Post Category → Family

I’m just saying that even if I donated the money don’t put my name on it bad stuff happens in there so just call it something else please

The city of Lincoln waits for you like a big red splotch, as if a great glob of glued-together Republicans fell from the sky and splattered over dozens of square miles of pasture at the heart of the Great Plains. They spread out, repopulated, all started building. First, ranch-style homes. Next, steak houses.

The fact that the University of Nebraska (arguably the most liberal spot in the state) is in Lincoln is only redeemed in the eyes of the citizenry by the Cornhuskers, the perennial disappointment of a football team with an inexplicably avid fan base.

In the far south of Lincoln is where you’ll find the April Sampson Cancer Center, which I can only describe as a cathedral to the gods of malignant tumors. It is massive and modern and all made of glass and marble. The foyer is tall. It looks like it was pulled out of a mega church, or maybe a bank, because right off to the side there are a bunch of partitioned desks where the administrative sides of things are handled. (That’s where they tell you your insurance doesn’t cover it. That’s where they tell you you’re bankrupt.)

There are a fleet of wheelchairs just inside the entrance and whole building is dedicated to cancer and, boy, do I hate it. I mean, I’m glad it’s here and I appreciate all the doctors and nurses and support staff. Everyone is so nice. They bake cookies every day and go around passing them out. There are player pianos and a cafe where the worker is quick to tell you about the free refills. There’s a whole path out back where you can walk around when the weather is nice. It has a water feature. It’s as pleasant of a “cancer building” as one could ask for. But I hate the fact that this building even exists.

I’m not a conspiracy theory sort of person, but there are a couple of things that I think are true:

  1. American car companies and the oil industry conspire and bribe the government to disincentivize small, cheap electric vehicles.
  2. There are people in the medical and insurance industries who would happily inject every American with poison if it meant they could squeeze another dollar out of one needy schmuck.  

I get the feeling that whoever built the April Sampson Cancer Center, whoever is profiting from it, considers the whole outside world to be one big waiting room and all of us peons are just cancer patients in the making. Waiting in the wings for our chance in the radioactive spotlight.

It’s pessimistic. Probably not the thing to focus on. Today, however, I am filled with dark images that occupy my mind like belligerent apartment tenants who refuse to vacate.

(When the pain got really bad, Dad’s hand seemed to rise up of its own accord. It hovered a few inches in the air. I recognized the motion. His fingers felt and fumbled with the hem of his shirt and then with the thin layer of tissue paper that covered the exam table. It was a restrained, delicate touch, but his hand didn’t find whatever it was looking for. Maybe a pocket, maybe a person, but nothing. Then his hand paused for a moment against his stomach and fell back down to the exam table, suddenly and quietly deflated.)

The thing to remember is that all you can really do is anything at all

I’ve had these moments for the past several days where my body will suddenly stop whatever it’s doing, as if put on pause, and an incredible and inescapable sense of ennui will wash over me like a layer of quick-dry cement. I’ll be just walking down the hallway with a cup of tea on my way to 2nd block when, WHAM, it hits. In this moment of intense hopelessness, my thoughts will turn incredibly dark and I’ll feel this sense of, “What’s the use of any of this? Why am I — why are WE doing any of this nonsense?”

It lasts for a fraction of a second; anybody watching would probably think I’d just had to do a sneaky, stutter-step fart or something, and then I’m back to normal, just walking along like everything is fine.

I don’t know why, but I feel a little guilty about it. Is that dumb? I think it is. It’s a stupid thing to feel guilty about and I’m aware of that, but I imagine what Dad is going through and can’t help but think he’s the one who is in the thick of it. I should focus on how to be helpful rather than dwelling on how bad I feel.

I talked to my brother about it quite a bit yesterday and I said something to the effect of, “I’m really starting to think that the only thing I can do — the only thing any of us can do — is to find happiness in little moments. Stop thinking about the past, stop thinking about the future, take a cue from all of those eastern philosophers and just live in the now.”

Trite? Maybe. Cliche? One-hundred percent. But it’s one way that I’m able to find some sort of comfort. Plus, in a new-agey, hippy sort of way, I really do think that Taoism has the right idea with entering a “flow state.” Spending too much time dwelling on the future is missing the point entirely.

Anywho, I was telling my brother this in the context of sharing this perhaps-too-on-the-nose clip from the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood:

(The part I’m talking about is at the end. “..to die is to be human, and anything human is mentionable. Anything mentionable is manageable. Anything mentionable is manageable.”)

I’ve also (surprise!) been thinking a lot about how uncomfortable most of us feel talking about death. I’ve been able to talk frankly about it with a few people in my life — Sarah, my brothers, a few friends — and it really does seem helpful.

Just keep moving, keep busy, keep talking. One foot in front of the other.

If there is one thing that matters in this life it is how you throw your sticks

I asked Dad to bring the ring I would use to propose when he came to visit, which was the first time I ever hinted to anybody that I was going to ask Sarah to marry me. It wasn’t the entire reason dad came to visit me in a different country, but it probably helped.

