Step Over

by John McCaffrey

The best year of Allen Iverson’s life was my worst. Determined to shed a “me-first” image, AI had bought into a team concept under new coach Larry Brown and propelled the underdog 76ers into the 2001 NBA Championship series against the star-powered Los Angeles Lakers. On the way, he had won the All-Star and League MVP trophies, dazzling fans and fellow players with his mercurial quickness and relentless offensive attack. He was relentless and fearless going to the basket against much larger foes, flinging his tat-laden, skinny body into thick seven-footers, finding a sliver of an angle to arch the ball up and under massive arms, taking the invariable hit, and falling, his cornrows glinting in the arena light, like a spent bottle-rocket. The miracle was never that the ball went in, which it almost always did that year, but that he got up off the floor after such a beating. But he did, every time.

For a while that year, I wasn’t sure I’d get up. Not literally, but emotionally. The hit I took was my wife leaving me, and while it might not have been as breathtaking as an AI swoop to the hoop, it had still been a six-year journey together as a married couple, and it hurt to have it end. Basketball helped to relieve the pain: watching, as well as playing. Like AI, I was a guard, and while I held none of his absurd athleticism, I could move well, dribble well, and shoot, I must admit, very well. I excelled in pick-up games, or at least held my own, and while I had never stopped playing once I got married, my forays to the court multiplied, and intensified, after my separation. I literally wore sneakers out, and nearly my knees and feet, but the game, the competition, the sweating and striving, helped me let go of tension, ease depression, and forget my troubles for a while.

Nights were spent scouring the television for games, and, as I had gone to school in Philadelphia (Villanova University) I gravitated toward the Sixers, and, naturally, AI. He was an underdog and so was the team that year, overachieving and winning games in bunches. I identified with them and felt inspired by them—if they could beat the odds and make a run for a championship, I could surely overcome my grief and feel good again. But like an NBA season, it was a long haul—feeling good again, that is. There were times when the grief was overwhelming, and with it came doubt and insecurity. Bouts of sadness led to fits of anger, tears produced clenched fists. I hardly ever felt comfortable, or at peace. I had trouble enjoying things I always enjoyed: reading, writing, even day-dreaming. About the last thing I wanted to do was spend time in my head, but that’s the only place I seemed to dwell, deep inside, a dark place. It was like a self-inflicted prison sentence, and my pain was the warden. Break time from this metaphorical cell came from hoops. The basketball court was “my yard,” a place where I could breathe fresh air, even if it smelled of sweat, where I could loosen my limbs, release anxiety and let go of aggression, where I could feel like myself again, or at least as long as I held “winners.”

---

About the same time the Sixers made it to the NBA championship that year, I was taking steps forward, small, incremental movements of progress, moments when my shoulders would release tension and I would take a whole breath in, rather than just an anxious sip. The growing sense of ease encouraged me to take chances, to be less isolated, to think again about a life lived and not hidden from. To this end, my family had a vacation house out in the Hamptons, in the bucolic town of Wainscott, just a mile from a beautiful beach and the Atlantic Ocean. It was just after Memorial Day, the start of the summer season, and I had a hankering to go there and spend the weekend away from City life. I also was looking forward to playing basketball.

Wainscott, at that time, contained in its small confines one of the few remaining one-room school houses in the country (it since has added a separate building to accommodate an increase in students), and on the grounds was a sun-bleached (and cracked) concrete basketball court. It was here that an evening hoops game was played every evening during the summer. There were no lights on the court, but from early June to late August games would last until darkness, or until the players gave up from exhaustion. I was a habituate of the game, considered it my home court, and must have launched thousands and thousands of jump shots (during contests and alone) at those two rusted rims over the years. There were others who were regulars, but none as regular as me. I lived for the game throughout my high school and college years, never too tired from a summer job or from having too much fun the night before to be first on the court. Graduation from college, moving to Hoboken, getting a full-time job, and, eventually, getting married, limited my time in the Hamptons. But I still put in enough weekends to maintain a presence at the evening game, gaining comfort in its continuance and my place in its history.

---

That Memorial Day weekend, 2001, I left New York City on a Friday afternoon, taking as a mode of transportation the Hampton Jitney, a bus by any name, but one jazzed up, perhaps, by its destination, the haughtiness of the mostly wealthy riders, and the provision of free orange juice and peanuts for the just-over-reasonable fee. The Jitney was good for me because it dropped me in Wainscott, and I could walk to my house. It was something my ex-wife and I liked to do, that walk, easing the transition from the cacophony of the City, the long bus ride (always traffic on the Long Island Expressway), enjoying, finally, the quiet calm of passing under a tree-lined, non-lighted street and, when conditions were right, the distant sound of ocean waves finding the shore. This was the first time in years I had done the trip solo, and, truthfully, the first time I would be at the house alone for such a long weekend. It was a bit daunting, but I comforted myself that it would be good for me, give me time to reflect, and, mostly, play lots of basketball.

Unfortunately, for the first part of the evening, time alone was not good for me. I paced the house as the sun dipped in the sky, starting to feel sorry for myself, thinking about my ex-wife, feeling sad and lonely. I finally called my parents, not wanting to worry them about my state, but to connect and let them know I was safe. Of course, I worried them. I wept openly to my mom and dad, telling them all my struggles. They showed their support  for me, let me know they loved me and that I would be okay, and my mother, in infinite maternal wisdom, told me there was a casserole dish of baked ziti in the freezer. I hung up and felt better. It was enough to give me an urge to take a jog. I laced on sneaks, shorts, T, and with headset on, took off.

I had never run so hard and for so long in my life, not before, and not after. Sweat and fury poured out of me, and when that was extinguished, out came all the other emotions I was holding. By the time I made it back to the house, more than an hour later, covering at least ten miles, what was left inside me, what I felt, was one thing: relief.

I was also starving. Remembering my mother’s suggestion, I took out the ziti and popped it into the microwave. Then I turned on the TV. About the time the ziti was ready to eat, Game One of the Lakers vs. 76ers was starting. According to the announcers, and just about anyone who followed the game, it was going to be rout. So dominant were the Lakers that season (they had won twenty games in a row), and so stellar was the play of their two stars, Shaq and Kobe, and so steady their coach, the renowned Zen-Master, Phil Jackson, that few, if any, gave the 76’ers a chance to win even one game. A sweep, it seemed, was inevitable.

