The Depression They Didn't tell you about

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present (that I know of), I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

I was taking nice, long strides as I walked to work that morning. I was attempting to clear my head with each step when all of a sudden an emotional tsunami hit & leveled me. I froze in my tracks and found myself openly sobbing while walking down a public street at 8:00 in the morning. In the span of less than a year I'd been diagnosed, lost a woman I loved and my father, along with a good part of my identity and sense of self worth. I could hear low guttural sounds emanating from my own throat that knew I wasn't intentionally making. I could feel the tears falling from my chin and wondered why the God I'd prayed to my entire life had abandoned me. I spent a good minute recomposing myself and then walked on to work where I buried myself in the days tasks.

 I was reminded of a couple with whom I'd gone to church. He was a handsome guy with blue eyes and wavy, dark hair. She was a beautiful, copper colored Filipina with an infectious smile and they always had their two adorable daughters in tow. I can't remember their names, but do remember that one Sunday a month my church would do "coffee & doughnuts" to encourage parishioners to mingle with one another. I would occasionally talk to the handsome couple and their two precocious tots when they told me that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer. I think it may had been uterine cancer but I can't really remember. She was going to begin chemo and she would beat it. I said a prayer for them and wished them well. Over the next few weeks the chemotherapy was taking it's toll on her. She'd lost her hair and resorted to wearing wigs. She'd lost lots of weight. Her dark eyes seemed to slowly sink in their sockets and she appeared more and more frail with each passing week, but Sunday after Sunday she, her husband and children were in the pew in front of me. One Sunday our priest made the sad announcement that she lost her battle. Our section felt empty without he smile and his. Each time I looked at him I saw a man who would have to spend the rest of his life raising two little girls alone whom he'd have to remind how kind and beautiful their mom was. Being a cancer patient sucks, but being the rock for someone with it takes more courage than many people can ever muster.  One Sunday he and his daughters simply stopped coming. I never knew why, but theorized that it was because he found himself questioning why a woman in the prime of her life was suddenly taken.

        Funny thing. Oncologists tell you about the varied side effects that will come with your cancer battle and its treatment but they don't (at least mine didn't) mention one of the very worst i.e. depression. It's as if you're moving into a house that someone else has lived in but you're not told about the mold in the walls, cracks in the foundation, raccoons in the attic or termites slowly eating away at it. They let it be a delightful surprise. Since my "journey" began, one of my therapies has been simply getting up, getting dressed and going to work. Trying to find a little zen in the repetition has been at times cathartic, but the waves of depression hit like artillery during a siege. They always occur without warning, and one never knows either their duration or severity until they've passed. They range from small episodes of self doubt to existential crisies where one has to remind one's self that suicide would solve nothing. 

        One such existential wave hit once while I was in a classroom full of students. The crisis part of my brain which I've never understood took over. It remembered the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and how drill instructors would intentionally say things to make us laugh, smile or simply gaze in their directions then punish us mercilessly either individually or in masse for "breaking the position of attention." I remembered a guy named Drill Instructor Sergeant Mask. Mask was a tall, thin mahogany colored man with a serious expression tattooed on his face. He had the driest, sardonic wit I've ever experienced in my entire life. Literally everything the man said was hysterical. Sometimes we would burst into laughter the moment the man entered a room because we knew he'd say something funny and whenever we did we simply dropped and started doing pushups before he even gave the order. As I could feel the floodgate of my tear ducts about to open I imagined being an 19 year old idiot at the position of attention with D.I. Sgt. Mask just feet away eyeing my continence for a smirk with which he could annihilate me and I prevailed. Losing it in a room full of teenagers would have obliterated my hard earned reputation of emotionless curmudgeon. 

      The V.A. offers limited psychologist visits and on one of those a psychologist suggested a "support group" and I balked at the notion. When asked the reasons for my disdain of the aforementioned I was quick to give my assessment of what I thought a prostate cancer support group would entail.  

1. As most men aren't effected by prostate cancer until later in life, I imagined I would be the youngest one there. I didn't want a group of old men gazing at me and thinking "Oh that poor kid."

2. More than likely I would be the only SINGLE man there. The literature they give you (what little they give you) says: "the best thing you can have when fighting prostate cancer is a supportive partner." As the woman in my life died early into my battle I didn't want to sit there being reminded of her absence.

3. I'd be bombarded by evangelism. I have no issues with praying or prayer, but have always believed that a belief in God is a person decision. I've never imposed my beliefs on others and never wanted others to do the same to me. Sometimes a person in pain just wants you to listen to them or to give them a real world solution to their problem rather than a verse of scripture. You give a hungry man food, not a psalm about hunger to sustain him. 

The young academic convinced me to attend one of the group sessions and as predicted:

a. I was the YOUNGEST man there. The second youngest participant want 65 years old. The majority of the men present were old enough to have been my father and most were Vietnam veterans. Their eyes seemed to regard me as "the kid".

b. Everyone there to a man said how he wouldn't have been able to make it emotionally without his wife, adult children or grand children and how cancer had gotten them closer to their wives and children. As I had neither I could only sit there and bestow "I told you so" glances at the psychologist. 

c. The phrases "I'm a decon in my church", "If if wasn't for the lord", "Iesvs gave me the strength" and varied verses of biblical scripture began going back and forth to the point where I could only gaze at the psychologist and smile. She stopped a prayer circle from forming after a member asked us to bow our heads and join hands.