I don’t know if my parents…approved of my living in South Korea for as long as I did. Mom certainly thought of South Korea as a place that wasn’t even worth visiting, but after she died my Dad came to see me for about a week, bringing the ring along with him, and booking a hotel near where Sarah and I were living.

It was during a rough time. For all of us. I was coping with my mom’s passing by turning from a heavy drinker into an incredibly heavy drinker, and my dad’s plotted course was along much the same vector. South Korea was perfect for us in that regard — their drinking culture is tremendous and vibrant. It’s easy to drink and be drunk at any time of day, and they don’t care if you do it in public. They encourage it. It’s a source of national pride.

I think Mom never approved of South Korea simply because I’d moved there and she couldn’t abide any country (or city or person or philosophy) that “took her boy away.” Mostly, though, South Korea wasn’t what she considered to be an “easy” country to travel in. It wasn’t a place for packaged trips or guided tours, which was how she preferred to travel.

Dad, though, figured at least one of them should visit me. I’d been living there for over 10 years at that point, and after Mom died, Dad bought tickets.

One of my strongest memories of when dad came to visit — besides the wicked hangovers — is of drinking martinis and playing Yut Nori at a hotel bar in Yulyang-dong.

He stayed at one of the fanciest hotels in town at that time (which wasn’t saying all that much). It was right above Homeplus and had a pretty decent bar on their top floor. My father had this thing he would do where he’d ask a waiter if they knew how to make a martini (they usually didn’t — martinis aren’t as common in Asia) and then would get all in a huff when they made it wrong. “Well I suppose I’ll have to speak with the bartender.” I guess he thought he was doing the world a favor by ensuring every barman he met across six continents knew how to make a decent gin martini.

Anywho, we got pretty toasted one night and were playing this traditional Korean game called “Yut Nori,” or just “Yut,” which is sort of like the board game Sorry! only instead of rolling dice you throw four sticks to see how far you move your piece across the board.

The fact that we were playing in a fancy hotel bar was unusual — Yut Nori, in my experience, is usually played by old gamblers in public parks or by families on particular Korean holidays. Playing it where we were, in a fancy hotel bar, was kind of like playing hopscotch at The Plaza. The bar was empty, however, and I explained to the servers that I was just trying to teach my dad how Yut Nori was played. (It was a cultural exchange more than anything else. Certainly not just my dad and I getting plastered and throwing sticks across a bar…)

Part of the way into the night, I realized my dad was cheating at Yut Nori. The trick was in the way he threw the sticks. Instead of tossing them, as was protocol, he would sort of roll them across the carpet of this fancy hotel bar in such a way that they would all land flat side down.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you roll them like that, it makes it more likely that they’ll land flat side down. It’s cheating.”

“It isn’t cheating. Look. I’m tossing them just like you said.”

Instead of tossing them, he once again rolled them. All four sticks landed flat side down. To this day, I don’t know if my dad was trolling me or if he really didn’t understand how the sticks were supposed to be thrown. Either way, he wouldn’t listen to reason, and did not seem to understand no matter how much I explained.

So, I called the waiter over. There were no other patrons at that hour, so it wasn’t like he was busy or anything, and I asked him if the way my dad threw the Yut was legal.

“Legal?” he said.

“Allowed,” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, smiling at my father. “That is allowed. The way he throws. Very much allowed.”

After the waiter left, Dad said, “See? Perfectly fine throws. Perfectly fine. Very much allowed.”

I said, “The waiter is only saying that because you’re older than he is and it’s customary not to go against your elders. If you weren’t such an old bastard, he would have told you the truth.”

“You’re just bitter that I’m winning.”

“Oh, am I? Fine. I’ll start throwing the bones the way you do. Then we’ll just see who wins. We’ll just see.“

So, I, too, started rolling the Yut. They continually landed flat side down, all four sticks. It was like playing an American board game and only rolling sixes with the dice. All game. On every throw.

“See how dumb this is?” I said.

“It’s not my fault they don’t have good games in South Korea,” Dad said, tipping back the rest of his martini and, no doubt, wondering how best to explain to the Korean-speaking bartender that vermouth ought to be sprayed on the ice rather than poured.

We didn’t talk much about Mom that trip. There was only the part where Dad gave me the ring that Mom had made before she died, which was a simple, modest golden band in a red box. The most remarkable thing about that ring (besides the person who now wears it) is that it’s made of the melted and reforged gold from the wedding rings of my mother’s mother and grandmothers.

I carried that ring in my backpack for months before I used it, and when I did, absolutely nothing went according to plan.

Blogging about diseases is boring and sad but I need to remember these things so here we are

I haven’t been reading much. Well, I’m still reading a little, but I’m so preoccupied that in my off time I just veg out and either watch YouTube or TikTok. Still, I’ve gotten through Dungeon Crawler Carl and am currently working through the second book in the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’m doing the print version and the audiobook (which is interestingly done).

