One Day in the Life of the Cancer Patient and His Wife

A Forest in the Living Room

She does "deep image" photography, for people going through trauma, taking them into nature where they can mourn in the mud and dance their grief under the broad arms of oaks and in the grasses waving silver in the sun, so even though I very much wanted pictures of me with my husband at this moment in our lives, when he is so deeply wounded by his terminal cancer and will never rise from his bed again, I almost told her never mind because we weren't in nature, which has been the top and the bottom and the all and everything to us, all the hiking and skiing and times on the trail ever since we met six years ago, but now we're stuck in his house with its furniture, and curtains over the windows and rugs on a wooden floor, but she said oh, but yes, of course we will, don't worry, don't worry and came to the house with large bins of flowers and ferns and foliage, and unfurled two sod rolls of moss and la them on him, and I said, "Oh, but I don't want it to look like he is buried already!" and she said, "Don't worry; don't worry" and never stopped for a minute Burt moved like a tornado in Kansas creating an Oz, slicing farms into the moss and tiny fir twigs and sprigs of rosemary, attaching a multi-pronged madrone branch to the back of the hospital bed and slinging it with cherry blossoms and draping lilacs purple and white at the top of the bed and white madrone blossoms and yellow Oregon grape util the room smelled musty from the moss and perfumed from the flowers and I sat by my husband's side in all that wonderland and kissed him like Helena her Demetrius, there in that magical forest she had created, like a Puck pouring a love potion into our eyes.

When Death Is around the Corner

          My husband, whom I married eleven months ago, had a return of his cancer a few months ago. It is now terminal, and last week he entered hospice care in his home. As you know if you have been following my blog, we kept our separate homes even after we got married, he in his in Medford and I in mine on the mountain in the Applegate. Now I have moved into his house to be with him during these last days, weeks, or months. 

          The hospice people are wonderful, and the help of our 'round-the-clock caregivers invaluable. Mike is immobile in bed, but his head is clear. So far he is walking that thin edge between enough meds to keep his pain level tolerable but not so many he becomes fuzzy-headed. He uses that clear head to see to end-of-life matters. He has seen to it that his business, which he built up, will continue with the same strength it has today. He has made sure to see the important people in his life. He has been courageous in his decline, generous in his appreciation, and good-humored through it all. He is showing us all how to die well.

          Writing poetry has been one of the primary outlets to my own emotions. So today's post will be two of those poems.

Like a Novice Standing before the Convent Gate

April 15, 2020

Like a novice standing before the convent gate

who thinks, "When I enter that gate

my life will be forever changed,"

I stand at my husband's door

knowing that once I enter

my life will never be the same.

I am surrendering my life not to God

but to my husband

so his last days can be as good

as all the rest of

our short life together.

My plainsong will praise him.

My hymns will rejoice in our love.

Our God will be the holiness in each other.

We took our vows eleven months ago.

Now, like the novice walking through the convent gate

I take a deep breath, smile, and enter with strong steps

to await the hospital bed that will bring him home to die.

Journeys

April 18, 2020

Paul Revere dashed through the countryside

Warning the neighborhoods of danger

Whipping his horse into a lather of hurry

The Apollo astronauts floated 240,000 miles

for three days through the universe

to land on the glorious silver orb of the moon

The voyageurs paddled three thousand miles

portaging 200 pounds and more

for the profit of the Hudson's Bay Company

You and I walked up mountains and down

over pass after pass for thirteen days

and ninety-eight miles in the Dolomites

Now, immobilized and weakened by cancer,

you blast into our spheres of consciousness

with the heroism of ninety Paul Reveres

and the strength of a hundred voyageurs and Apollo astronauts,

as you embark on a journey far beyond

the glorious silver orb of the moon.