      To be fair, while I was "the kid" in that session and the only unmarried man I did feel a little kinship with the men present. We were all fighting the same son of a bitch who had thrown our lives into chaos. One guy in the group admitted that he was more prone to rage than depression. I met a woman once who claimed to be a breast cancer survivor who asserted that she never went through the "why me" phase or had bouts of depression. I told this to a female friend of mine who is a breast cancer survivor who said the woman either: a. was on some serious drugs. b. was a delusional, empty headed Mary Poppins knock off or c. was a lying bitch whose response to someone saying they had cancer was to reply "Oh...I had cancer...I beat it...I'm a survivor" when they know they're not in the club. There is however no "universal" cancer handbook. Some of us bottle up our emotions not wanting to burden those around us. Some express them because we're to scared to do anything else & some of us channel them into other things. 

          Three years in and the waves still hit and I never know when they will. They still fill me with self doubt and sometimes make me question the reason for my own existence, but they're no longer as intense as they once were. Maybe the men and women around me are helping me to develop some coping skills. Maybe my subconscious is telling me that while cancer has killed a good part of me and that part of my life is over, that it's entirety has yet to end. Do I still occasionally feel as if a hard wall of emotional water has knocked the wind out of me and that I'm alone on some deserted beachhead having been left to die my my inner demons or what I presumed to be my best self? Yes. Will that feeing ever subside? At this point I can't say but I'll hope it will. 

          In the mean time I can try to remember that those waves have their own schedule but that I can swim even if I can't do so with the proficiency of an olympic athlete. I can remember what a "Bad Bytch" named Leah told me about how "there's no way to do cancer wrong" and that "this club sucks, but in it's ranks are some of the finest people you will ever know" and I can try to reach out to men and women new to our ranks and let them know that those waves will hit, that they can swim and that they're not alone and I can also do the same for my brothers and sisters whom I know are still fighting who occasionally need to be reminded of the same as I'm sure they'll keep doing the same for me.

       

Survival

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present (that I know of), I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

 I've had friends who met the SOB whose name I won't mention whose stories need to be told. Out of respect for their families privacy I won't give their full names.

Arturo: He was a big, gregarious Latino musician & bartender who always seemed to be surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women. I met him through a friend and he and I got to be close after I found out that he and I were born in same week. I was born 20 hours before he was and both too close to Christmas. We'd periodically get together on our birthday and get delightfully hammered. One day he reached out to me and informed me that he discovered he was in "the club" (what I call having the c-word) He had been diagnosed with liver and stomach cancer. Like most men, he didn't like going to doctors. He was having abdominal pains and initially thought them indigestion and ignored it. When it became more severe, he took antacids but when it became too much to bear  he finally went to a doctor and learned of his prognosis. A week later he called to tell me that his cancer has spread to his lymph nodes. If they attempted either radiation OR chemo therapy he would have gone into renal failure.  Two weeks later he was dead. We were born in the same year, in the same week and nearly on the same day and were diagnosed in the same year. 

Courtney: She was a redheaded firecracker from San Diego who always had a cigarette between those pouty lips. She had been a Jaguar saleswoman when there WERE no women selling high performance cars and she made a great living doing it. When I met her she was an adorable hippie living in the Montrose surrounded by crystals who supported her self by teaching Reiki and as one of Dione Warwick's "psychic friends". We drifted apart and I learned of her diagnosis after reading her obituary and reaching out to her daughter.

Bonnie: Bon-Bon was a free spirited blonde who said to hell with it in her 20s and ran off to Puerto Rico where she perfected her Spanish and later went to nursing school there. When I met her she was an avid golfer who lived life with a big L and boasted she had the body of a 30 year old. She was 20. years my senior and occasionally called me on Friday and Saturday nights and simply said: "I feel like going to ____. Meet me there."  We went on a few "dates" that weren't dates and she admitted that she liked looking at me, and my presence kept the men her age who would normally be flirting with her at bay. At one point at the House of Blues a gent her age was flirting with her while I was sitting next to her and she crushed him by putting her arm around me, smiling at him and telling him he was "too old" for her. I reminded her she wasn't an actual "cougar" and she told me "Shut up and be pretty." She had survived a bout of cancer but hers came back and she didn't tell me until a week before the bastard took her.  There was a celebration for her at the country club to which she belonged. She had conditions for attending, guests couldn't wear black, had to have happy memories of her and couldn't be "sad" that she was gone but rather happy they'd know her. I was dressed and ready to go but couldn't stop crying so I wound up not going. 

Al: He was one of the toughest guys and one of the kindest men I've ever met. A native of Detroit and career Army NCO I met him through his lovely daughter who is a friend of mine.  I periodically spent Thanksgiving with him and his lovely wife & daughters. He occasionally mockingly called me "princess" (he was an ex drill sergeant) and gave me a hard time about the length of my hair and various other things but, that was his way of saying he cared. He'd fended off the c-word once before but it returned and took him. I attended his funeral and wore the darkest sun glasses I own. I simply couldn't stop crying. He was a great man who had a beautiful family and I always felt welcome in his presence and in his home.