The series is fine. I like the relative mindlessness of it. Blowing up goblins and punching monsters so hard they explode. There are some unique aspects to the plot structure that are worth examining on a serious level — I feel like the arc of the story is built to be understood from a macroscopic lens; characters will make more sense the more books you get into the story. It’s as if the author planned on writing hundreds of thousands of words and just thought, “We’ll get to it eventually.”

As a writer, I’m used to doing this stuff quickly — I’m borderline minimalist. “Get to it!” that’s my motto. Or, as Vonnegut puts it, “Start as close to the end as possible.” Don’t waste words; your readers’ time is valuable and you should use it well. Reading Carl reminds me how flexible these rules are, because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get or simply wouldn’t do.

It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have more information about Carl’s ex-girlfriend yet, even though you know she’s going to make an appearance (or be brought back up somehow.)

I’m also not a fan of giving readers actual numbers for strength and intelligence. This book will give each character a level and stats, all of which are explicitly told to readers. Is this why they’re calling it “LitRPG?” (Horrible, horrible name IMO. And maybe, overall, just a bad idea.)

Increases in ability should be shown through action not spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were only ever created for RPGs like D&D where you couldn’t easily show strength or intelligence through action. In a narrative, though, all we have is time to show how characters act. That’s the whole point of a story.

I will never read a sentence like, “My strength was at 30 so I was confident I could win the fight,” and think, “That’s some good writing!”

I know, I know, not everything needs to be literary. Besides my gripes at the LitRPG genre in general, Dungeon Crawler Carl has been fun so far.

Anywho.

My dad has a feeding tube installed in his stomach and is out of the hospital, but his condition doesn’t seem to be…improving, or at least not improving rapidly. While he’s glad to be home, he really doesn’t have a lot of energy. I don’t know if that’s from the cancer or if it’s from weeks of not being able to swallow due to the tumor in his esophagus (which is growing rapidly), but it isn’t a good sign.

Sarah, my brother, and I went down to visit yesterday. Dad was able to get up and move around, but not much. He can’t swallow anything at all and chews on ice like they have you do in the hospital. His headaches are getting bad. He has a big red bottle of hydrocodone you can inject in his feeding tube.

Radiation treatments start this Thursday and will continue for most of April. Chemo will start after that, depending on how the radiation goes.

A “home run” at this point isn’t a cure; a home run is shrinking the tumor in dad’s throat enough that he can swallow food. Not only will that make his quality of life much better, but being able to get more nutrition will be an added bonus. Dad loves eating and I hate thought of him missing out on food he enjoys in favor of the flavorless goop that goes right into his belly.

Time marches forward.

School continues. The ACTs are tomorrow and I get to proctor.

Sarcastic yay.

Thanks I hope so too

My dad is sick and I am a mess.

He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a few weeks ago after a hurried trip to the ER when he started having difficulty swallowing. Scans revealed a tumor in his esophagus that prevented food from going down; more scans revealed that the cancer had spread. The prognosis is bad. Stage 4, likely inoperable.

I hate hate hate talking about it. Thinking about it is hard enough — I try to dumb myself down with substances in my off time specifically so I don’t have to dwell on it. Is this healthy? Not one bit. But I’m doing what I can to get through the day. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.

I’m at a point where I’ve started letting people at work know about what’s going on. Students are asking me about it; I missed school yesterday so I could go sit with dad while he waits to get a feeding tube put in, and today, first thing, I was met by a bunch of, “Where were you yesterday, teach?” (Students don’t really call me “teach,” but I’m hesitant to put my real name on here. I’d hate for my solitary reader to know who I am.)

This is what I assume you look like.

I don’t lie to students about stuff like this. It might be easier if I did, but this sort of thing is a part of life and there’s no use hiding from it. Plus, it isn’t as if people won’t notice something bad is happening. I probably look awful. Still, I won’t go advertising it because, again, I hate hate hate discussing it. When I have to talk about it, I try to sound as positive as I can to keep classes from turning into some kind of morose pity party.

So I smile and say, “Oh, my dad’s in the hospital and I wanted to drive down to be with him.” The conversation continues for a bit and, invariably, students say to me something like, “I hope your dad gets better soon!”

As much as I want to be truthful, I can’t exactly tell them that this isn’t the sort of cancer that gets cured. I pretend to be positive and, while it’s not technically the truth, I just tell students, “Thanks. I hope so, too!” in the most upbeat tone I can muster. It’s better than saying, “I don’t feel hope anymore,” which (unfortunately) is where my head is currently at.

Putting on this act is exhausting and It. Never. Stops. It’s so tiring that there are days when I don’t know if I can actually handle it. My body, like a house consumed by flames, will crumble in on itself in a pile of ash and smoke. “That was a nice old building,” couples will say as the amble by.

How do people do this? I have come remarkably close to losing it this week, and it’s only exacerbated by knowing that worse things are yet to come. Every time my phone rings or I get a text notification I immediately think, “This is it.” A memory will randomly make me feel like crying. I have to excuse myself from class every now and then just to get a moment alone to breathe.