Which was what the LA faithful, including Jack Nicholson and other Hollywood glitterati, were standing and chanting in unison before the opening tip that night at the newly-opened Staples Center: “Sweep, Sweep, Sweep!” The sound of their chanting reverberated throughout the arena, like a Roman Coliseum crowd calling for a fallen gladiator’s head. But as I gorged on ziti, still clad in my sweat-drenched shorts and shirt, it was clear the 76’ers had not gotten the message, were not defeated yet, at least not that night.

And it was all because of AI. Basically, he played out-of-his-mind, doing everything he did all season and more, taking it to the rack with fearlessness, ball-hawking on defense, breaking down defenders and causing uncontrolled chaos on offense. His brilliance willed them to overtime, where he hit the shot that has been since called the “Step Over,” a far-right baseline corner juke of a “j” over a fallen, “ankle-broke” Tyron Lue, the then back-up point guard for the Lakers, and now head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. They were just two of the forty-eight points AI scored that night, butthe most memorable. Sportsmanlike or not, what AI had done, after hitting the j, was take a giant monster-truck stomp over Lue’s prostate body. I saw it not as bravado, but defiance, an unwillingness to concede to a more powerful enemy, a David vs. Goliath triumph (even though Lue was shorter). I stood, and with ziti sauce caked to my mouth, cheered like a maniac. Then I cried. I cried and cried and cried. And at the end, just like my run, what I felt was one thing: relief.

---

I finally did clean up that night: showered, went to bed, and set my alarm. There was supposed to be a special game the next morning, at nine am, and I planned to get there early, to warm up and be ready. But when I got there, and waited and waited, no one showed up. My information had been wrong. There was no game that morning. Rather than go back home and risk feeling depressed again, I ventured to the far right baseline corner and started to shoot jumpers, and, whenever one hit the mark, I emulated AI, lifting my leg up and stomping over my imaginary, but very real foe, feeling, at least for that moment, defiant and in control.

John A. McCaffrey grew up in Rochester, New York, attended Villanova University in Philadelphia, and received his MA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. His stories, essays and book reviews have appeared regularly in literary journals, newspapers and anthologies. His debut novel, The Book of Ash, was released in 2013. His collection of short stories, Two Syllable Men, was published by Vine Leaves Press in 2016. John is also a Development Director for a non-profit organization in New York City, and teaches creative writing at the College of New Rochelle's Rosa Parks Campus in Harlem. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Find him @jamccaffrey.

Living in the Nut House

by Richard Ault

For five weeks last winter, I walked a half mile each morning from the "nut house" to my cancer treatments.

Munson Manor sits at the border of the campus of the Munson Medical Center and the old Michigan State Mental Hospital campus in Traverse City. When the mental hospital officially closed down in 1989, after years of slow decline, it was designated an historic site and preservation efforts resulted in what is currently known as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Munson Manor, now a gracious "guest house" for hospital outpatients and their families, was originally just plain "Building 27", built in 1903 for female mental patients.

Although we live only about an hour away, what with the vagaries of a Michigan winter and the potential for hazardous driving, my wife Pennie and I decided we would rather remain near the hospital for the five weeks of my chemo/radiation treatments and chose to stay at the Manor House.

Traverse City is the heart of one of the most beautiful regions on the planet, situated in northwest lower Michigan at the base of Grand Traverse Bay off Lake Michigan and surrounded by beautiful inland lakes and idyllic towns and villages—a tourist mecca and increasingly a magnet for retirees. Among these retirees, my wife Pennie and I live nearby on pristine Torch Lake. However, as a kid growing up in the 1940s about three hours south in Saginaw, I and most of my friends knew Traverse City simply as the "nut house." As the location of one of the three state "mental asylums," it was where they sent the crazy people. "You should be in Traverse," was an insult we used when one of us said or did something we thought a little wacky.

But that was just the beginning of my long experience with this place.

As an undergraduate at Central Michigan University in the late fifties, I was a double major in English and Psychology, taking a class in Abnormal Psych as a junior and Clinical Psych as a senior. Each year the combined classes took the two-hour bus trip from our Mt. Pleasant campus to the mental hospital in Traverse. We first met in a large conference room and were introduced to a few of the "milder" neurotic patients, who were interviewed by hospital staff and then took questions from our group—sometimes fascinating but fairly tame stuff for the most part. But then came the real horrors of the place. We toured some of the most disturbed wards and witnessed firsthand every form of psychoses imaginable—a scene reminiscent of the infamous Bedlam asylum in London. My gut churned. My mind swam. I concluded that I would rather be dead that suffer serious mental disease.

And then came my dad.

Several years after those field trips, my mother and father, both in their late sixties, were stricken with serious cases of the flu and had to be hospitalized in Saginaw. My mother emerged without further issues. But not my dad. Mentally he was completely fried and put in the Saginaw County Home. Soon I received a call in Kalamazoo, where I was living at the time, from my brother Chuck to come to the Saginaw facility for a "family meeting." We never had "family meetings", so I knew it was serious.

It was the first I had seen Dad since before his bout with the flu and it was awful. He was completely incontinent, wearing diapers, and hallucinating. We, his five sons, were told he was violent and uncontrollable and would not be allowed to stay there. He had never received a formal diagnosis to explain his condition.  The five of us discussed his options. My four older brothers carried most of the conversation, not a surprise as I look back now given that I was ten years younger than my next closest brother. Finally, we voted reluctantly but unanimously that the State Mental Hospital in Traverse City was our only option. Though my brain was flooded with the haunting scenes I had witnessed there as an undergraduate, I fully respected and agreed with my brothers' conclusions.

I only got up from Kalamazoo to visit Dad twice. The first time I rode from Saginaw to Traverse with my oldest brother Jack. We sat with Dad briefly in his ward, a scene much like I had seen in my previous student field trips—scary but perhaps not quite so extreme—or maybe I was just witnessing the place through less innocent eyes. Jack then arranged for us to take Dad out for a short car ride. Along the way, we stopped for ice cream cones and then parked to enjoy them near a beach with a nice view of East Grand Traverse Bay. Dad was in the passenger seat while I was in the back. Jack—who was so much better at this sort of thing than I was—tried to engage Dad in conversation about old times, old relatives, and other normally familiar themes. Dad seldom said anything, and when he did, his comments were not very responsive. Then suddenly he opened the car door and tried to take off. We got him back in the car but the ride was over. Back to the mental hospital.