Donita: A tall, silver haired, blue eyed woman from Arizona with whom I bonded because we laughed that she was the ONLY white woman on the planet named "Donita". She lived near the airport and would invite me over to watch animated, Pixar movies and drink wine. She moved back to Arizona and we occasionally talked. One day I called and she sounded weak when she answered the phone. She told me that she had lung cancer and was in the hospital. I could hear how happy she was in her voice. She told me that she was tired and needed some rest but to call her in the morning. I called at 10 the next morning and her daughter answered the phone. She asked: "Is this Jesse?" I said yes and she told me how her mother had died minutes after my call, but that in the time she was caring for her, she'd never seen her so happy. She thanked me for calling and said that I'd made Donita's final moments happy ones. 

Amy: Amy stood about six foot one and looked like a big cupie doll. She had a short blonde bob cut, drank like a fish and swore like the 7th fleet on shore leave. I jokingly called her the female Bacchus and she laughed and embraced the moniker.  She was a Special Education teacher who became one because she hated practicing law. Once when someone stole my identity and a huge company with whom this person had debts which they were paying with my money refused to simply refund me she simply said: "Oh for F--k's sake." she wrote down one sentence and said "in your next email to them, send this at the end." I did and they asked me if I wanted them to cut me a check OR to wire me my money. She fought three different cancers in her life and the last one took her.  Her daughters remember her as both mom AND the life of the party. 

These are the friends I've lost. I won't mention the family members, but with each of their passings I found myself asking why them? I'm oft told of how high a survival rate my specific cancer has. It's almost as if they're telling me that if cancer is a sport those of us with mine are 2nd string Junior Varsity and shouldn't act like "real" cancer patients, but we read about men like the Martin Luther King Jr.'s son Dexter died of it as have countless black men. With the passing of each of these people especially after my diagnosis (Courtney & Bonnie died before I was diagnosed )  I found myself asking why them and not me? Why did people with so much, charm, talent & charisma die while I'm still here? I've never been married. I don't have any children and think my passing would make little difference, but these men and women loved life and their absences left holes in the lives of many. Moreover, there are small children with types of cancer far more severe than mine who are either gone or not long for this world. Why am I here while they were taken? Do I have some mission of which I haven't been made privy or simply don't understand? Am I wrong for feeling guilty that I'm still here and they aren't?  Why am I here when a man with a loving wife, two daughters and three grand daughters has gone on? Why do I get to go on long pointless walks while a gorgeous nurse doesn't get to save people's lives?

       My friend Leah once told me: "there's no way of doing cancer wrong" but there are times since she's told me that when I've felt as if I am doing it wrong.  A shrink I talked to called it "survivor's guilt" I don't know how to deal with it and truthfully the fact that I don't bothers me even more. I have friends (and family) who are also fighting this bastard. Sometimes we talk about what we're going through, sometimes we simply talk about other things. But as Leah told me, there's no way of doing this wrong, I'm just going to have to tell my subconscious that at some point and hope it listens. 

Euopean? That makes one of us.

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

Downtown and I'm a few feet away from a bus stop. There is a tiny corner in the facade of a building near a door and out of the sight of cameras, I stood attempting to relieve myself praying no cops drove by.  I had found myself having spent the previous night rising every 30 mins to unsuccessfully do the same.  I'm took the bus because I was in too much pain to drive. The second bus on which I waited would bring me directly to the VA's emergency room. It arrived more expediently than I thought it would  and I painfully lurched into the ER a mere 60 yards away.  The bus stop used to be closer to it, but the hospital administrators complained that the busses stopping there somehow inconvenienced them. 

             Upon entry I told a nurse behind a desk my symptoms and she immediately ushered me into a room with a bed and told me that because I'm a urology patient I needed their on-call doctor to consult. I was curled into a near fetal position on the bed atop some odd pad and within minutes a scared 20 something, freckle faced midwestern blonde in scrubs came in. She asked me my name and some other random information then asked me if I'd ever had a catheter. I nodded and she told me that I'd needed one today.  She was an intern. Am I uncomfortable with interns? Not really, her inexperience was glaring and she wasn't filling me with confidence. I needed a Foley catheter. For those who don't know it's a long tube inserted into one's urethra and anchored by a small balloon which stops it from sliding out. There a few attachments involved and apparently our young intern didn't pay close enough attention to making sure one was secure so when she inserted the tube into my bladder she was baptized in an unexpected but predicable gusher of my urine. She stumbled to seal off the opening from which my precious bodily fluids came forth but the damage was done.  She sent me home with a bag on my leg which I was to drain whenever it got too full.  She also screwed up with it's placement so each time I took a step I found myself in serious pain until it was removed days later. 

          Flash forward to a recent Saturday. I found myself standing at a urinal trying to empty my bladder and having no luck but instead was hearing men in other stalls joyfully doing what I could not. I envied the sound of streams hitting water and the accompanying sighs of relief they emitted, but simply had to get out of there  feeling as if I'd been kicked in the stomach. I braved traffic thinking I was having momentary bladder distress, but by the time I made it home I realized that my enlarged prostate (which would have been large even if I'd never had cancer) was squeezing my urethra shut. It occasionally did it, but not this long or this severely. It was one of the things that happened after the procedure which destroyed my tumors, but had never plagued me before it. 

