happy trails
DESCRIPTION
A man, a boy, and a horse.TRANSCRIPT
“Richard,” Missy had something up her
sleeve. I can tell when she does because of the twinkling in
her big brown eyes. She is a person full of heart and
compassion and the assistant to my Oncological Psychiatrist.
A big, capable gal who deals with life and death every
day. And so kind that when she explains the realities of
death and disease, you smile while she does.
The kind of person you feel lucky to listen to.
“Cindy at Arts in Recovery could really use your
participation in a project. Will you meet with her?”
“Well,” I was blind-sided, left totally empty-handed of
any believable excuse. “Um, I guess. What is it?”
“Oh, you’ll love it, Richard. I already signed you up.
She’ll be over here by the end of your session with Doctor
Dee today.”
“Well, damn Missy.” We’d been playing off one each
other for over three years, “I’m happy to hear I’m all signed
up for this project we don’t know anything about.”
“I just knew you would be,” she laughed her heart-felt
laugh. “Oops, better get in there. Doctor is really booked
today.”
“Just don’t sign me up for any more projects while I’m
seeing Doctor Dee, Okay?”
“Okay.”
I had just been volunteered for. But I had been in the
art gallery business for decades--known to Missy---and I
was envisioning helping people on life support with their
crayon technique and some dreary collages.
This is not the sort of Volunteer Project I could imagine
happily joining. I had cancer. Incurable cancer. Wasn’t that
enough of a contribution?
But--and it is a big but--the fact is that my shrink saves
my sanity on a monthly basis. She listens. She questions.
She helps me figure out how to live with stage four
pancreatic cancer. I determined to quit the hermit crab act
for the next hour. At least.
And try to drop dealing with the fear of death every ten
minutes. At least for the day. At least.
It scares me all the goddamn time. My ‘P.C.’ is ticking
away inside me. I’ve made it a little over three years.
My son Ryan once went with me to one of my Gloom
and Doom sessions with her and then made me laugh
magnificently at a lunch afterward by pointing out that at
least I knew what would eventually kill me.
Ry knew that the next person who assured me that
‘any of us could be killed by a bus the next day’ had a strong
chance of being thrown under a bus. By his Dad.
My son was twenty-two and we were deciding to live
together. When he learned of my ‘problem’, he simply told
me that he would be moving in to help out.
The kid was only a kid.
“I’d love to live with you,’ I said. “But, I don’t want to
become a . . .”
“It’s all gonna work out. Pops.” He grinned, tucking an
especially small paintbrush behind his ear. “Just don’t expect
any sponge baths. Nothing personal.”
.
It worked out. Ryan was attending the best and
oldest art school in the city and studying what I called ‘the
real deal’, painting. Oils, Canvas. Brushes of all sorts and
sizes were meticulously organized in clear jars in the room
set side for his easel and studies.
I had made a living as an art dealer for most of my
adult life and had loved many years of it. We sat up late into
the nights, discussing Dada and Surrealism and new art and
old art and bad art and ‘real’ art (left entirely to our
discretion) and baseball and our Giants chances for the
season. And hope.
He often fell asleep next to me as I lay sick as a very
sick dog from the chemo and the side effects and the fear.
And our home gave me the freedom to write about my
life before it ended and my talented son would design
wonderful covers for my essays and articles when he wasn’t
deep into his school assignments. It gave us a sense of
collaborative art and reasons to insult each other’s weaker
efforts. And I’d ask him his honest response to my writing
for the art project at the Cancer Center.
So we wrote and painted and drew and dined on Ryan’s
veggie meals and drank some good wine and we’d laugh and
laugh and laugh.
And every weekend, this unflaggingly cheerful and
happy and hopeful kid of mine would hoist on his backpack
and sing out ‘I love you, Dad’ and crossed the Golden Gate
bridge to stay at his mom’s in Marin and spend those
moments with his beautiful and brilliant girlfriend Rachel
that is the special reserve of the young and the bright in
love.