Getting through Coronavirus Isolation

          During these times of closures of public spaces, some people have been, for instance, taking virtual tours of museums, which Peter Schjeldahl, an art critic for the New Yorker, says "add insult to injury" because they are "a strictly spectacular, amorphous disembodiments of aesthetic experience." So many people have shifted to working at home that the computer store sold out of computer holding stands and other stores out of goose-neck lamps. One can read books, try new recipes, and I hear that Netflix and Zoom-type apps are making tons of money, so they sure better be donating tons of money to virus research or to small businesses or other places to help those who have been thrust to the bottom of the barrel through no fault of their own, just as the unexpected boon from the bad has come to those companies through no effort on their part. All luck.

          Might I suggest another way to deal with both the lag of time and the need for stimulation? Memorizing poetry is a wonderful distraction. I started with T. S. Eliot's brilliant 140-line poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The subject matter is maybe too close to this our own dismal time, but the poetry, the word usage, is so beautiful it carries through the existential ennui, as it's supposed to do. I walk the hills saying, "Shall we go, then, you and I,/ while the evening is spread out against the sky/ like a patient etherized upon a table?" and "There will be time, there will be time," even though I know full well that it isn't true. 

          Needing something both easier and shorter after memorizing "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," I picked up the gorgeous humor of Edward Hoagland and started in on "His Majesty," which begins, "What does his majesty, Mr. Boombox in my Jeep think/ as he drives down the beach every night at 2:00 a.m./ under the bleached shell of the summer moon/ assaulting all the houses with his rude tunes?" and containing the great suggestion that the "divine peaceful Florida night" might "inflict on the human condition a big flat tire" or "write it a ticket for two thousand years of disturbing the peace." I love saying those words again and again, as I learn the poem.

          And then what could be better than one of Robert Frost's delightful narrative poems? I memorized "Death of a Hired Man" many years ago, so now I decided on another one of my favorites, "Wild Grapes," in which a five-year-old girl is taken grape picking by her brother to a bunch of wild grapes growing in white birches. When he bends the tree down (you remember from "Birches," don't you? how flexible the white birch tree is?) for her to hold onto and pick the grapes out of, the tree "caught me up as if I were the fish/ and it the fish pole," and then she hangs on "with something of the baby grip/ acquired ancestrally in just such trees." It's a delightful tale, but the best thing is the quintessential Frost way of ending with something wise:

                    I had not learned to let go with the hands

                    as I still have not learned to with the heart

                    and have desires to with the heart — nor need

                    that I can see. The heart—is not the mind

                    I might yet live, as I know others live,

                    to wish to let go with the mind

                    of cares, at night, to sleep,

                    but nothing tells me I need learn

                    to let go with the heart.

            Now I'm onto Gerard Manley Hopkins because I love Hopkins, but most of his poetry is full of angst, and I don't want to be reciting angst right now. So I've chosen "Binsley Poplars," which contains the beautiful and wise lines, "Oh if we but knew what we do/ when we delve and hew/ hack and wrack the growing green."

             Where will I go from here? I'm looking at Wallace Stephens (pretty difficult), maybe Mary Oliver. I like the long poems because the memorization part lasts longer. In the meantime, I'll walk the hills with Eliot, Hoagland, Frost, and Hopkins.

                    

Sitting on a Sunny Porch in Medford, Oregon, during the Pandemic

          Warm in the morning sun, I sway gently in the swing on the porch of my husband's house in Medford. Deep yellow Oregon grape blossoms throw waves of perfume through the soft morning air. Sunshine pours down like yesterday's rain. Birds gurgle in the redwood tree planted a century ago in front of the house A man with earbuds walks by, a kerchief tied over his mouth and nose. A neighbor laughs on the phone from her porch. The woman across the street is sitting on her porch, talking with a friend on the steps, six feet away. It is spring in southern Oregon, and, coronavirus notwithstanding, the mood is upbeat.

          A young man glides down the middle of the street on a skateboard. Seeing me on the porch, in my mask, he calls to me, "I forgot my mask and gloves. I'm trying to figure out if I have time to go back for them." I was glad he at least knew he should be wearing them.

Masked

          The occasional car passes, going where? Only essential businesses are supposed to be open, but it amazes (and irritates) me to see how many businesses think themselves essential. The hardware store? Jacksonville didn't even have a hardware store until a few weeks ago, and now the store considers itself essential? Stove store? Auto parts? Bi-mart is a pharmacy and sells groceries, so it is legitimately open, but I could shop there for flower starts and toys, too, if I wanted. The Subaru service center is open; does that mean I could buy a car? The laundromat is open, and the copy shop.