       I painfully drove to the emergency room at one point pounding my dash board with my fist, screaming out in agony and  was quickly processed on arrival with spiking blood pressure.   The on call urology doctor simply told them to give me a catheter and send me home and they did precisely that. A regular catheter drained 24 ounces from my swollen bladder and I was inexplicably given a 24 ounce IV to replace the "fluids" I lost. I questioned this and mentioned that I wasn't dehydrated, I just couldn't pee.  I was dismissed. 

         The following day I found myself going every 20 minutes but barely. By Midnight Sunday I'd completely shut down. I couldn't sleep and every 20 minutes I found myself painfully attempting to perform a bodily function many happily take for granted. At 4am I got dressed and drove back to the ER on a Monday morning and was greeted my a small, muscular Filipino nurse who asked "Weren't you just here?"  She ushered me back into one of the familiar rooms and I heard a nurse given instructions for my treatment from the shift's head nurse. I couldn't see her but she sounded like every elderly, no nonsense black nurse who knew her stuff so I felt as if I was in good hands. She was the woman you simply didn't question. From the other side of the curtain the voice asked me "Baby ...you know you're leaving here with a catheter today right?" I answered "Fine..fine." Within a minute the other nurse came I and slowly and painfully inserted the rubber tube that drained 30  ounces from my bladder over the next few minutes. I was amazed at both the capacity and resilience of my bladder as I looked at the translucent bag and the contents with which I'd filled it. 

           The head nurse came in and to my surprise she was not an elderly black woman but rather a small round, 30ish Asian woman with a wide grin. "Mr. Handy" she said in syrupy Carolina accent "how you feeling' this morning?" I tried not to let my face show my obvious surprise that she didn't look like the character Lavern from the tv show Scrubs or my forth grade teacher. "Much better than when I came in." She smiled and in a reassuring tone continued: "Baby, you're gonna have to keep that in for the next three days while your body adjusts to it. Just come on in on Thursday so urology can take it out okay?" I nodded "Yes ma'am." I know I had to be at least 15 years her senior but her voice was throwing me off and my reply seemed a conditioned response. She handed me a release form and I drove home as many Houstonians started their day. The sun had yet to come up but my mission was to get home and get some much needed sleep. 

         The cancer journey continues. There are people I know who assume that if you're a cancer patient and you're not confined to a bed and howling in excruciating pain that you should be smiling broadly and dancing and being that "positive" person telling the world  how you're "beating" it. There are good days and bad and unfortunately this one one of the bad few, but in the grand scheme of things my situation could be worse and knowing that sometimes is a heavy burden.

A Hard Fall

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

I was staring out the jeep's window watching stalks of sugar cane dance in the wind in fields we passed and I wondered if my ancestors had harvested sugar cane or cotton in those same fields. It was a balmy day in the small central Louisiana town where my father was born and spent the first decades of his life and I was leaving his memorial service.  Driving was my friend "Handsome" Bill. A friend and I call him that because he bears a bit of a resemblance to tv/movie actor Jon Hamm who played Don Draper on the show "Mad Men." Our inside joke being "Hey Bill, when are you going to introduce me to Joan from your office?"

         After going public with my diagnosis I learned some hard lessons, among them was that there are certain people who hear the word "cancer" and immediately presume that the person with it is on borrowed time. Cancer in the minds of many is effectively a death sentence. 1/3 of the people whom I thought were friends disappeared. I would later learn that some simply didn't know what to say so they said nothing and others simply left. I reached out to a former lover and told her of my diagnosis and she said: "Well...good luck with that." A few weeks later she called to apologize and said that she'd lost her mother to cancer when she was growing up in Detroit and couldn't handle the thought of losing someone else. She then quietly vanished. 

     A gorgeous, foul mouthed, buxom, small town blonde I know from California chewed my ass for NOT telling her before I told everyone else. I apologized to her for my being chickenshit in thinking for a second that she wouldn't have been at my side.  A group of my female friends who were in their own battles with breast & pancreatic cancer reached out. and became an online support group whom I lovingly called and still call the "Bad Bytches". A "Bad Bytch" can withstand anything and if they're on your side your odds just went up.

      Then there was "Handsome" Bill. Bill had been the Veterans Counselor at my college. An ex army sergeant who played ball while we were working on the degrees Uncle Sam told us we needed and was an all around decent guy. Upon learning of my health concerns Bill called and said: "Man if you need anything. I'm here." It's been my experience that people oft say that but seldom mean it. 

