April 19, 2021

The radiation oncologist was impressed when I told him about entering (although dropping from) the Black Rock mountain run in North Carolina a few weeks ago (see March 29 post). I said he might enjoy that kind of thing. He laughed. “I don’t think so. I’d rather stay home and drink beer,” he answered. I said that sounded good, too.

He had good news, my new CT scan showed “no evidence of metastatic or recurrent disease.” He pressed on my chest and seemed satisfied. We bumped fists and I was out of there. A couple of days later I was back to see the medical oncologist, who gave me the same upbeat report. “Couldn’t be more pleased,” he said. Me, too. I’ll be back for the next scan in August, then follow-ups with both docs at the Prisma Eastside Cancer Institute. Then the same drill three months later, and so on.

The Eastside Institute here is a graceful two-story place, surrounded by woods and set away nicely from other medical offices. Just off the parking lot is a lovely memorial to those who came to fight the disease, a monument to the sacredness of their lives. The doctors and nurses stepped up for them, staying with the mission through the worst of the pandemic.

They don’t exactly slap your back. With cancer, everything is a maybe, a conditional, an unknown. You can call it remission if you want, but not recovery. My thymic carcinoma, in the recent recurrence that followed loss of a kidney 18 months ago, has a peculiar genetic constitution, not treatable by immunotherapy drugs. “If we see anything on the next scan we’ve got options,” the med-onc added. The genetic analysis he ordered recommended a drug used to treat bladder cancer. “You don’t have bladder cancer,” he added with a smile. I nodded okay.

All cancer patients have their not-great moments, but all I’ve met will give you a smile. I’ve met so many, sentenced to surgery, chemo, radiation, drugs. They all smile, some with a bit of a grimace, but all determined, persevering. Angry, maybe—hard to tell. I met them here and at the chemo and radiation therapy facilities in Woodbridge, Va., waiting to go in or finishing up. Almost always you get the nod and grin, the “hang in there,” as they toss their treatment gowns in the hamper. Nobody complains. Nobody’s got the woebegone look or manner of feeling put upon.

When you’re in that world, you’re researching the problem, constantly. You start with “chemo class” given by a senior staff member to new chemo patients. You sit with others around a table and listen to a lecture on the processes and goals of the treatment, recommended diet, etc. Radiation therapists make sure everyone is well-briefed. All of this is useful, clarifying. Chemo and radiation work together to kill cancer cells as they reproduce. The complication is they also kill healthy cells, producing the sometimes ugly side effects.

The docs now have work-arounds for some side effects. Chemo patients typically get a dose of medicines before the chemo drip kicks in. The medicines put me to sleep for the full five hours. The rad-oncs offer various salves and creams to treat the skin irritation—that is, skin burns. My first rad session, toward the end, was like sitting shirtless at noon in Death Valley. The cream didn’t help.

Staying upbeat was a kind of numbness. Here you are, you didn’t ask for this, but—no wiggle room, get through it. The numbness gets in the way of fear or anger. But in so many others I saw something else: courage.

Two years ago, in Virginia, a young woman had the early morning radiation slot, just ahead of me. When I arrived she was on her way out. She was thin, frail-looking. Breast cancer, she said. There was a quiet smile, every day. She was finishing her month-long stint, but then starting chemo at another facility, showing no fear. You can call it acceptance, going along with the medical conglomerate because, really, there’s no alternative. On her last day she smiled one last time, said “good luck,” and disappeared. It was the same in chemo. Folks took their seats, rolled up their sleeves, started their IVs, and smiled.

Here at Eastside, rad patients flowed in steadily, the schedule was tight. Folks may have been frightened, but they always chatted. I saw old guys like me, elderly ladies, middle-aged people, young, good-looking guys and girls. I saw a woman in a wheelchair, pushed by her daughter, not smiling. She has dementia, the daughter said. She smiled as if for her mom. I saw a guy built like a football player. He grinned and talked football.