The second and last time I saw my father, Pennie (my wife to be) and I drove up from

Kalamazoo for the weekend. On Saturday, I met my brother Jim and his wife Arlene at the hospital and the three of us sat with Dad on an enclosed porch adjacent to his ward. I remember little of what we talked about except that several times he complained that someone had been hurting him physically, maybe an orderly. Given his state of mind, we did not know whether to believe him or not. How could we know—he was crazy after all. At one point, out of the blue, he got up from his chair and stood over me. He stared down with a menacing glare as though ready to punch me. Did he take me for his tormentor? Although I had been on the receiving end of his anger more than once as I grew up and remained afraid of him at that moment, I didn't flinch. I stared back directly into his hate-filled eyes. Thankfully, he backed off and returned to his chair. We took no action on his complaints about physical

abuse.

The weekend was salvaged when on Sunday I took Pennie for a drive around Torch Lake. She fell in love with the shades of turquoise on Torch that day, and though it would take years to make it happen, we had found our future home. Soon after our Traverse visit Pennie and I were married and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where about a year later we received the call that my dad had died.

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My niece, Connie Ault Kinnaman, has become a passionate family historian, our own genealogist. She made the unfortunate discovery that it was not just my father who died from an extreme case of dementia, but so too did my great grandfather, my grandfather, and a grand uncle, all at the Traverse City State Mental Hospital. In those days, the disease was most often known as senility or hardening of the arteries. We can’t know  for sure if it was Alzheimer's. As knowledge about the disease has advanced in more recent history, however, we do now know that three of my four brothers were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, as well as three cousins from my dad's side of the family.

While only a small percentage of Alzheimer's cases are thought to be genetic, with my family history I am not comforted by those odds. Until my very recent journey with cancer, the Alzheimer's specter loomed as my only serious health concern as I have aged. I was known to boast that I was the youngest seventy-nine- year old on the planet—at least that I felt that way, leading an active life with no frequent aging issues such as heart disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure.

Despite my claims to good health and fitness, though, I have had a long, rather unfriendly, relationship with my gut, routinely suffering heartburn before new medications virtually eliminated that problem. However, I continued to have frequent night time bouts of acid reflux. That led me some years ago to get an endoscopy, which revealed that I had a condition known as "Barrett's esophagus," in which the lining of the esophagus changes to tissue which is more like the lining of the intestine. About ten percent of us with chronic GERD symptoms develop Barrrett's, and, while it does increase the chances of developing esophageal cancer, my doctors assured me that less than one percent of people with Barrett's esophagus develop esophageal adenocarcinoma.

Nevertheless, I continued to get regular routine endoscopies every three years with no signs of cancer. Until, that is, in November 2015, when my doctor found a tumor near the juncture of my esophagus and my stomach—esophageal adenocarcinoma. So much for those odds. As my doctor attempted to inform me what I now faced by way of a treatment plan, I could scarcely hear, let alone understand, what he was telling me. My brain and my stomach were swirling. The good news was that the cancer was diagnosed early, before I had experienced any of the usual symptoms such as difficulty in swallowing or unintended rapid weight loss.

The first thing I did when I got home was call Max. Dr. Max Wicha was the founding Director of the University of Michigan Cancer Center and is now Director Emeritus. He and his wife Sheila were once our summer neighbors on Torch Lake, owning the cottage next to ours. Max, a world-renowned authority on breast cancer, is also one of the nicest guys I know, and I have long said that, heaven forbid, if I or anyone close to me would ever develop cancer, Max would be the first person I would call. And I did. He told me that their center had one of the best esophageal cancer groups in the country, headed by Dr. Susan Urba. The next day, I received a call from Dr. Urba, a most informative but gently reassuring call. She arranged for me to meet the next week with her and a surgeon, Dr. Rishindra Reddy, to discuss my options.

On December 29, 2015, after a few weeks of tests and further consultations, I had all but the top inch or two of my esophagus removed by Dr. Reddy at the University of Michigan. The procedure also involved stretching and pulling my stomach up to my neck to be reattached to the little bit of remaining esophagus, permanently and radically changing the way I must eat. The surgery was a success and we "celebrated" by spending New Year’s recovering in the hospital. As is standard practice, seven days later I was given a barium swallow test to determine if there were any leaks in the new attachments. I passed with flying colors. No leaks. Normally that would mean hospital discharge and going home the next day; however, the surgical team that appeared at my bedside early each morning noticed that the dressing on my neck incision showed more dampness than they were happy with, a likely indication of some minor leakage. They tried to find a leak by observing me take a drink of grape juice or water each of the next three mornings. No leak. Then, on my soft food diet, one morning I had some yogurt and soft slices of mandarin oranges. When I followed that by drinking some water, my incision let loose and I began to spray through and around my cervical dressing. When I asked Dr. Reddy how it was that I developed a leak despite passing the barium swallow test, he told me it happened about five percent of the time. Those were the odds.

The good news was at least they had determined what the situation was. The bad news was that I had to go home with a feeding tube, able to take nothing in by mouth. Pennie was quickly trained on how to change the dressing twice per day and to provide my medications and nutrition through the tube. We went home the next day with an IV pole and pumps and boxes full of my "formula." In a few weeks, my untrained but loving nurse Pennie got me through. The incision leak healed, and we were ready to move on to the next stage: chemo/radiation at the new Cowell Family Cancer Center at Munson hospital in Traverse City. Just prior to starting chemo I was given a new CAT scan, which showed that I had no signs of cancer anywhere—no lymph nodes, and no other organs. We celebrated by going out for pancakes.

Soon I began five weeks of treatments—chemo each Monday and radiation Monday through Friday of each week. I feared the worst based on stories I had heard about the possible side effects of those treatments. Why, I asked my medical advisors, if my tests showed no cancer, should I go through such an onerous ordeal? Their answer? To increase the odds—the odds of being and remaining cancer free based on probabilities from statistical studies.

So, for five weeks, five days a week, through March and early April 2016, I walked the half mile from Munson Manor to the new Cancer Center across the street from the Munson Hospital: radiation at 8:30 Monday through Friday and a chemo infusion on Mondays.