        I can't say that fall of 2021 was the worst year of my life as I haven't lived my entire life yet, but it was miserable. I had a procedure that made going to the bathroom a miserable chore. The woman who had been by my side had died of the Corona virus within days of being admitted to a hospital and a week later my father died. Because of Covid protocols and because I wasn't a blood relative I couldn't be at her side in the hospital when she died. Out of respect for her memory and her family's privacy I won't say the name of the wonderful woman I lost but will say this. She saved my life. A routine physical indicated an elevated PSA. Let me explain for those unfamiliar with the male urinary tract. Men have a gland called a prostate. it's normally slightly larger than a walnut and is directly beneath a man's bladder and the base of his penis. Canals flow through it which regulate the flow of his urine and well, let's call them male "fluids"  during sex.  When it becomes inflamed or enlarged it starts to produce certain chemicals or antigens specific only to the prostate which are detectable via a blood test. My PSA was high and my doctor encouraged me to get a biopsy. I was reluctant until the now late girlfriend convinced me to get a biopsy and in doing so sent me upon my cancer odyssey. Again, she saved my life. 

       One of the things about the cancer journey that doctors (well at least not our compassionate friends in urology) don't tell you is that depression is a good part of what you'll be dealing with. I was already depressed when a faceless nurse told me over the phone that the woman I cared for didn't make it and less than 10 days later my mother informed me that my father who had been suffering from dementia for the last 4 years had finally been released from the prison that his body had become.  Dad's last wish was to be cremated and enshrined in a mausoleum in his hometown. Upon being told of this by my older sister who had been his caretaker I actually laughed. Dad always saw himself as larger than life and his wanting a big granite monument to himself seemed in keeping with how he'd lived. "Dad was dad." as I liked to tell my mother. 

       On learning that I was going to Louisiana for dad's farewell "Handsome" Bill volunteered to drive from his home in Austin to pick me up and bring me to dad's funeral hundreds of miles away in another state which is how I found myself in the passenger seat of a large jeep staring at a field of sugarcane on our way out of the place I frequently refer to as the "ancestral homeland". Leaving dad's final resting place meant taking a four lane blacktop back to Interstate 10. We were maybe half a mile away from the interstate when Bill broke the silence with "What's your favorite coffee brother?" I give him a confused look and answer "Cafe Du Monde." He smiles not taking his eyes off the road and continued "We're coming up on I-10. Now IF we take a right we can be back in Houston in a couple of hours and this journey will be at an end...OR" he said "we can take a LEFT and in an hour and a half we can be in New Orleans AT the Cafe Du Monde" drinking your favorite coffee and enjoying a beignet." I sat there in disbelief. "The decision is yours. We take a right we're on our way home, we take a left and years from now. you'll be old and grey and in a nursing home telling the story about how you and. your pal Bill went to New Orleans...for a cup of coffee." 

       At that moment I realized that despite the miserable things 2021 had heaped upon me, there were still wonderful people in the world including one of whom who had sacrificed an entire Saturday to drive nearly 1000 miles in a day so that his basket case of a college bud could say goodbye to his father.  There are points in life when playing it safe is the way to go, when one must ignore Robert Frost's advice to take the road less traveled and to stay on the well worn path, but at that moment my friend had emboldened me to "carpe diem" (seize the day) and before we made it to the traffic light which directed us to the interstate and proclaimed "I guess we're taking a left." 

        We made it to New Orleans enjoyed COLD beignets and excellent coffee at Cafe Du Monde while a few charming college girls flirted with us. We were looking pretty good in our suits. Maybe they were just flirting with Bill and I was convincing myself they were flirting with both of us. Who knows.  I even bought a can of their famous French Roast (which I still have) and we drove back at dusk and talked about life,  the universe and everything. Along with dancing on a J-Rail platform on Christmas Eve in Akihabara in Tokyo  with my loving adopted big sister Mami, the detour on the trip home from saying goodbye to dad will forever be one of my favorite memories and I can thank "Handsome" Bill for that and yes ladies he's single.

           The handsome chump was right, I still regale people telling them about the time "[Me] and [my] pal Bill went to New Orleans just to get a cup of coffee."And for that I'm eternally grateful.

Happy Anniversary...

 

[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts.  My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] 

Three years ago in March I was wide sitting on a black vinyl chair in a small exam room with walls the color of which I still can't determine. Maybe they're a shade of light green, or perhaps they're grey. I've been to those rooms in the Houston Veterans hospital urology department several times and for the life of me the color of those stupid walls eludes me. Also, whenever I've been there I've been slightly more preoccupied with why I was there. I was staring at a fading chart on the wall of the male urinary & reproductive system and trying to be as positive as I could as I ignored a large silicone model of a penis which sat on a shelf above me.

                 I was a bundle of nerves but was told by the handful of people privy to my being there that despite certain risk factors more than likely the result of my biopsy would be negative. I probably just had something called benign prostate hyperplasia or simply put an enlarged prostate. I'd been wide awake for my prostate biopsy a few weeks earlier. Despite the shots and numbing agents employed it still hurt like hell. The procedure involves inserting a probe into a man's rectum then cutting tiny pieces of his prostate to examine them for cancer cells. Given the level of discomfort a local anesthesia is given but I still felt every cut.  When you reach a certain age, every doctor you see will be younger than yourself. As a man in his 50s I've reached that age. A fresh faced young doctor comes in with a chart and his face is without expression. Seeing young men and women without expression could mean one of many things, exhaustion, suppressed anger, or an unpleasant task ahead of them. He closed the door behind him and sat at the desk on which my elbow rested and said the five words which utterly changed my life. "I'm sorry. You have cancer."

