5 Days in April - Day 1

April 9, 1998

A time of great sadness.

When I turned my computer on I had two messages from Sandy. One was forwarding a message from Tom Lee saying that he had to speak to me before I left town and one was telling me to call Pat Arnold, my accountant. I called Pat, since April 15 was only 6 days away. She needed a little more information on my songwriting royalties and related expenses for 1997. Basically, she wanted to know how I could spend so much money to make so little. After we hung up, I emailed Sandy and told her I didn't have time to call Tom. I had to go see my dying mother, possibly for the last time.

I carried my bags downstairs, my trusty old leather duffel that my sister Ruby and her husband Harold had given me for Christmas many years ago and a garment bag I got when I bought my truck a few years ago. This was the first time after countless trips home that I would take two bags. Inside the garment bag was a black pinstripe suit, black belt, white shirt, dark blue tie and dress shoes. Funeral attire. The death of a loved one is marked by lasts and firsts. The last Christmas, the last birthday, the last card game. The last Easter. The first time you take funeral clothes to your mother's house.

Raina hugged me goodbye, trying not to let me see the tears in her eyes. She was eight months through a hard pregnancy and the doctor had told her she couldn't travel any more. As we hugged, I felt my child in her belly. I wondered how such a good thing could happen during such a horrible time. Cassidy Rebecca. Cassidy after the Grateful Dead song and Rebecca after my sweet, sick mother. My first child and mom's first grandchild would arrive soon to a world far less happy than it should be. And, possibly, to a world her father's mother had recently departed. Mom was trying to hold on so she could know her first grandchild, even if just for a short time. Depending on the day, I was either sure she'd make it or convinced she wouldn't. Hanging on or letting go had to be a pretty tough choice for a grandmother to be. Watching it unfold was certainly pretty tough duty for a father to be. And one day, I suspected, it would be hard issue for Cassidy. My mother's father died when I was an infant. I never knew him. It didn't bother me when I was growing up. He was just a name I heard and an old photograph I saw once in a while. But as I got older and death and dying became such a theme in my family, I began to miss not having known him.

My father's brother, Ray, drove his car into an oak tree when he was eighteen. I never knew him. My father's mother died when I was a toddler. I never knew her. Daddy lasted until I was eight, before dying a horrible death of lung cancer. I barely remembered him. My grandfather remarried, and his second wife died when I was a teenager. He and I were sitting in her hospital room when she died. We could tell because her leg, which had been involuntarily bending and straightening beneath the covers for days, suddenly stopped. "Two sons and two wives," my grandfather said, "it's so horrible." He lived for a few more years, dying during my sophomore year in college. Mom's brothers died in sequence, all at an early age. C.J, the oldest, first, of a heart attack. Lorenza, the second oldest, of heart attack assisted by a long, slow train that kept the ambulance from getting to the hospital in time to possibly save his life. Finally Ken, the youngest brother, of too much hard living and a broken heart. So I knew death well. It hung over my childhood like a threatening cloud. But this time is was different. Death had set its sights on the one place I hoped it would not go for a long time. My mother.

I drove to the airport, part of a long line of cars leaving downtown Houston for a thousand other places. I looked at a few of the people in the other cars and wondered if they were going somewhere happier than where I was headed. Probably, I thought. At least I hoped so. After my daddy died, I used to pray that my sister and my mother would outlive me. Unless I fell asleep at the wheel or my plane crashed, I was going to do no better than one out of two. I noticed the deep blue sky, the green grass, the blue and red of the Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes along the side of the highway. I wondered if everything would look different after mom was gone. Maybe a little duller in color. Not quite as vivid. I decided things would keep looking the same to most folks. But they would definitely change for me. In fact, everything was already fading a little. Getting just a bit fuzzy around the edges. Even bright colors had hint of gray. Like the Procol Harem song. Like cigarette smoke.

We found out that mom had a brain tumor on the day after Christmas. Raina and I had arrived at mom's house late Christmas night. We were looking forward to spending a few days with mom and Ruby. Everyone was excited about our baby. It was going to be a good Christmas. When we walked through the door, mom was wearing an eye patch. "I have double vision in this eye," she said, "probably due to a sinus infection." Mom had struggled with sinus infections for years. Sensing my alarm, she said "don't worry. Jim did a CAT scan and it didn't show anything. He did an MRI to be sure and we'll get the results in a few days. But I'm sure it's nothing to worry about." I looked at Ruby, who had been home for a few days already, and she didn't look too worried. So I tried not to worry about it. Raina and I wrapped everyone's presents that night before we went to bed. We ordered almost all of our Christmas presents from mail order catalogs and had them shipped to mom's house. It made holiday traveling a lot easier. We had a bunch of clothes for Ruby. A stereo and some clothes for mom. After all the presents were wrapped and beneath the Christmas tree, everyone went to bed. We would have our Christmas the next day. December 26, 1997.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and got ready to have our Christmas. We always open our stockings first. Mom doing one for each of us and the kids jointly doing one for her. She always put little toys and things in our stockings to give us something to play with. We did the same for her. Stockings were a big deal in our family. Mom needlepointed stockings for all of us. One for Ruby, one for me, one for Harold and one for Raina. She even did one for herself after we complained that she had to have one too. Only Harold's empty stocking remained on the hook beside the fireplace. He had gone to Oregon to spend Christmas with his mom and dad. It was the first Christmas in as long as I could remember that Harold wasn't with us. When we were almost through opening our stockings, the doorbell rang. It was mom's friend, neighbor and doctor, Jim Thrailkill. He walked in, greeted Raina and me briefly, and, without sitting down, told mom he had some bad news. "You have a growth in your head," he said, pointing to a spot on the back of his head, just above the neck. "You need to see a neurosurgeon to find out what it is. I have called a guy at Duke and he's expecting your call." He gave us the name and number. I tried to ask some questions about what this meant, but he was evasive. Less that ten minutes after the doorbell rang he was gone. Ruby was crying, I was stunned, Raina looked on silently. Mom tried to put a positive spin on things. "Look, we don't know if this is anything at all, and we're not going to know until I see the doctor. So let's have a good Christmas and open our presents." And that's what we tried to do. We succeeded, sort of. Presents were opened. Hugs were abundant. We went through the holiday motions, but everyone was obviously worried out of their minds.