Thus, I found myself back in the nut house. That is, each of five Sunday evenings we voluntarily checked-in to the old "Building 27", now rechristened Munson Manor, until the following Friday. We slept there and ate our daily breakfasts and other meals there. Beth and Char, the day and night managers respectively, and the rest of the staff could not have been more gracious, professional, and accommodating. The elegant furnishings and quiet halls created a restful atmosphere perfect for patients' families. Because we all fixed our meals in the same kitchen and ate in the same dining room, and because the only televisions were in the public lounge on each floor, we met and got to know other guests.

Richard, with colon cancer, and Bill, with rectal cancer, were there, like me, for chemo and radiation treatments. Women with husbands and men with wives who were in for back or colon surgery. Two new mom's whose premature babies were still in the hospital, breast pumps sitting in the hallway outside their rooms so that they could continue to nourish their little ones. Another mom whose full-term baby was still in the hospital because he was born with pneumonia. Then there was the family of a teenage girl, a high school senior, who was brain injured when, worn out from her day in school and her full-time job, she fell asleep at the wheel of her car and crashed into a tree. Part of her frontal lobe had been removed to relieve pressure and she was put into an induced coma. After a few days, she was taken out of the coma briefly each day and her mother told us how exciting it was the day her daughter first squeezed her hand. The family could not afford the thirty dollars per night to stay long term at Munson Manor, and we and other guests quietly helped them financially as much as we could. The girl's young sister proudly told us how she enlisted several churches in their small town in offering prayers for her big sister.

Each morning I walked from the Manor to the beautiful new cancer center, and, because it was still winter in March and early April, most days I took the short cut through the hospital. As I walked the long main hall, I always mindfully noted the painting at its end—a portrait of James Decker Munson, the first superintendent of the "Northern Michigan Asylum" from 1885 to 1924. He also donated, in 1915, a boarding house to be used as a community hospital, now grown into the regional Munson Medical Center. Every day but Monday, I showed up a few minutes before my 8:30 a.m. radiation appointment. I was in and out in five minutes or so, free for the rest of the day. On Mondays, I hung around for the next few hours for my weekly chemo infusion with Tina, my pretty, funny, and caring infusion nurse. I was usually finished by about noon when Pennie and I went out for lunch. No signs of nausea. No other side effects. Not so lucky to get cancer in the first place, I was, despite my worst fears, very lucky with my treatments.

Each afternoon I took a mile or two walk around the grounds of what once was the asylum, now The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

My first time back at that place after my father's death was several years ago when Pennie and I tried out Trattoria Stella, then a relatively new upscale Italian restaurant in the old Building 50, which was the central building of the old mental hospital and, which is still called Building 50 in its current incarnation. The restaurant is in a lower level, almost like a rathskeller, in what was once the place where they did lobotomies. As we walked from the parking lot to the restaurant, I looked up at the tall windows of the old building, the one I visited in my undergrad psych class days and the one in which I'm quite sure my father died. My mind was haunted by the horrors I had seen there and what had happened there. My stomach churned all over again. I told Pennie I wasn't sure I could eat at all. But I did. And it was good. Since then, Stella has become one of our go-to spots for special occasion dinners such as birthdays and anniversaries.  

In 2008, I took Pennie to Building 50 for her foot doctor appointment and, as I sat in the waiting room, I tried to stream Tiger Woods in the Monday play-off for the US Open that he won playing on one leg. Building 50 these days also houses the Mercato shops, art galleries, and other offices. We have been to Traverse City Film Festival parties there, on the lawn, in the building, and under large party tents. There is also a yoga studio, a bakery, and other eateries. Nearby buildings have been renovated and made into upscale apartments and assisted living facilities. New buildings have sprung up.

Obviously, my feelings about the place have eased. As I went through those five weeks of treatments and daily walks around those grounds, I consciously tried to look at those buildings through a new lens. Epictetus may have said if first—"It is not what happens to you, but how your react to it that matters," but today that bit of wisdom is even shared by football coaches and golf pros. I decided I would try to put a new, less- haunted frame on my vision: this was no longer Bedlam but a setting for growth, for renewal, for living. Sad to say, I was only partially successful in my reframing.

For me, when I looked up at the Disney-like spires, I still often saw the past. Looking up at those tall windows in which the bars have been replaced by mullions, I still often saw the bars. Despite all the best efforts at transformation I frankly still found it a bit creepy. I will grant renewal—important enough in itself—but not transformation.

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The same might be said of me, of course. My life has been changed by cancer, by the drastic reconfiguration of my digestive tract resulting in a radical change in my eating habits that will last the rest of my life. All observable evidence shows that I am now cancer free. For five weeks, we treated a disease we no longer knew I even had. I had now done everything that I could do, my doctors did everything they can do, and together we did everything that medical science says we should have done to ensure that I am and will remain cancer free for life. But there are no guarantees—despite the odds.

So, things are different for me. I must adjust, they say, to "a new normal." But am I, myself, different? I am grateful, of course, that I no longer have cancer, grateful that I am still alive. I am grateful for the doctors and nurses and technicians who provided such superb professional care. On the other hand, I was already mindfully grateful for my life before any of this happened—for my family and friends, for a creative and meaningful work life, for all the fun and satisfaction I have experienced along the way. It was not new for me that I am in love with life—not just my life but with life itself—with the very idea of life. I want stay around to continue to savor life in all of its manifestations as long as I can. I am grateful that my recent journey will enable me to do that for a while longer.

But am I transformed? Not really, I think. Will I, as I know I should, live each day to its fullest? Probably not. Will I spend more time than a sane man should practicing my golf game against all odds of improvement? Probably. Will I waste too much time on Facebook and watching television? Likely. As I try to savor the present moment, I drag all of my past along with me, for better and for worse. The same might be said of the The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

Perhaps transformation is just the wrong metaphor. A better notion might be "transition" or "a work in progress." We, these old grounds and my old self, are not what we were and we are not what we are going to be. We don't even know what that is. Buddha taught that all is impermanence.