              I've been asked many times since that day what I was thinking when I heard him say it. Did I go through the five stages of grief in an instant? Did I experience denial, depression anger, bargaining and acceptance before I drew my next breath? The best way to describe it would be sitting in the sun on a warm day then suddenly being doused with gallons of arctic water in an instant.  I sat there in disbelief feeling the blood drain from my face. "Are you sure?" I asked in a pleading voice. He nodded his expression still somber. "But" he said "the good news is it's not a fast growing cancer, and the survival rate for it is much higher than it was just a few years ago. It's a very treatable cancer."  Each time he uttered the word it felt as if he were stabbing me. I was in shock.

         "So." he said his demeanor seemingly changing instantaneously. "Let's schedule when we can take out that prostate." He was smiling.  This kid just told me I had cancer cells growing in my body less than a minute earlier and now he was SMILING. Urologists are a bit different from other specialists. Some see themselves as oncologists, many see themselves as surgeons. The truth lies in between, they are however not known for their bedside manner. Surgeons want to cut people open and the men and women whose domains are the kidneys, bladder and reproductive organs do not pass up opportunities to cut people open. I wish the medical school this young man had attended given acting classes so that he would have been able to better conceal his desire to have me on a gurney as he tried to see how quickly he could remove a part of my body. "Is there NO other option?" I asked still in shock. He seemed a little crestfallen that I wasn't ready to go onto an operating table.  "There are" he said trying to hide the disappointment in his voice, "but the prostatectomy is the most effective. You would remove all of the cancer at once. There is also radiation, but I wouldn't recommend radiation for a man your age." I would later research and learn that younger men who get radiation as a prostate treatment are more likely to have issues with incontinence and their colons years later.  "The thing is" he said "right now you have options for your treatment, but before we discuss those we need to schedule an MRI so we can see exactly where your cancer is so we can come up with a treatment strategy. How about next month?" I nodded in silence avoiding his gaze. "Okay" he said "Make an appointment with the front desk on the way out." 

      "Can...I have a moment? I asked. He nodded and replied "sure, just come out when you're ready." I didn't notice his leaving but heard the door closing behind him. In an instant I was quietly sobbing.  I could feel the tears falling from my cheeks as my vision became blurred.  I've no idea how long I sat alone in that room feeling as if a death sentence had just been imposed on me despite the young doctors assurances, but eventually I composed myself and walked out of that room feeling numb. The clerks made an appointment for me to be stuck inside a large magnet and I like an automaton I took the elevator to the first floor and found my way across a parking lot to the jeep in which my lady sat waiting.

          She could see I'd been crying. "Oh God." she exclaimed before I could utter a word. She wrapped her arms around me and my face fell unto her shoulder as I silently wept. "I had skin cancer. You can beat and WILL beat this." she assured me with a confidence in her voice that gave me comfort. I sat up as the tears continue to well up in my eyes, Her placid blue eyes gave me a strange peace at that moment. She grabbed my hand and said "Okay, let's get out of here." We drove off as I asked what every cancer patient asks throughout the journey at some point "why me?"  I had no idea what lay ahead. I won't lie and pretend that I wasn't afraid. I was, but my fear wasn't of my own demise. Years of reading samurai treatises have made me accept my mortality years earlier, but I was afraid of the fact that I was about to face the unknown. I'd just learned that I was about to start fighting for my life against an enemy which had killed men and women far stronger than I have ever been or would ever be, and it scared the hell out of me.

Hate "Cancel culture"? Where were you in 1492?

King Alfonso I ruled the African Kingdom of Kongo on Africa's west coast in present day Angola in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. He converted Kongo to Catholicism and he and his kingdom were recognized by the Portuguese and the Vatican. He was known for his wealth and piety. He built Catholic churches in his kingdom and sent his children to be educated in Portugal.  He built a cathedral in 1491 and after the Portuguese took over his country they let it fall into ruin and claimed it had been used for "primitive rituals."  It was as if he never existed. Chances are if you're not either African OR someone who either majored or minored in history you've no idea who he is.

       Mansa Musa of the kingdom of Mali in the 14th century was the wealthiest man in the world. It's said he was the wealthiest man who ever lived. Ancient maps made in Europe in the 1300s show Musa in the center of Africa seated on a throne holding a golden sphere.  On a pilgrimage to Mecca it's said that Musa lavishly spent so much gold that he literally collapsed dozens of economies.  I'll wager you've never heard of him either.

        Over time The kingdoms of Mali, Congo, Nubia, and Zimbabwe vanished from history and the Ancient Egyptians in North Eastern Africa magically became "Europeans" or "Caucasians". Don't believe me? Go to your local libraries archives and get a history text book from the 1930s, 40s or 50s. Europe started wars in Africa to created a slave trade was to give weapons to both sides of the wars they started and encourage them to bring live, healthy prisoners to exchange for advanced weapons.
       Imagine if during the second world war aliens landed in America and offered the Allies futuristic weapons to fight the Axis and all they asked in return were that we give them German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war whom they would dispose of for us and whom we'd never see again. Would we have taken advantage of it? What if they offered Hitler the same deal and didn't tell us about it? We could simply acknowledge the alien with advanced weaponry in this fictional scenario, OR would could merely simplify it and blame war like people of earth as being entirely responsible lest we offend and "blame" an "advanced" alien culture.