They—we—may have picked it up to some degree from the staff. They tried to make us comfortable. But the patients all seemed to have something that led them to smile at and kid with each other. For some it’s a kind of mystery, the sense that I’m here at the brink, I didn’t chose this, but there’s no turning back. Nothing to do but fight. So get on with it. For others, it acknowledges the nearness of God in their lives.

We looked around at each other, knowing what we’re all going through, but that we’re not alone. Cancer is everywhere in America, a scourge of children, teens, young adults, and oldsters. Despite the millions spent on research annually by the best medical institutions in the world, cancer still baffles the professionals.  They achieve miracles, except when they don’t. My younger brother went to Sloan-Kettering for a consult. Months later he was gone. U.S. cancer deaths have declined in recent years. Yet in 2020 some 1,600 people died of cancer every day in the United States.

I walked out of the rad-onc’s office and waved at Daisy, the admin assistant. She smiled her own dynamite smile. “I’ve got you coming back on August 10, right after the scan. Take care!”

Those waiting room smiles say something: I know what you’re dealing with when you walk into that lead-lined treatment chamber and lie down on the slab under that giant, scary machine. I know what you’re thinking when you feel that warm rush of drugs flow into your body. We’re doing this with you. So we whisper, “Hang in there.” And keep smiling.    

April 12, 2021

The sun now rises high and warm nearly everywhere, making the flowers and plants explode from the soil to paint the land with the brilliance of the season. As I’m sure some poet has said, Spring breathes life into the living. Walking through parks, any parks, or driving through towns and cities, any town or city, and inhaling the delicate aromas of Spring lightens the heart of every human person. The sensations may seem superficial or trivial in the face of deeper concerns, they may be short-lived, but they are real and undeniable.

What also is undeniable is the work about it. Spring in its loveliness is a signal to the suburbanites, or many of them, to head to Home Depot and Lowe’s and stand in line to buy new tools, seed, nursery-raised plants, and fertilizer, and deploy for the lawn wars. A lush spread of grass outside your front door is why you moved to the burbs, isn’t it?

I resigned from most lawn duty a couple of years ago. Other than mowing my modest front-yard plot to keep the neighbors happy, I gave up caring what it looked like. For years earlier I laid down new seed in the spring and straw on top of the seed to keep it from washing away, then watched the crabgrass and other stuff devour it by mid-July.

You can avoid that by hiring a lawn-care company to tend your patch of green, meaning seed, fertilize, mow, and snip it. Our Virginia neighbor across the street does just that. Once a week for half the year, around 8 AM, a team of lawn manicurists arrives in a pickup truck, wheel out their giant sit-down mowers, and inside of 15 minutes blast neat new swaths in her lawn. Then they head to the next customer. It’s a volume business, after all. We understood. I never asked her what it cost, whatever it was, it was more than I wanted to pay. Her lawn was beautiful. Ours resembled a World War I battlefield.

Every man who slaves away at his lawn knows what those who don’t also know: lawn care can be addictive, like sugar or caffeine or worse things. Nightmares are made of the sums of money otherwise sane adults allocate to seed, “pre-emergent” herbicides, lime, and the various seasonal strains of fertilizer. Isn’t it necessary, the homeowner asks himself, to use all of them? In their season? Scott, Vigoro, Pennington, and other corporate giants rule their own aisles of the hardware stores. That’s the software, then there’s hardware: the spreaders, mowers, sprinklers (or in-ground sprinkler systems), and wheelbarrels; the power tools—blowers, vacuums, clippers, trimmers; and the hand tools: grass rakes, thatch rakes, leaf rakes, hoses, edgers, weeders, hoes, spades, shovels, pitchforks.

I owned all those things.