So, I find myself with a strange, almost ineffable connection with this old place. I also find it a hopeful one. We are both changing for the better, I hope. We are both, in a way, healing. Nearing the end of my chemo treatments, while sitting in my infusion chair, I read an old Time magazine cover story, "The Alzheimer's Pill: A Radical New Drug Could Change Old Age." Maybe Alzheimer's itself will not be with us permanently. This much I know: unlike some of those of my lineage, I was not "sent to Traverse" to die. I went there so that I could go on living

I lost track of Richard, the colon cancer patient I came to know at Munson Manor, but I have spoken by phone a few times with Bill: his rectal cancer is gone but he must wear both colostomy and urinary bags for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, he expressed happiness that he is cancer free. All the babies who were hospitalized came through healthy and well. The high school senior with the brain damage graduated with her class in June.

One May morning about a month after all my treatments were over and I was feeling fully recovered from my winter's troubled journey, I took my place in "easy seat" on my yoga mat to begin my regular class. Without a thought, without a moment's warning, I began to tear up. It snuck up on me from just below the surface. Pure emotion. Pure sensation. No words attached in that instant, but as the moment passed I realized it was some combination of joy and relief.

I was still alive, and what a wondrous thing that is.

Richard Ault has been a participant-observer in the practice of changing the culture of large organizational systems for most of his working life. Previously he was a teacher and principal at the secondary school level and taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses at the university level. He was principal author of a book on change management called What Works and has published articles, poetry, and short fiction. Consistent with his life's passion for change, he is currently working on a novel about reinventing our political and governance systems. He and his wife Pennie live on Torch Lake in northern lower Michigan. Dick is convinced that he is the youngest eighty-year old, minus an esophagus, on the planet.

Vanishing

by Siri Liv Myhrom

1.

Raymond hasn’t eaten in five days. He will go on dying of dehydration, starvation, and cancer for five more days, and we’ll take turns keeping vigil by his bedside, watching him incrementally disappear until we wish him gone, for his sake and ours.

It will finally happen on a stormy, slate-sky Tuesday afternoon, six people surrounding him, earnestly resting flushed hands on his sallow rawboned limbs.

He’ll breathe in—we’ll wait, holding our own living breath—but no exhale will come. And that will be his exit: mouth slightly agape, eyes steady and skyward, a Renaissance saint in rapture. I will sit for an hour beside him afterwards, almost more in awe of this terrible beauty than in grief, wonder for weeks what he saw, wonder still.

Outside, the crab apple trees will be at their fullest, the arching, wind-blown branches crowded and busy with sturdy white blossoms that keep shaking off the rain.

2.

Four months later, it will be my mother. Some floodgate will open in her brain, some explosion of light and blood at the base of her skull, a bright flash. She will look at my brother and say, I feel so tired. He’ll say, Come in the living room and sit down. She’ll say, But it’s so far, even though she’s only ten feet away from the chair.

Then the blood tide will rise too fast and strong in her brain, and she will drown right there in my brother’s living room, ninety seconds from start to finish.

I’ll sit with her in the hospital room, every part of her that mattered already snuffed out, but in the absence of her, I’ll cling to what’s left: those artist’s hands, the soft flesh of her upper arms, the long, warm space between jaw and collar bone. I’ll sing to her all the hymns I know by heart, the ones she loved, because it is the only way I can figure out what to say to her about what I am witnessing.

Even after the breathing tube is pulled, she will work so hard to die, for hours, through the entire night and into the morning, her whole sternum heaving, the gurgling inhalations and the sour exhalations fluttering and halting. This is a sound, along with my father’s muffled sobbing into her chest, that will relentlessly revisit me in memory.

The last moment will be just that: a moment. She’ll let her breath all out, finally letting go, her ribcage depressed, my ribcage on fire. Nothing but white and the faint beeping in the room. I’ll think, Even if this is it, even if there is no heaven, this painless quiet is enough. The blazing blue September sky outside the window, and all the embered trees, will bow in agreement. 

3.

Jeff will choose to die at home. We will take turns sitting with him during the night, having our own surreal and mundane conversations about ordering pizza, feeding the cat, washing dishes—all this brash talk of living things in the presence of the dying.

Finally, his breath will soften and slow. He will bring his teeth lightly together with each inhale, his mouth barely open, like he is tasting and chewing the very last of life. His new bride, Marti, will put her head on his chest, will hold his wounded head—the source of all this misery, the surgeries and still the insistent tentacles of tumor. She will kiss him over and over, will give him permission to finish this one last meal of air.

And he’ll listen. That last breath will be a holy trailing thread that holds him here one moment and then just releases him into the embrace of some soft compelling Invitation. It will be so tender a passing that she will have to ask, Is he gone? Did he go?

Then in the brittle winter morning light, we will wash his still-warm skin with cloths dipped in a metal bowl of steaming soapy water and lavender oil, a sacred offering on this All Saint’s Day. We’ll dress him, awkwardly heft his bony body from bed to wooden coffin. We’ll weight his eyes with quarters, tie his jaw, arrange his arms and legs, line his body with ice packs, line the coffin with sunflowers and lilies, adorn the room with a summer’s worth of flowers. Other than the rare whispered question, we’ll move mostly in silence, so gently, so gently, knowing we are inside a consecrated moment, that we have stood at the temple door between Here and Not Here.

4.

On a warm June evening, I will open the garage door to get the reel mower, and I will see a baby robin with his head tucked under his wing. I will know something is amiss when he doesn’t startle or try to escape at my approach, when he lets me pick him up with little protest. I won't know how he got in or how long he's been there.

I will take him out in the back yard, hoping the fresh air and close light will revive him. I’ll give him a few eye droppers of water, which he will quietly drink.

My three-year-old will hold him so gently and say, He looks tired. Maybe his momma will come get him soon and snuggle with him. I think she will. But his breathing will be getting erratic by this time, and he’ll keep closing his eyes, and because I believe in telling her the truth about these things, I’ll talk about the fact that he is probably dying. She’ll take this news with a kind of sagely acceptance: it is what it is.

Is his brain hurt? she’ll ask, reaching back almost nine months to the conversations I had with her, when she was two, about my mother. I’ll marvel again at how kids don't miss a thing—and how they resurrect moments and make connections in the weirdest, most clairvoyant ways.

She will go inside to take a bath, and I’ll hold him again, press him up to the warmth and pulse of my neck.

And how can I not think of every creature I have ever loved, every being I’ve held as it left, everyone I love right now with such a ferocity that I hardly know what to do with it? As soon as I commit to sitting in one small moment where I’m paying attention and not flinching or distracting or numbing myself, I’ve committed to sitting with all of it, and it's always a little bit like drowning.

