,
would send her over the cliff.
Too much change too soon, you know.

But at a gradual pace we can
get used to anything, even death.

It’s admirable that he’s here at all.
So many are in this alone.
And although he’s just sitting there
reading the paper, providing
brief commentary as she takes
phone calls from her nervous mom
and distressed daughter,
that seems to be enough.

Blessed are the comforters,
for they will be comforted.

The Madness of Miracles

Our friend had suffered a near tragedy.
For two full weeks, her child’s life hung
in the balance while the world prayed.
Even I cried. Even I dialed up the Almighty.
What else could we do with such horrors?

When the tragedy turned in their favor,
I braced myself as explanations emerged,
how God had heard the prayers
and intervened with a miracle. Meanwhile,
I, the unhealed, sat waiting, all alone.

We get these calls, letters, emails, begging us to consider this product, that procedure, this ritual, that prayer. 

Indeed, each week I receive a fairly steady stream of well-wishers who have something that will cure me of the stage IV colon cancer that has metastasized to my liver and lungs. And Alternative Therapies was about how some of those calls or suggestions or contacts can get downright awkward.

Most of the people who make these contacts have their hearts in the right places, I think, but you’ve got to wonder about their brains. Others are undoubtedly snake oil salesmen, looking to make a quick buck off anyone regardless of their situation. (As my friend John used to say, there’s a special place in hell for people like that.) Others may actually have something worthwhile to offer. Problem is you’re never quite sure.  

Just this week, I’ve been contacted by someone with a prayer that has reportedly healed every person who’s ever prayed it. I’ve been contacted by someone about a faith healing group from another country who would come and lay hands on me, if I so desired. Someone else contacted me about a product that has shown great results for people like me, but I was concerned when I saw the word “amway” in the email address.

(By the way I’m not poking fun at any of these people. Honestly. I’m just reporting what has happened.)

Others call and leave a message: “Are you the Jim Chastain that is in the newspaper? Well, if so, you need to call me right away, because I’ve got something you’ll really want to hear.” They always seem to leave a long distance number.

Beep! (That’s the sound of me deleting their message.)

Anyway, I usually get several responses from readers after I post a new blog. Some respond on the Oklahoman site, and some send me emails. But when I posted Alternative Therapies, nobody responded. It kind of bummed me out.

I worked hard on that, I thought. Didn’t anyone find it interesting? 

Perhaps it’s a touchy subject, my search for wellness or the fountain of youth. Perhaps Alternative Therapies wasn’t as funny as I’d hoped it was. It was, I’ll admit, a bit dark.

Perhaps no one knew what to say.

I think we all want to believe there’s a magical (or natural or spiritual) fix for whatever has taken us down. Although my entry was humorous, there was a sadness, a loneliness, behind it too. Can you believe this stuff actually happens? it implied. 

Truthfully though, it rarely bothers me when someone contacts me about a miracle cure. I mean, I’ve become sort of a detached, third-party observer to these things. I listen with fascination, like a reporter who’s on to something big.

That’s not always the case. Sometimes the calls hit me hard for a moment or two. I don’t want to pretend I’m tougher than I am. But for the most part, I don’t mind getting these calls. They are, at the very least, interesting.

But still, you’ve got to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as they say. In other words, you need to listen closely, objectively, unemotionally, so you can put each caller in the proper category.

Category 1 – quack. Category 2 – huckster. Category 3 - possibility.

Here’s a call I received recently that will hopefully illustrate what I’m talking about, this wheat and chaff business. (What follows is a paraphrase of a real conversation.)

“Is this Jim Chastain? From the paper?” the caller asked.

“Uh, yes. I  think so.”

“Well, Jim, you don’t know me, but I have some important information for you. I wasn’t sure whether or not to call, but I thought, what the heck. I’ll just tell you what I have to say and you can decide what to do with it.”

Bad sign number one: The caller did not know me or anyone connected to me. I had no ability to hold him accountable for what he had to offer.