A homeowner’s desire to keep his place presentable exerts powerful pressure to acquire a lawn-care warehouse. The thick green lawn is a component of everything else. You have to spend money, after all, on painting, powerwashing, repairing brick facings, vinyl siding, and shutters, cleaning windows and replacing broken ones, cleaning gutters, and so on, with the understandable goal of not letting your house look run down or abandoned. Because the grass or other vegetation that fills the space between the front door and the sidewalk is alive, it requires constant attention. The lawn-care compulsion grows (heh-heh) from that. Hence the lawnmower, for starters. Then the rest.

My recovery started with failure. The soil on our property was naturally poor. Without commercial fertilizer and hours of watering—positioning a sprinkler or spraying with a hose—the expensive grass seed I planted grew feebly, then died. Eventually I decided the weeds that replaced it were green enough. Mowing gave us a minimalist level of suburban acceptability. That was the front. The backyard I surrendered completely. Because it was a steep hill and not visible from the street, when I got sick I quit even occasionally trimming it and handed it over to the weeds. Here, nature was kind. The chickweed, etc., grew sparsely and slowly, giving us the gentle, calming look of a meadow or pasture.

I braced myself for lawn care here, at the new place. We now face a new enemy, a Homeowners Association (HOA) which, in its rulebook, demands lawn accountability. The seller, Miss Jean, bequeathed us a rake, a hoe, a couple of spades. But since we gave away our entire lawn-care arsenal, including the mower, we’re unarmed.

Then I noticed something. All the lawns in the neighborhood look brown and neglected. Unlike our Virginia neighbors, nobody here, even in mid-April, was frantically fertilizing, seeding, aerating, trimming. The thick, heat-resistant zoysia that predominates in local lawns has not yet stirred to green. Its tough, wirelike clumps seem to limit weed growth to dandelions, which dapple our front lawn with their yellow flowers and fluffy seed pods. Once established, they never go away short of a massive herbicide assault.

Lowe’s is teeming with anxious customers who know the territory better than me.  But I called off shopping for lawn tools.

When I moved from Jersey to Nashville in 1975, I took some time getting used to certain Southern peculiarities, even after marrying into a Southern family. The “Lost Cause” thing never worked for me, although it’s still alive and well in Tennessee and in South Carolina. But the slower, more genteel pace hereabouts is okay for us now, as we figure out things more complicated than lawn care. But lawn care will still matter. Ask the HOA.

April 5, 2021

Winter hung on. We stumbled through the move from the apartment to the new house with fewer troubles than some people experience, nothing valuable was wrecked, the power was turned on as scheduled, the neighbors didn’t stand on the sidewalk staring. Not that I’d mind. But then we have no sidewalk. Suddenly it was Easter Week. 

We “attended” Mass on Palm Sunday by watching it on the internet. Easter called us to show up. Last year the churches were shut by covid-19. We tried to set aside the dark memory of the year of pandemic agony. We turned to the eternal Easter message: love, humility, compassion, mercy, hope, the weapons that will defeat evil that returns again and again: 550,000 souls lost to a microbe, a season of political mendacity, spasms of incomprehensible violence.

Hope is the beginning. We pressed forward tinkering with our new living space, prospecting through the garageful of boxes we hauled from the apartment, and before that to the apartment from the Virginia house. We met the neighbor across the street, who welcomed us in her soothing, lilting, regional twang. She grew up near here, she said. She mentioned she long has admired the Japanese maple in our front yard. I turned and looked at it, the branches were bare, but I thought I could see tiny buds. That’s something, I thought.

I kept puttering. The light bulbs in the three-lamp bathroom fixture had been mysteriously snapped off at their sockets; the home inspection missed it. I was able to extract them with pliers after getting a scary electrical jolt that made me yell and throw the pliers up in the air. I realized then I should have turned off the switch.

I looked at the neighbors’ yards to the east, west, and south, saw no one. Not a soul. I hung a few pictures and raked the backyard weeds. I tried hooking up the internet, it didn’t work. I called the company, the fellow checked the account and found the internet had not been connected in the house since 2013. Another message from our seller, the enigmatic Miss Jean. She had decided she didn’t need it. Didn’t need it, so didn’t want it.