We went to Duke on the 29th and saw the neurosurgeon. He looked at the MRI and initially thought he could remove the tumor with no problem. "It doesn't look malignant, though you can never tell. Let's go in there with then intention of taking it out and see what we find. We'll biopsy it on the operating table. With a little luck you'll be good as new." He scheduled mom for surgery on Friday of the following week. We were all relieved and reasonably optimistic. As a precaution, the doctor scheduled a chest and abdomen CAT scan, "just to rule out any other problems." We left Durham, thinking that mom would have surgery the following week. It was December 30. On New Year's Day the doctor called and told us the CAT scan had detected a spot on mom's right lung. He wanted us to come back to Duke for a biopsy on Monday. We went back to Durham and mom had the biopsy on Tuesday morning. By this time we were all extremely worried. Our fears were confirmed when the doctor called me at our hotel that night. "Unfortunately, it's a malignant tumor," he said, "the brain tumor is a metastasis from the lung." He had made an appointment for us to see a radiologist the next morning. The next day, we met with him, got the bad news in more detail, discussed the limited treatment options, and headed back home with broken hearts. Ultimately, mom decided to take radiation treatments for the brain tumor at the regional hospital near home. The other choice, and the one I initially favored, was to come to Houston and have treatments at M.D. Anderson. The brain radiation consisted of eighteen treatments, one a day for eighteen straight weekdays. Ruby dropped out of school and moved back home to care for mom. I spent all of January there and commuted on the weekends thereafter. The brain radiation must have worked, as her terrible headaches had subsided, only to be replaced by unbearable backaches where the cancer had spread to her spine. After much consideration and not a little hesitation, mom had begun a second round of radiation treatments on her back.

Mom had convinced herself that smoking didn't kill daddy. That his lung cancer was caused by something else. Bad luck, genetics. Something, anything other than his love for smokes. I don't know about all that. All I know is that he smoked and he died, like millions of other people. Mom still smoked, even though her lung cancer had spread like smoke in the wind through most of her body. As I drove, I could picture her in my mind, sitting on the back porch, bent over in pain. Cigarette dangling from her mouth. Playing Solitaire. Brave, sad and lonely in the face of the storm.

I checked in at the gate and found out that I once again had a middle seat. Long ago, before mom got sick, I would have been very annoyed at this. But by that point most things didn't bother me too much. Things that used to be extremely important to me were just stones in the road. I walked around them to get wherever I was going. But I barely noticed them. And I never picked them up. When they called my row, I boarded the 747 and took my middle seat. It turned out that I was seated beside a woman I had seen several times on the same flight during the past few weeks. Once or twice we had traded magazines. A Forbes for a People. A Readers Digest for a Newsweek. That sort of thing. We chatted as the rest of the passengers found their seats. During the course of conversation, she told me about her job in Houston and her family back in Wilmington. I told her why I was traveling to South Carolina every weekend and that I was about to be a father. She asked what we were going to name the baby. I talked about my sister, Rebecca Ruby, and mom, Mary Rebecca. "Mom, Ruby and Cassidy," I said "One, two three Rebecca's." "My name is Rebecca, too," she said with a smile, "it's a good name." "Yes it is," I said to fourth Rebecca. Soon we were both asleep as our plane flew through and around El Nino. Bouncing along toward South Carolina, where my life began and where my mother's was ending. Living and dying in the time of El Nino.

After an easy landing in Charlotte, I got my rental car, a Toyota Camry with no radio knobs, and headed down Highway 74 towards Monroe. From Monroe the highway would lead through Wingate, Marshville, Peachland and then into Wadesboro where I would turn right onto Highway 52. Highway 52 winds through Morven and McFarlan towards the South Carolina line. Just south of McFarlan you cross the state line. Ten miles later you are in Cheraw, SC. The Prettiest Town in Dixie, according to all the license plates. My hometown. The place of my youth. The place where my father is buried out on Chatham Hill. Beside an empty plot. Daddy bought two when he and mom moved to Cheraw in 1956.

I pulled into mom's garage at 11:45 p.m. Ruby met me at the door, looking tired but otherwise OK. She and mom were playing cards in the kitchen. I walked in and greeted mom with hugs and kisses. Mom seemed to be feeling reasonably well, and was glad to see me. I knelt beside her chair and watched her play. Ruby won, but it was close. After we visited a while, Ruby went to take a shower and I helped mom get ready for bed. Soon they were both sleeping, Ruby quietly in her room and mom loudly and uneasily in hers. Occasionally, she would cough violently. A short while later I laid down on the cot in her room, I fell asleep listening to her labored breaths and her hacking coughs. I wished for happy dreams for her. When she first got sick I had prayed a lot. For her to get well. For the cancer to not be in her bones. For all sorts of things. None of my prayers were answered, so I decided I'd try wishing. At least sometimes wishes come true. So I wished for mom to dream of better times, before things turned bad. That was a long time ago, but I knew she still remembered the good times. She talked about them sometimes when she was high on morphine or some other painkiller. I could remember them too, but I didn't talk about them much. I figured you had to embrace your blues to defeat them. And I was holding mine tight. Right up against me, all the time. I slept on and off, but did not dream.

© 1998 Kent Newsome