Good sign number one: He wasn’t going to try to force a decision right then. Could be a sales technique, but he seemed fairly genuine.

Bad sign number two: The caller had a folksy style of talking, like a farmer or someone you’d meet over at the county fair. This isn’t bad, per se, but he was, after all, going to give me advice on an issue that modern science had been unable to fix.

“Jim, there’s this clinic just over the border in Juarez, Mexico, and let me tell you, they are doing some amazing things over there. I was just like you. I had cancer and was told I needed chemotherapy and radiation and that I would probably die anyway. But someone told me about this clinic, and I thought, well, what do I have to lose? And so I went over there, and they gave me this natural product, and I’m telling you, six weeks later, the cancer was gone. Completely gone.”

Bad sign number three: The clinic was in Mexico. Not just Mexico, but Juarez, Mexico. In my experience, Juarez Mexico is not the first place you think of when it comes to quality medical care. No, even Mexico would fall someplace way down on the list. Perhaps 62nd or so, just after Turkey.

Bad sign number four: The caller was very unspecific about what type of cancer he’d had. I mean comparing colon/liver cancer with, say, brain cancer or skin cancer is like comparing apples to horse apples.

“I know what you’re thinking, Jim. Mexico? That’s where the desperate people go. But let me tell you, this clinic is different. It started out in Illinois, in 1898. And after awhile, they moved it to Dallas, Texas. But the FDA was getting on their case, because they don’t want it to get out that there’s a natural cure for cancer. So to make it easier, they moved to Juarez.”

Bad sign number five: The clinic had been forced to move at least once, possibly twice, due to FDA concerns.

Bad sign number six: The caller repeated that paranoid tale I often hear about a nationwide conspiracy to keep cancer patients from knowing the truth about a “natural” cure to cancer. The FDA is always the bad boy in these stories, doing its best to send all the money to the doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals.

Bad sign number seven: The caller pronounced Illinois with an “s” on the end. That creeped me out.

“Now Jim, here’s what happened. There was this guy in Illinois who had a horse that he just loved, but the horse got cancer. The vet told this gentleman that he’d have to put the horse down, but the guy couldn’t do it. So he took his horse out to a farm out in the country and let the horse roam around freely. After awhile, the horse started getting better. When this fellow took the horse to the vet, they discovered the cancer was gone! They figured it had to be something out there in the field that the horse was eating, so they went out there and took clippings of everything the horse ate. Then they bottled the stuff up.”

Shall I go on? Why of course I should.

Bad sign number eight: Patient number one was not a human.

Bad sign number nine: The miracle cure is essentially horse feed.

“Now Jim, when you take this stuff, here’s what will happen. After a couple of weeks, you’ll get this bump or boil someplace on your body. Could be anywhere. Now the bump will keep getting bigger and bigger. But don’t mess with it; don’t even touch it. Eventually it will burst open, and this fluid will ooze out of it. That fluid’s your cancer.”

Bad sign number ten: Basically everything I just wrote.

“Now here’s the deal Jim. You just call these people, just call ’em right up, and they’ll get you in the same week. You don’t even have to have an initial exam. I don’t think you have to have a passport to get over there, just a driver’s license. Now it’ll cost you 4,000 bucks, but that’s a heck of a lot less than chemo.”

Bad sign number eleven: the lack of standard medical protocols.

Bad sign number twelve: The money, of course.

The man wanted me to take $4,000 cash to Juarez, Mexico, at a time when Americans have been warned by their government to stay away from border towns, due to violence and kidnappings. Once there, I was to purchase some unknown substance that horses liked but the FDA frowned upon and attempt to get it back into the good ole US of A. Then, I was to consume that unknown product, hoping a gigantic boil would surface on my body and eventually burst, at which time I would be healed.

So, which category do you think I placed this caller in?

Uh-Oh

When a character coughs
in the midst of a movie
a sickness will follow
for all is not groovy.

But alas if there’s blood
then the cougher, most often,
will finish the film
lying dead in a coffin.