Then we left the chores on Holy Thursday, start of the Triduum. We struggled to grasp the truth of the miracle, perhaps this year as much mystery as miracle.  Easter and Passover lift us from grief. The Gospel writers stand against the onslaught of human tragedy, advancing the message of the Resurrection, the central event of history. This year, from John:

“Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

We settled in, along with the complicated memories. I owned up to it: we left good people and places that still hold me. On moving day last week I stood in the empty apartment where we lay our heads for five rootless months and wondered again at the choices that landed us in this compact little house with the squared-off property lines in a two-street subdivision, on the fringe of a city we barely know. Then I shook my head and dropped the retrospectives, which now come so easily. We pushed forward to the next things, the things that matter now.  

We worked at anchoring ourselves: changing addresses, visiting the tax office and the Motor Vehicle Department. Sickness took over: appointments, tests, surgery and recovery, more appointments, more tests. In November, in an auditorium at the downtown parish, we watched Mass on a video screen. We visited the pastor before the operation, he helped me through it. A Pentecostal minister stopped by my hospital room for a chat and a prayer, he submitted a report on his visit to the hospital chiefs. I hoped they approved.  

The evangelical Christian church next door to the apartment sported giant banners: “Overcome the Past,” and “You Belong Here.” The first presumably alluded to South Carolina’s segregationist history. The second was a pitch. They, like their competitors, planned major services this weekend, visitors welcome.

People raced back to the churches, as they stampede back to bars and restaurants. Masks are disappearing, hugs and backslaps are everywhere, celebrating the Savior’s hard work in making things “normal” again. It looks that way. Millions now can brag of having at least one vaccine shot. Chocolate bunnies and jellybeans are back on the shelves. Easter once again brought out the pretty dresses and stylish hats.

Dark clouds rushed in on us midweek, bringing chill and a hard rain. The feds are warning of the spread of covid variants. People are getting sick again.

We showed up for Mass with masks. We thought about those half-million now gone, their families, and all the rest: the victims of cancer and mass shootings.  The choir wasn’t there but the prayers were those of past years, of every year. We knelt and witnessed the recreation of the sacrifice, the prayers of the faithful, the solemnity of the Season, the return of hope. We looked ahead to Spring.

March 29, 2021

Chris was the first to pass me, halfway up the Black Rock trail. Kirk and Paul followed. Bruce and Kevin were farther ahead, but they started earlier. Bruce and Kevin and I were in the first wave, jumping off in darkness to march up that first ascent, the first of many, many ascents on the “Assault on Black Rock” course.

It was Paul’s idea to converge on Sylva, in western North Carolina last weekend, the point being more the reunion of the old THuG running group than the Black Rock mountain climb event. He splits his time between Asheville and Wilmington, near Kirk’s new home. Kevin came up from Florida, Bruce from South Carolina’s Low Country, and I made the leisurely drive up from Greenville. We all registered, along with 125 others. Paul forwarded the course map. I studied it. Looks hard, I thought.

I got to Waynesville, 30 miles west of Asheville on Friday, the day before the run, driving through chilly drizzle with the clouds low over the Smokies. I found the hotel then, with the afternoon free, drove the 15 miles to the start just outside Sylva. I walked a quarter-mile up the trail. This will be very hard, I thought.

That night we got together for dinner and a chance to catch up. All of us but Chris had moved away from northern Virginia, first Paul, then Bruce, Kevin, me, then Kirk. Chris talked about seeing bears on Virginia trials, Paul had his colorful anecdotes. I’ve seen lots of bears, the last now three years ago. I’ve been away from the mountains that long.

In the 6:00 AM darkness at the hotel, the mountain chill penetrated; in the low 30s, I guessed. I pulled on my thermal jacket, but it stretched the straps of my hydration pack. For a seven-mile course most runners would carry a single water bottle, but the docs tell me to drink three liters every day. I needed the pack. I shucked the jacket.