          It seems like just about any business can justify itself as essential.

      I get it. At this point I'm thinking haircutters and massage therapists should be considered essential businesses, too.

See what I mean about the haircut?

         I am in the habit, now, of wearing my mask even if Mike and I are just walking around his neighborhood (staying six feet apart). Doing so makes a statement, reminds people that even though the weather is serene, the virus is still rampant. People tell me they like our masks, which I made from some South African fabric, green with tiny zebras on it. I agree. They are cute.

          People are, in general, patient. They encourage each other with cheerful words and a sense of our commonality of purpose. The pandemic may not be coming to an end yet, but the end is in sight. You can feel it in the spring of your step, the blossoming trees, and the eternal hope of spring itself.

April Is the Cruelest Month

          T. S. Eliot's opening line of "The Wasteland," "April is the cruelest month" comes to mind every April, but this time I've been rereading the poem. It's surprising how much of it is relevant to this particular April. So here's a poem:

To T. S. Eliot on the First Day of April, 2020

You're durn tootin', Mr. Eliot,
that April is the cruelest month—
this year, certainly, when
fear is in every handful of dust
and we latch onto the word of every Madame Sosostris whose
clairvoyance shows crowds of people walking round in a ring,
earring in restaurants, enjoying theater,
playing music in the same room where we can
hear each other without headphones
pleasures we miss this April
when we say, washing our hands, donning our masks,
restraining the urge to rub eyes and scratch noses,
waving to each other from a six-foot distance,
"One must be so careful these days";
when the unreal city is every city
with its ghost streets and its silences which,
in those unreal cities in Europe,
are broken every Wednesday night
with applause from balconies for nurses and doctors,
for grocery store clerks, postal carriers, and gas station attendants.

None of us had thought death would undo so many.

Our nerves are bad at night
frazzled from hours in front of the computer
reading books online, playing games
efforts to keep the kids occupied
our bodies aching for a walk in the parks that are closed
the rubber band of our psyches stretching thin as

April stretches before us
cruel in its unwillingness to promise a date
when we can leave behind the withered stumps of time, 
told upon the walls of our homes, in which we shelter,
longing to know when we can emerge with the lilacs out of the dead land
and regain spring in our step.

Hurry up, please, it's time.
Hurry up, please, it's time.

                                                                 by Diana Coogle

Coronavirus Stories

          I have been moved to tears by the ways people are helping each other during these difficult days. Players in the Rotterdam Philharmonic, for instance, put a video on youtube (google it) of each of them, unable to leave the house, playing with earphones so that they were all playing together. Of all wonderful selections, they played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

          Our joy will not be forgotten.

          In cities all over Europe people have come out on balconies and opened windows at 8:00 in the evening to applaud and appreciate their medical workers. Seeing this phenomenon online, hearing the tumult of applause, will bring tears to your eyes, too.

          Our gratitude will not be forgotten, either.

          The NPR program 1A closes each segment with a call from someone around the country with an uplifting story. A few days ago it was about a postman in a small town who gave $1200 to each employee of a beloved local restaurant. Many of my friends who don't normally use take-out are using it now just to keep their favorite restaurants in business.

          Our generosity will pull us through.

      I am donating back to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic the cost of my now useless tickets, since I won't be going to New York next month, after all, and the performances have been canceled, anyway. Same with my tickets to plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that have had to be canceled. My priority is that our cultural institutions, large and small, like our restaurants and coffee shops, will still be here when we emerge from our houses.

          The most important thing I can do is to stay home, so I do, as much as possible. My husband's medical condition requires frequent trips to the hospital, but I stay in the car and knit while I wait for him.

          Trailkeepers of Oregon has asked that we not go on hikes, not because we can't keep social distance on a trail (though on steep mountain trails, that, too, becomes problematic) but so we don't take risks of twisting an ankle or getting lost or anything else that might use medical resources.