And we shared this life for three and a half years.
Against all odds, I stayed alive. And felt it.
.
‘An Unplanned Life’ was the apt title for the Art In
Recovery project.
“How can I get out of this writing project I got roped
into?” I shook my head at the prospect. I was under a near
constant mental fog from the chemotherapy. The lack of
self-awareness was a huge obstacle to my writing. Any
writing. A five sentence e-mail to the utility company took
nearly an hour. “How the hell can I get out of this?”
The guilt of dropping out would be even worse. The
project was a noble effort. High school students who had
lost someone to cancer volunteered to become pen-pals to
individual patients with a terminal illness.
Jesus.
“Plus, it’s kinda connected to my shrink, so I can’t just
bail.”
“Plus,” Ry was cooking one of his original vegetarian
concoctions, ”you’d have Missy to answer to.”
“The kale looks especially good tonight,” I tried.
Artistic commitments make me feel itchy.
“It’s chard, Dad.” He was chopping some garlic cloves
as the leafy greens sauteed. “You won’t quit and you know
you can’t. You said you’d do it and so you will. Because it’s
the commitment that makes an artist.”
“Those are some huge mushrooms,” I observed.
“Like when I first volunteered to work at Creativity
Explored and hated it at first.”
This was a direct hit. The previous year a center for
developmentally disabled kids invited Ryan to help create art
with their clients. A week later a commercial gallery offered
Ryan a good salary and decent hours.
“You have to stand by your commitments if you mean
to be an artist,” I told him at the time.
“You have to stand by your commitments if you mean
to be a writer, Dad. Remember when you . . .?”
“Are those pine nuts you’re using? That looks delicious.”
“It’s good for mental clarity, Dad.” He tossed the dish n
a large earthen bowl. “For writing, they say.”
“Then give me a double dose, okay Buddy?”
.
“Do you know the basic difference between your
Dad, and you and me?” Nurse Sheila asked Ryan.
I go into the Cancer Center for an infusion twice a
month. The monthly bill is over $42,000. The government
programs pay these bills and so I stay alive. What’s a life
worth?
I’m sorry. I meant to ask what is your life worth?
The infusion nurses have, had, and will see it all. They
will tell you the truth if you ask them for it. Sheila has cared
for me for over three years.
“What?” Ryan asked. I must add here that my other
loving two sons and daughter were present for me whenever
possible. But Ryan lived with me and his school knew of my
situation and would adjust his schedule so that he could
come with me.
“It’s that you and I might--occasionally--think of our
own mortality. That we will die someday. But, your Dad
thinks of it everyday. Every day. He might not admit it, but a
person can’t avoid it.”
.
How do you find your happy trail in this huge
world? My pen-pals and I finally met at a public reading of
our shared letters at the program’s end.
And while I realized I may have answered a few of their
life questions in my letters, their missives answered my
questions about the meaning of my life. They reminded me
of what it was like to be young, and find the world a
daunting place, and put a life together, and see the pieces of
the puzzle fall together.
.
One of my teen pen-pals wrote:“I frequently find
myself thinking about the fact that I am alive, Richard, and
it makes me feel privileged to be breathing this beautiful air.
The simple things are truly what make me happy.”
.
“Nail it, Pops,” Ryan and Andrew said as we pulled up
to the hall for the reading. The boys like to encourage Pops
because I’m often placed in one of the last speaker spots.
There is true concern and attention paid to the
survivors at such cancer events. There is crying by audience
and patients alike. At this evening’s event a brave young
woman--a teen--struggled to read through her tribute to her
father. We all reached out to hug her when she was able to
collect herself.
.
The menu of cancers lurking around to kill you
leaves a large group of survivors and supporters. They have
marches and auctions and dinner fundraisers and other
events necessary to raise the research dough that is simply
not to be found.
Except for pancreatic cancer. There are no marches or
events or gala dinners. Because there are no survivors.
There are many bereaved left from this insidious
disease.
But very, very few survivors.
.