As I gained elevation the cold closed in. My fingers felt numb through my gloves. I remembered my practice of wearing mittens in cold weather so you can pull you fingers together to warm them. No mittens today.

Chris hoofed it past me then turned up another switchback and started running. He’s our greyhound, always has been. He won’t be out here very long, I thought. My philosophy for trails is the old guy’s philosophy: if you can’t see the top, hike. Even the hiking was tough, up, up, tapdancing around the rocks. Other runners passed me, Kirk and Paul scrambled by. “Keep moving,” Paul yelled. No other choice.

The Black Rock trail elevates nearly 3,000 feet in 3.5 miles, the last quarter-mile about a 70-degree slope—almost vertical. Many runners staggered to the summit, took a deep breath and a photo, then hightailed it down in a joyful descent to the start, the fastest guys and gals got a belt buckle, maybe some adult refreshment.

On the steeper switchbacks I paused and drank. Close to the top the trail leveled off for a half-mile. After another turn two Rescue Squad volunteers, in yellow vests, stood near their ATV, apparently waiting for Black Rock victims. One of the team, I learned shortly later, was Josh. I stared at what looked like a gash in the mountain. “Is that the trail?” I asked. “That’s it,” he said, not smiling.  

I grabbed a root, then another, and pulled myself up. Runners descended from above, some leaping in a flying descent. Kirk and Paul slid past on their way down. “Lookin’ good,” Kirk yelled. “Keep it up,” Paul breathed. A few minutes later Bruce and Kevin shimmied down. “Take plenty of breaks,” Kevin warned.

I moved forward, foot by foot, pulling at roots and branches, planting each footfall, the cold taking over. I stopped and breathed, once, twice, pushed on, stopped, stepped forward.  Then I could see the last turn up to the summit. A runner swung down. “You’re shivering. I wouldn’t try it,” he said. He was right, my legs were numb. He and a woman runner helped me down, the Rescue Squad guys put me in their ATV. Josh talked about his experiences in the mountains as we careened down the trail I had just climbed. At the race finish two EMTs led me to their ambulance and checked my vitals. By then I was OK. They let me go.

 I was right about Chris. He brought home a buckle for finishing close to the top of the field.

So that was that. We drove into Sylva for lunch then headed for Asheville, a cute town made famous by breweries and, in recent years, “green” political activism. It had not warmed up. We checked into hotels, got naps, then reconvened for beers and dinner, quads stiffening. The walking helped, but our backs and legs would feel Black Rock in the morning.

We looked back, the way middle-aged and older-than-middle-age guys will do, to reprise life at that rich, happy moment. We got up to date on family, work, new communities, plans for down the road. We talked about the longtime friends who, like us, had scattered for careers, retirement, other things. As always, we invented schemes for the next reunion: back to Virginia for some running event—or maybe somewhere warm. Kevin, our Florida rep, is on board for a beach junket.

We joked a bit about the run, it never was the main event, and the weekend got better as we detached from Black Rock. We showed up, after all, got some fresh air and a mountain adventure, the fitness experience that reminded us of the things we did when we started doing this ten or more years ago. We were younger and stronger and life was simpler, and health problems were only a bad dream. We all get tired more easily now. We all know it. But there we were, together.      

March 22, 2021

The “stimulus” payment landed in our checking account a few days ago, $2,800 for the two of us. We did catch the news report a week ago Friday of the family of five that got $7,000. Whoa. We didn’t have a pandemic when our kids were dependents, and Congress didn’t give stimulus payments for chicken pox or ear infections. But I did remember to thank our grandsons, since they’ll be paying for it.

I guess we’ll use some of it for “transition” expenses: the movers, the painters, the new stuff we need, those things that everyone needs when moving. Then we have to inspire ourselves.  The strangeness of the whole experience hasn’t worn off yet. At our age, settling into a new place brings a sense of the final step, the last big decision. We get the feeling that others are watching to see whether we’ll figure it out.