          So even though there's fresh snow in the mountains, I won't be cross-country skiing this weekend. The risk is too great. I'm not a flamboyant skier, but a friend's recent experience has made me think twice about my own behavior. A very good mountain biker and a normally cautious person, and super aware of not taking unnecessary chances during these times, he thought he could safely go for a short and careful ride, but when he got to the trailhead, he found the parking lot full. "People, this is not cool!" he thought, angrily. He decided to take a short, seldom used route before going home and was riding along, slow enough but emotionally distracted, when he crashed, tumbling down the mountain, his bicycle falling on top of him. Fortunately, he didn't have to call on medical facilities, but, see? We think we are safe; we undermine ourselves.

          I can see the distraction affecting me, too. For instance, my usual practice, when I'm ready to take a shower (I have an outdoor shower), is to hang my nightgown on the inside bathroom door and my towel on the door to the outside. After my shower this morning when I reached for my towel, I found that I had hung the nightgown where the towel should be and vice versa. Such unconscious action is a clue to distracted behavior.

          So I stay home, reading, writing, cooking, sewing, knitting, gardening, walking in my own hills. I've joined my yoga instructor's online class. And I stay buoyed by words of friends and family and by the examples that come through the internet of ways people are facing this crisis. Here is one such example, a poem by Donna Ashworth. May it give you the wings of hope we all need these days.

History Will Remember

History will remember when the world stopped

And flights stayed on the ground

And the cars parked in the street

And the trains didn't run.

History will remember when the schools closed

And the children stayed indoors

And the medical staff walked towards the fire

And they didn't run.

History will remember when when the people sang

On their balconies, in isolation

But so very much together

In courage and song.

History will remember when the people fought

For their old and their weak

Protected the vulnerable

By doing nothing at all.

History will remember when the virus left

And the houses opened

And the people came out

And hugged and kissed

And started again

Kinder then before.

On the Mountain during the Coronavirus

          Day is just dawning. A crescent moon has slipped over the mountain, shiny white in a pale blue sky just beginning to throw off the night. When I stepped outside for a piece of firewood from the front porch, I heard the twitter of spring birds. The songbirds haven't arrived yet, but the early twitterers lift my heart. Humpy Mountain, west-facing, is still dark. Left-over snow patches its facade here and there. The sky glows softly behind the mountain.

          Nothing in nature cares that the human world is in the clutches of a cruel virus. (What nature does care about is climate change, but that's another story.) Everything up here on the mountain is as usual. Even that I am here alone is not unusual. I am reminded of the days I lived in my little house, here on the mountain, for so many years without electricity. When a storm hurled its power over my house, I was fine. With my kerosene lamps and wood-burning stove, I never knew when there was a blackout down the road. Life was as usual up here on the mountain.

          The difference now is that I do know that the coronavirus is playing havoc with people's lives down in the valley and collectively with societies all over the world. Like everyone else, I have been affected, not directly by the disease but by its effects. Mike and I had to cancel a planned trip to New Orleans for a stove convention for him, which he was sorry to miss, and, for me, a chance to see what New Orleans is all about. We will cancel our late-April trip to New York, too, since even if we ourselves felt safe, what would we do there, with restaurants closed and events canceled? The New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the off-Broadway play—tickets bought and money down the drain. And I was so looking forward to being in New York City.

          In the face of things, it's not a big deal.

          One person says, "Why are we bothering with all these cautions? We're all going to get coronavirus, anyway." Another person buys fourteen loaves of bread and packages of meat that will last a year. 

          I am at neither extreme, taking precautions without panicking. I wash my hands. I have adequate supplies. I have no need to go into town or take public transportation or be in crowds, which, I understand, don't exist anyway.

          I held a teleconference for the board meeting I chaired yesterday. I talk twice a day with Mike, who is stuck at his house in town (for other reasons, but that, too, is another story). I have my usual work and activities here at my house. I walk up and down the mountain every day. I watch the grouse flowers come into bloom, listen for the birds, take solace and inspiration from the mountain. My family is safe. There is a lot to be grateful for.