And this was the part of my little talk that my boys
thought hilarious. Once I introduced myself and owned up
to be a stage four pancreatic cancer patient, the audience
would usually issue a collective gasp.
“Good God,” Andrew would joke with me, “they must
think; Shit, this guy really has cancer!”
The boys put their arms around my shoulders as I
climbed down from the dais. Quite a few of the recently
graduated girls were rather pretty, I whispered to them.
“Not the place, Dad,” Andrew said. “Really not the
place.”
“Really,” Ryan laughed quietly. “Really not the place,
Pops.”
.
We made nice with the people in attendance and
then crossed town to my flat. It was Pappy’s bedtime, but
early enough for the boys to go to a local cafe. Andrew won
a spot to sleep over after a number of solemn oaths to Ryan
that his snoring days were over. Even I became convinced
that earnest Andrew was capable of monitoring his own
snoring while fast asleep.
It was easier than simply saying that we loved being
together.
.
I woke them at a decently early morning hour to help
me swab out the place as they would be gone to see Mom
and friends across the bridge for the long Memorial
weekend.
The fellows packed up their duffles and told me they
loved me. Multiple times. It was something we did and
weren’t afraid to say in front of anyone. “I love you, Dad.”
And these strong, strapping, blossoming young men
would give Pops a kiss on the neck with a ‘See you soon’.
We had a rule about never saying ‘Good-bye’.
.
After all, we had plans. In just ten days, we were
going to spend a week in the Rockies. Just the three of us.
It had been made clear to me that if I were to build
memories with my kids it should be now.
“Really,” Mister Humphries,” now. While you can still
can. You can never tell with this stuff you have.”
So, with oldest brother Clayton off exploring Indonesia
and daughter Brooke juggling a lively daughter, husband and
business, we concocted a ‘guy’s trip’. My youngest were in
their twenties and I was not a long-term bet. So: Let’s go
play cowboy. Now. This summer now.
I spent a few years growing up in Colorado and the
Rockies were a paradise I wanted to share with the guys.
After an animated visit to a Western wear store, we
moseyed on down Mission Street.
“Jesus, Andrew,” Ryan shook his head, “with that
Stetson hat and those Tony Llama boots you look twenty
fucking feet tall.”
“Yeah,” I agreed and asked my youngest to try to
hunker down a few inches when he was standing close.
We talked constantly of our upcoming camp out/cattle
drive/cook-out at the gorgeous Black Mountain Ranch in the
heart of the Rocky Mountain Range. I felt, knew, it might be
our last summer together.
The fellows knew I planned to write about our little
adventure. ‘Happy Trails’, you know? Ryan had already
designed a terrific cover for the unwritten piece.
I waved to them the next morning from my second
floor window as they left for the weekend. They were
wearing their hats and boots to break them in prior to the
trip. It was the last time I would ever see them together.
.
It always arrives unexpectedly. A knock on the door. A
telephone call from the hospital. A sudden crash. It
happens to all of us but it should never happen to our
children.
.
“What the hell are you up to?” I asked my youngest
son. Andrew was suddenly shaking me awake. “What’s the
idea, Andrew?”
You know. The kid is twenty. A driving arrest? A
buddy in trouble? It was just past five in the morning.
What the hell was he doing standing in my bedroom? He
was supposed to be in Marin.
“Something horrible has happened, Dad.”
I saw he was crying.
“Ryan’s dead.”
At age 22. My boy. My artist. My guy Ryan .
.
Chestnut was my guy. At just under sixteen hands
the big Appaloosa carried me, cantering up a steep trail with
barely a snort. I’d reach across the pommel and give the
big boy’s neck a pat to ease him. He’d turn his head and
look at me, full-eyed, knowing we were on an unplanned
trip.
Cresting a hill, the strong big horse would gently pause,
giving the winds time to dry my tears, the views to calm me.
Our place back in San Francisco was too full of Ryan’s
art, too empty of his being. Finding a new trail would be a
long way off.
Happy trails, Ryan. Dad