Our little homestead will be a little different than others in the neighborhood. Up and down the street I see two-car garages open and bursting with mowers, toolboxes, lawn furniture, bikes, sports gear. Giant SUVs and pickup trucks are in driveways or parked in the street. This is the South, after all. We won’t have any of that. My goal, since this is the first home we’ve ever had with a garage, is to use it as a garage. I’ve practiced inching the van into the confined space.

Judging from all the stray bikes and basketball goals, we’ll be the odd childless couple the neighbors will wonder about, the oldsters who didn’t default to some version of a “55 and better” community. My first idea was a secluded place in the mountains. That didn’t work out. When looking for our new nest we drove again and again out into the sticks. We saw Walhalla, we saw Tigerville (is it Tygerville?), Traveler’s Rest, Easley, a few others. What was it about those places that chased me back to the burbs?

I wonder now. Familiarity has to do with it, the odd comfort in stepping out the front door and looking at rows of houses on similar-sized lots up and down the street, kids’ toys littering the lawns, the occasional stroller who waves, the other things about subdivision living that tell us that life here is more or less what we hoped for. “Riverside Glen” is the name of the place, posted on a little sign at the intersection with a busy main street, although no river flows anywhere nearby. I’ve been calling it “Glenwood Estates” or “Woodside Manor” or “Riverwood Acres,” provoking Sandy’s impatience and her sense of “this is the way it is, get used to it.”

The remote places we looked at are on the northern fringe of the state, an hour or more from the city. They are pretty, lush with woods and views of the Blue Ridge. The houses are ranch-style, brick or frame, the lots generally are huge, resembling small farms, a long arms’ length from neighbors. The nearest business is a gas station or a Stop ‘N Go or Dollar General. Small Baptist and other Protestant churches line the country byways. The main highways, U.S. 25 and 276, which take you to North Carolina, are dotted with shacks under six-foot-high signs advertising “Fireworks” and flying Confederate flags. Grocery shopping would mean a ten- or 20-mile drive, minimum.

While speeding past those places you spot several retirement communities that offer through the woods a glimpse of a golf course or a lake, sometimes both. I recall they feature formidable stone walls and a guard kiosk. No locals would be getting in except to make deliveries. I forget the names, but they all have names: “Forest Haven” or “Mountain Aerie” capture the flavor.

I admit it was the same in rural northern Virginia: the more-or-less ramshackle small rural settlements with the modest little stores and churches around the Massanuttens and Shenandoahs are set off by pricey gated places and resorts. High-priced Rappahannock County, dotted with cute tourist spots like Washington and Sperryville, offered as many “Trump-Pence” signs as the boondocks counties farther south. But I never thought much about any of that because, as much as we liked puttering about the antique shops, we never considered moving out there. I drove through them to get to the mountains. The communities themselves were remote and alien.

We go to remote places, and sometimes seek to live near them, to restore something to our lives by being within the solitude of fierce, rocky forests, the Appalachians and their extended cousins. They call us in a mysterious way to learn something about ourselves and our connections to others, to truth, to God. If we’re inclined, we can recall that poor, rough-hewn people lived in those places a century ago, hacking a living from the hostile, rocky ground. They left something of their sense of life, a legacy of reverence for the earth and its connections to something non-earthly, that can restore for us a sense of the goodness, the holiness of life lived in reverence for others. So we keep going to those lonely, beautiful places.

But solitude and mystery and truth can overwhelm, and are best taken in small doses. We looked around the highlands and beyond, then beat a path back to what we know: the outer fringe of the urban world, not at the monster scale like Atlanta or even Charlotte. This place, Greenville, seems about right, and our kids are here. It’s a place I never thought about before they moved here. We took our best shot at what seemed like Shangri-la, country miles from Riverside Glen. But here’s where the journey ended.