I’ll make a bed for him in the mulchy leaves under the dense hosta. His eyes will be closed and his feet curled, though his chest will still be moving—but I will know by now when there's nothing left to do. There's so much I can't do a thing about except be a witness. And it will seem strange to me, since so much of life is letting go—most of it, really—that it is still such an awfully hard thing to do.

Siri Liv Myhrom is a writer and editor living in Minneapolis, MN with her husband and two young daughters. "Vanishing" is part of a larger nonfiction collection of conversations with grief. She can be found as an occasional guest contributor to the OnBeing blog.

Trousseau

by Lisa Richter

My father has collected us from our scattered lives to huddle here with him. We are in the family home, in the basement, the den of my childhood. My older sister, Lori, stands to my right, my younger sister, Lynn, to my left. We fall into position unconsciously. This is the way it's always been. In countless family photos and events we stretch our smiles, eldest to youngest, me pressed between.

He sets a deep box before us. The aged thick cardboard is embossed with a bronze hue. Paper peels at its edges; dust stripes its lid. Hutzlers, the logo says, a once glitzy Baltimore department store now defunct.

A tabletop fan whirs on a steady swing. A dull, flat light falls from the ceiling bulbs and is sucked into the concrete. The floor is thickly painted to keep the dust down. Anchor straps on the storage shelves keep the danger at bay. Bars on the window keep the bad out.

Forty years ago, this room breathed open and free. I drew highways with chalk on the then raw, unpainted floor. I created magical kingdoms from shelves left mobile. I climbed through that window, always gaping wide.

Strapped to the ceiling beams is my grandfather’s handcrafted seesaw and jungle gym, squeals of laughter memoried deep in their aged wood. Laughter once owned this basement, now gutted. The drone of the fan swells in this strange emptiness where memory pulls. My father’s drying Levis dangle from a strung clothes line, swaying in the pushed air. The A/C runs. It's early autumn, but the air feels icy. A blast from the fan catches me. I shiver.

The box waits, centered within our huddle. Mom’s box. My father taps its lid. “It's time,” he says.

I gasp as the fan pushes another blast across my skin.

My mother died in my old bedroom, four springtimes ago, bathed in the same soft light that I had known as a child. When I arrived that evening, the hospital bed had been dismantled, the drugs and syringes packed, the boxes taped over and brought downstairs, the TV moved back to the kitchen. Only the IV drip remained as a reminder of her presence, the gangly apparatus standing where my Humpty Dumpty lamp once sat.

It's how my father processes life: tidy up and move on, stick fiercely with the positive. Anyone asks, the answer is an upbeat “Can’t complain.”

“Hey, girls,” he says. “Look through this.” He taps the box again. “The last of Mom’s things. And listen, whatever you don’t want, hand it over.” He yanks his thumb in the direction of the driveway as he strides outside to the gaping mouth of the dumpster. The largest one available, it smothers the bottom of the drive. It's filling too fast. In a couple of days, the seesaw and the gym will find their way into it.

This is it. The final weekend. Right now, right here. My sisters and I are to take what we can of what remains, the rest goes. There will be no discussion. The house is sold. The car donated. Truckloads dropped off at the Catholic charity in Baltimore. Taxes paid. Lawyer notified. Inheritance discussed. My father wields a ten page checklist, and he will settle it all, so that we will not be burdened.

He will take his bed, a dresser, his Lazyboy, the family photos, and a small suitcase of clothing and check himself into a senior facility near his church, where he is a beloved elder. Six months ago, my father looked ten years younger than his age. Now he is a withered man, though his smile is still bright. His doctor has said he has a couple months left, maybe six if God allows. He is dying, too.

The tape on the side of the box is yellowed and dried. The fibers barely grab the cardboard. Lori runs her finger under the band, and it releases with a dusty pop. She lifts it slowly, then looks at me and Lynn, offering. We don’t move. She wedges the lid off. Nylon fluff, satin embroidered flowers. A gust from the fan grabs the fabric, tosses its blossoms in a flutter.

The lid slides away. Tissue, brittle and gray, wraps the contents. A card rests on top, my mother’s handwriting.

There is no stopping it now, our descent over the edge. I'm already there, in the barren blue-black where orphaned bodies float, where impressions sink in padded silence, where lungs echo with the swell and shrink of fake breaths, where pulse drags and ticks like a metronome set low, where not a whimper is allowed, not one, because that tear, that first tear, will be the end.

My father slams another item into the dumpster. His will is his strength. When my mother was moved home to die, he selflessly tended to her medication, performing a ritual of injections every two hours day and night, to ease her pain and chemically nourish her. He pushed on relentlessly, unaware that a kiss, an embrace, might have healed so much more.

My sisters and I read the card silently. My wedding trousseau, 1957. Written for us to find. I lift out the fabric, a cloudlike fairytale of full, translucent white. It smells of tired cardboard, but it is exquisite. Two pieces unfold: a negligee gown and a light cover-up. The gown’s tight bodice of woven lace falls to generous yards of sheerness. Wide lace bands flow over the shoulders. The sleeves of the cover-up poof wide, trimmed in satin with a satin tie at the neck, the same airy nylon, the same fullness. The effect is at once both angelic and daring, a holiness awed by sensuality.

Her spirit flies from the box as I hold up the gown, its wrinkles already disappearing. I lay the trousseau garments on the table.

There is a second tissue-wrapped package. Two 1950’s crinoline half-slips unfold. Lori shakes them out, and they bounce open into wide stiff skirts. There is, too, a glamorous scarf hat, also white. Its satin label reads Christian Dior, New York.

A third package contains a silk communion dress, my mother’s from 1936. The veil is included, its delicate lace disintegrating, and a pair of small white gloves with a pearl button closure. We have a photo of my mother wearing this, kneeling in the cathedral receiving communion for the first time, her eyes glistening restless, shining dark like her hair.

 The box is now empty. We stand motionless, unable to close it, or move it, waiting for my father to return and take it away.

The fan swings, its current stirring the abundance of white before us. Lynn finds a loose rosary protruding from some tissue. It slips easily into her pocket. When her son lay critically ill with leukemia at age three, word spread until the entire archdiocese of Baltimore was praying for him. The moment the oncologist gave up, Nicholas regained strength and made an inexplicable, complete recovery.  