       The American conservative movement in 2020 invented the term "cancel culture" as a means of riling up their base. Like most propaganda it's short, sweet, catchy and easy to remember because of the alliteration. Conservatives invented the term to describe the crescendo of those who've spent decades calling for the removal of Confederate Statues from the American landscape who are finally being heard.
        The men and women who were offended by statues put into place during the hey-day of the Ku Klux Klan (more fun and easy to remember alliteration) in the 1920s and 30s were simply dismissed. In fact the Confederacy being commemorated with these statues in no way resembles the actual confederacy. The creators of the confederacy stated in their letters of secession from the United States that they wished to protect "the institution of slavery", yet amazingly the inventors of the Confederate myth insist that the Confederacy existed to stand up to "big government" and to protect the rights of the individual and small business man. Slaves were an afterthought in the Confederate myth, much like Alfonso I of Kongo and Mansa Musa millions of American slaves whose lives and fates were the only reason the Confederate States of America came into existence were simply "cancelled."

       American history is RIPE with cancellations. The "Thanks Giving" myth illustrates this. When Europeans arrived on what is the present day eastern United States, Native Americans welcomed them. If someone arrived on your doorstep during a hurricane would you bolt your doors and tell them to leave, or would you welcome them? Natives did the later and were surprised when Europeans let it be known that they had no intention of leaving and would in fact take MORE land.
       Save the incidents known as Prince Phillip's war and the French and Indian war it's almost as if the scores of Native Americans who lived along the Atlantic Ocean never existed. They were "cancelled" as it were as they make the narrative of people seeking "religious freedom" somewhat let's say "klunky". People whose religious text says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "whatsover you do to the least of my brothers you do unto me" and "thou shall not kill" look like thieves, murderers and hypocrites if you present them in a light OTHER than sitting at a table having a feast of Thanks Giving with the "noble savages" who had cultures and civilizations prior to the European's arrival.  Cancel them.

         Those crying the loudest of "cancel culture" want to forget "Irish need not apply" signs. They want to forget a culture which seemed to invent new stereotypes and slurs for Italians every other day. History books in these United States don't mention the thousands of Americans of Mexican descent who were in many cases 3rd generation Americans and beyond who were deported TO Mexico.
         We can stick out chest out and boast about the completion of the trans continental rail road in these United States, but conveniently forget that the Chinese who came him to be paid a fraction what white men made to work on the same rail road and faced the same discrimination, lynchings and tailor made racist laws specifically aimed at them.
        The people CRYING the loudest about "cancel culture" are the same people who seem to have "cancelled" the Jim Crow laws that  existed from the 1870s until the last of them was removed in the 1990s from history books and the American collective conscience.  We can acknowledge either a century of laws which prevented men of color from sitting on or testifying before juries, voting, going to school, holding certain professions, marrying certain people, getting bank loans, being protected from blood thirsty mobs intent on murdering them or simply entering a restaurant and having dinner and simply say that people of color never attempted to "assimilate" as groups of immigrants did.  Let's cancel a century of Jim Crow as if it never happened and simply paint Martin Luther King as a guy who wanted to use "white" drinking fountains and bathrooms and sit at the front of buses.  Let's also "cancel" the death threats he received and the fact that someone attempted to blow up the man's house while his wife and children slept.

      My point? The people complaining about a "cancel culture" only find it objectionable if they're not the ones doing the cancellation. 
      

June 2020: The Summer of George

 On May 25, 2020 transplanted Houstonian George Floyd was in a store in his adopted city of Minneapolis, Minnesota attempting to make a purchase.  Store personnel believed the bill with which he attempted to pay to be counterfeit and called police who arrived shortly thereafter.
     Mr. Floyd was taken into custody by uniformed officers on the scene and  security video from multiple angles show him to be complying with the arresting officers. For reasons yet determined officer Derek Chauvin put an already handcuffed Floyd on the ground and placed his knee on his neck until George was begging for mercy and his life but to no avail. It fell on deaf ears and Floyd died from the officer cutting off the flow of blood to his brain and his air supply.

        When video footage of the incident in which onlookers were begging Chauvin to remove his foot from the helpless man's neck went public Chauvin and the other officers present were immediately fired. Days later he was indicted for 3rd degree murder.  Protests and riots ensued in some cases concurrently. While watching the events unfold some only saw protesters, others only rioters. People saw that which they chose to see. They saw that which made them the most comfortable.
       I saw the footage and released a heavy sign.  I've seen this happen so many times it's as if I'm in the Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" and I can describe every event forthcoming because it's happened so many times before.

1. Video is released. Many are outraged, but others will imply that we didn't see what happened BEFORE the cameras started rolling.

2. There will be protests in the streets and a few imbeciles will riot leaving some with a political agenda to try to imply that protesters were violent thugs bent on destruction and not civil rights.

3. The officer will face a grand jury and may or may not go to trial.

4. There will be discussions of race and inequality which will fizzle out as soon as there's a huge news story like a mass shooting or a celebrity wedding or baby.