My mother was buried on Nicholas’s birthday; my father will be buried on mine. “That makes us special, Aunt Lisa,” he will whisper to me in the approaching spring as we share a seat in a cavernous sedan, his suited young body in black.     

Lynn folds the communion dress, the veil, the gloves. She lays them in a pile behind her. These will be hers. Being touched by grace gives her the right. Lori and I nod.

Lori looks at Lynn, then me. Lori has survived a divorce and stomached already one divide of shared goods. She has learned to be selective and cautious. She lifts the crinoline skirts. “Take them,” I say. “They are perfect for you.” She smiles, relieved. “I’d like the hat, too,” Lori says, looking at Lynn. “It would mean a lot to me.” Lynn grasps the Dior and strokes its sides. She inspects the weave, smells it briefly. After a time, she returns it to the table. Lori takes her pieces, puts them aside.

The trousseau remains. I lift the sheer gown, and it swings before me, flaunting the desires of a woman alive in her skin. I imagine my mother as she once was, the woman in the photos, the electric mind in fabulous clothes laughing with friends and dancing on the boardwalk. The woman she was a lifetime ago, before the silencing began.

I want to believe that it was beautiful for her, at least those initial days of the exuberant freeing from virginity. I want to connect with that spirit, its powerful innocence, its vibrant determination. I want to unfold in its embrace.

My sisters look solemnly at me. Though they will not give up their treasures, they are sorry, sorry for me, sorry that I must retain the trousseau of that first night. It makes them uneasy, this billowing enticer, a participant in our parents’ coupling.

I don’t explain, I don’t have to. This is my right as the one silenced in the middle. I don’t tell them how thrilled I am, that it isn't exactly the gown that I want, but the energy it contains. If I can touch my mother’s essence maybe I can once again find my own truth, and through this, offer my daughter a possibility to claim hers.

~~~

It's evening, and I soak in a rose mint tub. A bubble hovers on my skin. I blow it a gentle puff and it is carried off perilously on an air stream. I pull a toe through the foam at the surface. A fragrant mist rises.

I step from the bath and towel dry, tapping each water droplet until it pops on my skin. I wrap my hair up high and slide the negligee over my warm shoulders. The bodice’s soft lace presses against my breasts. The fabric is forgiving, light as a joyous thought. It's true: my mother was my size once.

I slip into the cover-up letting the satin tie dangle open. The aroma of rose is rich in the soft light. “Mom,” I whisper. “Are you here?”

I spin a pirouette. The fabric lifts, the flowers dance.

~~~

Lisa Richter is a fiction writer and poet and a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Her work has appeared in The Santa Monica Review and is forthcoming in the Squaw Valley Review, Orange Coast Review, and Unbroken. She mentors at WriteGirl, cooks when she’s not writing, and lives hilltop in Laguna Beach, California. She has a daughter and a son.

Kindness

by Sharon Frame Gay

According to legend, angels are mystical, ethereal beings with feathered wings, gauzy gowns, and Mona Lisa smiles. They perform miracles from afar, gently pulling on the strings of our lives to veer us out of oncoming traffic, heal our sick children, or act as messengers for our prayers.

But I have learned that there are angels who fly much closer to the ground, touching our hearts with their kindness in unforgettable ways.

One such lesson arrived on a cold January day, the kind of day when even God was snuggled under blankets, sipping cocoa. He must have fallen asleep on His watch, because the winter skies cracked open with a ticker tape parade of snow, inches upon inches falling on our neighborhood. There was no filter to this storm, but rather a winter snowfall of such abandon that the dog could barely navigate his daily rounds. Absent intriguing scents, snow to his belly, he begged to come in and stretch out by the fire.

My husband, Ben, was huddled under two quilts, shivering. Radiation to his brain left his body regulating devices askew, and he was just shy of hypothermia. We both kept our fingers crossed that the power wouldn’t go out, a common occurrence in our neck of the woods.

By nightfall, the snow miraculously stopped, leaving behind a night blanketed by flinty stars, illuminated by a fresh moon. Outside, the snow glittered, lying crisp and unmarred, several inches covering our yard and driveway. Pretty as it was, there was danger in the cold, and I prayed that the streets would be navigable should Ben have a seizure and require help. As the only driver, and a poor one at best, I felt not a little panic.

As we watched TV in the back of the house by the fire, I heard a scraping noise out front. There was a steady staccato to the sound, interesting enough for me to crawl out from my blanket to peer out the front window.

There, in the moonlight, were several neighbors. Some I knew well, others I had never met. They each had a snow shovel and were quietly shoveling our driveway. I hurried into my boots and coat, grabbed my shovel, and drifted out into the snow to greet them. The world was quiet under the cloak of white, stars so brilliant that they cut holes through the cloth of the night sky, and the moon shimmered on the fallen snow, a spotlight on the faces of those who were there to help. There was little talk, just gentle smiles with a few softly spoken words and the steady shoveling. Working alongside my neighbors I experienced something deep in my soul that expanded out through my blood like tiny bubbles of champagne—a feeling of joy. Snow angels had fallen from heaven and left their mark indelibly on my driveway and in my heart.

As the cold gave way to February, there seemed some hope that spring might join us. But despite the promising slant of light as we crept closer to the sun, Ben’s condition wasn’t improving, and although the days grew longer, our lives felt shrouded in darkness. Ben needed to be moved to a facility. He left our house one dark afternoon in the back of an ambulance, both of us knowing he would not return.

I learned then that the halls of hospice are filled with angels. They occupy the corners of the rooms and walkways. The winter windows are frosted from their gentle sighs on cold panes. Some are there to welcome home the weary traveler, while others hover to support and bring comfort to those destined to be left behind. Candles flicker in the windows of those who have passed, a lighthouse for the angels, a beacon showing the way.

But not all hospice angels tread on heavenly planes. There was the man, a stranger, who spoke to me in the hallway. For a moment or two we were joined by our sorrow, commiserating, exchanging hugs. Then we turned away with sad smiles and resolve to continue our vigil with loved ones. The next morning he came to our room with flowers for me. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said with tears in his eyes. “These are from your husband. He would want you to have them.” I never knew his name, or where he lived, I knew only that he walked on this earth, an angel of bone and sinew.

Angels entered the room each day in the form of nurses, social workers, friends and neighbors. They made blankets to keep Ben warm and put hummingbird feeders outside to attract the tiny birds to Ben’s window. The birds would come, even though the February rains threatened to weigh down their feathers and push them to the ground, still they came, defying all odds, dancing in the wind.

One weary, grey afternoon, I returned home from hospice alone. It had been a sad day. A day of weariness and sorrow, exhaustion and trepidation. I needed to return to the house, feed the dog, pack a bag, get the mail—the everyday duties we must accomplish in the teeth of life’s turbulent changes. The sun was setting as I drove down my street, the hills beginning to darken, another day swallowed up in the great business of dying.

As I pulled into my driveway, I looked up towards my front door and the planter beneath the sidelight window. To my amazement, the planter was filled with bright, colorful primroses, their little faces peering out, illuminated by the last rays of sunshine. They were merry, hopeful, completely unexpected, a symbol of friendship and caring—the perfect gift when my heart was so heavy. More angels had touched me. Lovely neighbors, transforming the twilight in my heart to happiness.

Over time, angels brought us meals, drove us to radiation and chemotherapy treatments, took Ben for little jaunts and out to movies, called, wrote, and visited. Each one touched our hearts in ways that will never be forgotten. In the dark night of winter, these angels gave us wings.

Sharon Frame Gay grew up a child of the highway, traveling throughout the United States and playing by the side of the road. Her dream was to live in a house long enough to find her way around in the dark, and she has finally achieved this outside Seattle, Washington.  She writes poetry, prose poetry, short stories and song lyrics.

The Woman in the Window

by Jean Venable

           

            It seems odd that at a terrible time in my life, the person who helped me the most was someone I didn’t know, someone who was unaware of my existence. She lived in a building across East 76^th Street from me in New York City, our windows directly opposite each other. It was on my third night home after visiting my husband in the hospital that I became aware of her.

            We had received horrible news. “You have a brain tumor,” the doctor told my forty-seven-year-old husband. “It’s in the speech center so it’s inoperable.” As we sat stricken-faced, he proposed a course of radiation that would not eradicate the tumor, but would--as he put it--”shrink the hell out of it,” giving my husband more time. The treatment meant that my husband would have to stay in the hospital for five weeks.

            I made my way home, the streets a blur, to face the apartment we had so happily moved into the week before. Maneuvering through stacks of boxes to the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of wine and took it into the bedroom, setting up camp on a mattress still wrapped in plastic on the floor, to make the dreaded calls. Hearing myself say the words that the doctor had said made them harder to disbelieve. I gratefully accepted one friend’s offer to make some of the calls for me.

            As I returned to the kitchen for a refill, I glanced at the window across the street and that’s when I noticed her. She appeared to be in her mid sixties, with neatly cut gray hair, wearing a dark green robe which zipped up the front. She was headed to a table by the living room window, her headquarters, I was to learn, for her habitual evening’s reading.  It was quite late by now, and few of the other windows in her building were still lighted. As I changed into my nightgown, I found myself appreciating her presence.

 

            The next day my husband started his radiation treatment. We tried not to notice the condition of some of his fellow patients. That night I opted not to call anyone, which would involve reporting things I would rather not think about. I glanced across the street and saw that my anonymous friend had emerged from her bedroom in her reading attire. I was grateful for a form of companionship that did not require answering questions.

            With no appetite, I attempted to eat my dinner, which consisted of a large glass of wine and a linzer torte, the wrapper of which I used as a plate. As I munched, my stomach in knots, I observed the surroundings of my new acquaintance. Her living room was attractive and uncluttered, with dark wooden bookcases on two of the walls. As I looked around my own apartment I realized that the disorder of the unpacked boxes was adding to the grimness of the situation, as was my constant pacing, wineglass in hand, increasingly gravitating back to the bottle of Chardonnay. 

            At the beginning of the second week, it occurred to me to wonder what was in the glass being refilled periodically across the way. The next time the woman headed to the kitchen I turned out the light and grabbed my binoculars. What she was drinking was ginger ale, and I surmised that she was probably feeling a lot better in the mornings than I was.  The next day I made two purchases: a box cutter from a hardware store near the hospital, and on my way home that night, a six-pack of ginger ale from the deli across the street. I began with the box cutter, extricating two table lamps, their warm light an immediate improvement over the glaring ceiling fixture. With the help of the super, I got the mattress out of its plastic shroud and onto the bed frame. At supper, I had one glass of wine and switched to ginger ale.     

            At the hospital the next morning I tried to describe my new relationship to my husband. He regarded me quizzically at first, but grateful for anything that could be of help, came to appreciate this stranger whose order and serenity I was attempting to emulate. He did not encourage me to share this one-sided relationship with others.

            Back at the apartment, I settled into a nightly routine, which began with a call to my husband to report that I was safely home. I had often procrastinated taking my showers in the evening, but I started timing them so that my friend would still be reading when I emerged. I found it helpful, when trying to ward off morbid thoughts, to get into bed and turn out my light while she was still up, revisiting childhood days when I could hear my parents quietly talking after I was put to bed.

            My favorite nights were Saturdays, when the woman’s doorman would bring her the Sunday Times as soon as it was delivered to the lobby late Saturday night. This was a guarantee that she would be up half the night working on what I figured out was the crossword puzzle. If I were feeling desolate, I could crook up on one elbow in my bed, and no matter how late it was, she would be intently bent over, pen in hand, the light of her lamp enabling her to do her puzzle, and me to fall asleep not feeling alone.

            When my husband’s treatments were completed, he was discharged with a prognosis of one year and lived six, during which time we had a son. Our life was now centered in the apartment; shades were pulled at night, and I was no longer thinking about the woman in the window.

            Several years later, shortly after my husband died, some activity across the way caught my eye and I realized that the furniture was being moved out of the apartment on which I had once been so focused. The next morning when I pointed up to her window, her doorman confirmed that the woman had died. She was never to know the measure of solace felt by an anguished young woman who, one long ago summer, kept company with her across the darkness of East 76^th street.

 

Jean Venable was a writer/producer for NBC Network News for 25 years in the Documentaries division and spent the last seven years of her career with the TODAY Show. Now retired from NBC, she writes from Poughkeepsie, NY where she lives with her second husband. She has one son, who is a cameraman for News 12, Westchester, and seven stepchildren.