5. The officers trial will result in either an acquittal, mistrial or hung jury, but in the event that there IS a conviction there will be a lengthy appeal, but during that appeal the officer will be out on bond. After years of appeals a sympathetic judge will uphold the officer's conviction, but commute it to however long the appellate process took. By such time either the indignation from the family of the person murdered will have subsided, or  the public would have lost interest.

6. Another black man is killed by a cop, security guard, neighborhood watch captain or citizen trying to make a citizens arrest and it starts all over again.

President Trump's response to the protest has been to use tear gas on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across from the presidential residence that is the Whitehouse and to tell the nation that our cities need to be "dominated" by the military in a sad attempt at martial law.  In other words IF police brutality IS real we can deal with it later, in the interim lets get on the streets and be brutal and excessive. Simply put the brutal police treatment will cease when the protests of brutal police treatment ceases. OR as the old naval joke said: "The floggings shall continue until morale improves."


Author James Baldwin once said in his essay "The Fire Next Time": “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.” 

I do not believe that black America HATES white America. I believe that there exists an undercurrent of fear and misgivings between us that has resulted in ongoing tension that threatens to suck us into an undertow that could kill us both.

I can't  and don't pretend to speak for black America. Like any group of people we're not a monolith. Our opinions are as varied as the shades of brown in which we come.   The civil rights movement was a century long battle to remove Jim Crow laws enacted in the American south by embittered Confederate veterans after they LOST the civil war.   The purpose of Jim Crow was to prove to the black man that he didn't have to BE a slave legally in order to be the lowest run in society.  Jim Crow laws were entirely economic. Wealthy southern whites allowed them as a means of pacifying their poor brethren. Convince a poor man that another poor man is the source of all of his problems and the odds of both poor men uniting to topple you decreases.
          For a century Jim Crow laws  gave poor southern whites the belief that they were somehow better than blacks by allowing them to deny them access to housing, education and even the right to use a public restroom. While that happened those same dirt poor people never questioned why wealthy whites kept them from country clubs, schools and living in certain areas.  Some didn't question it, others simply were satisfied in knowing that they weren't the lowest on America's totem pole.
     
        The problem with civil rights legislation passing in the 60s and 70s is that many non persons of color don't see it as the PAUSE of rights given in 1865 being removed, but rather that a problem was solved. They believe that racism vanished over night with the passage of a few laws. Those same people probably believe that the entire civil rights movement was about being able to sit in the front of a bus.
       I've never believed in entitlements. When I was eight I asked my dad for an "allowance" and rather than giving me one, he taught me to do paint and dry wall and paid me for working with him.
As a black man in America I've never wanted a "check from the government", "stamps" for food and sure as hell didn't want any damned free cheese.  All I ever wanted and felt I was entitled to was a chance.  I'd like to think that if I apply for a job my qualifications will be viewed as anyone elses.
      I want a justice system which can look at me and another defendant accused of the SAME crime and which treats us the same way and DOESN'T give me a harsher sentence based on the hue of my skin.

        While I love my country I would be remiss if I didn't say that she has racist roots. We are a nation built on land stolen from its indigenous people, who then created an industry of kidnapping the indigenous people of another continent to work on that stolen land. A war was fought over the ability to treat the descendants of those captive people in that state and the right to move them onto NEW lands stolen from the indigenous people.  While claiming to be the land of the free, my country has killed Indians, enslaved and killed Africans then allowed the recreational killing of the descendants of Africans, Mexicans and Asians for the amusement of jeering mobs.

     Are we a racist country today? I don't think we are, but the problem is America is NOT comfortable with it's racist past. My simply MENTIONING the aforementioned will anger many. I'll be accused of being a Politically Correct Thug who is revising history ignoring the prism that is history. I'll be asked to consider the time in which the creators of our country lived. Invariably I'll ask those same people to join me in the 21st century.
    Many non persons of color will defensively say of Indian genocide, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act and deportation of people of Mexican descent BORN in the United States.  "I didn't do it! Why do you keep bringing it up!?"  Odd that the same people may even proudly wave one of the flags of the Confederacy and call it "history" and a source of pride. Who decides what's "pride" and what's "hurtful?"  America has never owned up to her racist past or the inequities embedded in daily life to that end were we to think of it as a football game, the issue of racism has been punted on 4th down after 4th down with the assumption that the next possession will be when it's dealt with.  The problem is it's late in the game and we have no points on the board.
     Entire groups of Americans are marginalized by racism in different forms every day and others either pretend it doesn't exist because they don't face it, allow something in their minds to pretend that they are the true victims OF it, or act as if it lives in a bygone America in which their grandparents lived.  Sadly America's denial of rights to persons of color was replaced by a simple denial about racism and  unfortunately each time we evade the topic and pretend that there is nothing to discuss we ensure that some future generation will be discussing this same topic generations from now.

    In the meanwhile as his summer continues, George Floyd gets to join Travon Martin, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till and scores of black men whose names we'll never know whose only "crime" was being black in America and a victim of someone elses sad, preconceived idea of whom they were.  I can only hope that there will be no future martyr whose name shall become synonymous  with America's grave sin of differentiating degrees of Americanism, but I know it would be foolish to believe it's even remotely possible.  Our history has proven me wrong on too any occasions.