It’s what he said to me, inside the emergency room. He got it right away. He understood. In the midst of the controlled chaos of the emergency room, my son, my baby, looked at me with his bruised and battered face, and said, “Papa, thank you for everything.” As I crushed his hand in mine, he broke my heart, and I understood too.
On a Friday in early December of 2019, some months after my 50th College Reunion, Myra and I spent a lovely day in New Haven. The food had been good, the museum engaging, the campus settling into crisp winter light. We were at peace. We drove home along the Housatonic River, through some of Connecticut’s more hardscrabble neighborhoods. Once in the higher elevations, and past the Yale boathouse, the hardscrabble fell away, the woods got thicker, the light started to fade.
Arriving at our house in Bethel, we found our thirty-six-year old son Alec on the driveway, as though he were coming to greet us. I stopped the car alongside him, “Hey, what’s for your birthday dinner?” December 6 is his birthday. With the light nearly gone, I could not quite see his face. He says nothing, but leans his head toward my window. Then I see that the left side of his face is badly bruised, including the eye, as though he had fallen. We ask him, “What happened?” He doesn’t realize he is hurt. We walk him to the house, “When did you fall?” He is totally confused and doesn’t know. He says, vaguely, “It was three days ago.” But, we know, he was fine until that afternoon.
And that was that. We drove him to the emergency room. The instant the receiving nurse saw him, a trauma team materialized as if from a dream and went into action. Within an hour of our finding him on the driveway, he was on his way to a CAT scan with a doctor alongside. Myra and I were sent to a waiting area, with the promise that we could come back to him as soon as the scan was completed. After what seemed like an hour without a word, we looked for the doctor, who informed us that as soon as we had left and they were taking him to radiology, he had a second seizure, a continuation of the first. So that’s what brought him down. The doctor said, “There is something in there, and we have to take it out.” The trauma team hands him off. A brain tumor at the age of thirty-six.
He was admitted immediately, starting up a complex mechanism of checks, tests, scans, families and friends gathering, crowding and stepping over each other, filling the entire weekend. The good news: All the neurological tests are good; he is fully aware and alert, no longer disoriented, physically strong and coördinated. He is in bed and on anti-seizure medication. Other than a bruised face, he appears fine. For now. The agony of what is to come hangs heavy on us all.
On Monday, Myra began organizing his brain surgery. Not a moment to waste. Forget trying for Yale-New Haven, or Memorial Sloan Kettering. We couldn’t raise them on the phone anyway. Maybe we can see him in six months. OK then, we’re staying right here. We meet the surgeon, a beautiful, young, nerdy doctor, assisted by the older professional from his practice. A spot had opened up in the operating room. By Tuesday morning, Alec was in surgery. Six hours later, he was back, head bandaged and groggy. By the next morning, he was walking the halls, and going up and down the practice stair. Truly.
From the first seizure to the emergency room to surgery to the ICU, all within seventy-two hours. Something miraculous had just happened, but I could barely comprehend it. Myra had a lot to do with it. She is a force of nature. Don’t mess with her kids.
The tumor, of course, was malignant, stage three. We met with the surgeon: “I got 80 to 90% of it; any more would have caused potential damage to brain tissue.” Next stop, radiation and chemo-therapy at Yale-New Haven. We meet his neuro-oncologist, another young, nerdy, beautiful guy, Alec’s age, and the best at what he does. He says to Alec: “You ready for this? We’re going to be together for a long time. Let’s get to work.” And they did.
We made it to the relative calm of post-trauma and immediate aftermath. Six weeks of daily radiation along with daily chemotherapy. Alec in tears on the floor of the shower, collecting his beautiful red/auburn curly hair from the drain. Then chemo for one week a month for twelve months. Meanwhile the quarterly MRIs show small signs of improvement. Dr. Blondin, with his big ears and joyful smile, keeps all of us alive. “We are going to knock this out for the foreseeable future,” he declares, conjuring up the alchemy of turning hope into fact. No oncologist ever says that unless he means it, right? Then one day he says, “There’s nothing in there,” and everyone laughs. Sweeter words.
It’s now almost five years since Alec’s first encounter with the enemy. I look forward to the day when he helps me to get over to the other side. And I can say to him, “My son, thank you for everything.”
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That’s one view of these events. But there is another, darker one too.
On some of those dark December days after we learned of Alec’s tumor, I would sit in my car in the garage with all the windows closed and the doors locked, so no one could hear me or get me out. There I would shriek with all my strength at the dirty trick played on him, on me, on all of us. Alec, come back! Alec, come back to me! I needn’t have worried. No one was listening.
The turbulence in my family that these events caused has still not subsided. Just when I thought I had gotten away with it, clean, this monster reached into the innermost part of my life, and struck at that which was most dear, most important, most holy and sacred, to me.
Fuck you, the monster said, you’re not getting off that easy. I’m gonna make you pay. But I thought I paid enough already, I replied. Weren’t those first miserable eighteen years of my life enough payment? Why make him pay then? Why not take me instead? Because you’re already at the finish line. Who needs you? I want someone who has more to lose, and he’s it. I don’t give a shit about you.
I am also angry with Alec. Poor sod, he’s not at fault for what has happened to him. He’s actually taking it all with courage and grace, most of the time. Still, who the heck does he think he is? Getting sick like this? Now? Hell, hasn’t he caused us enough trouble already? I’m in the last phase of life, and I have to deal with this? Isn’t it rude and inconsiderate? I just wanted to fade away in peace and quiet. Interestingly, I now find myself impatient, in a hurry to get it over with, wanting to hasten my passing before his.
He was never an easy person. Now I wonder if the tumor helped shape his character and disposition along the way, as well as his anxiety and depression. As his father, I probably did not do enough to mold him to be more tolerant of his siblings and his mother, in particular. That’s the aspect that causes me the most pain. I have often found that he isn’t grateful for what we have given him (but see the title above), subsidizing as we did his dream project, the creation of his absurd barn, this albatross around our necks, that we now run the risk that he will not be able to complete it. What the heck are we going to do with this million-dollar elephant, his life’s work? Is it really all for naught?
God, I feel helpless and ignorant, with little talent or capacity to cope. Always trying to show him a positive face is exhausting. I feel like his puppy dog now, acutely sensitive to his every moon, fearful of doing or saying the wrong thing, and now censoring myself and just not saying anything. We have long periods of silence, in the car, at his desk in the barn, watching TV together. Mostly, I am just there, waiting to serve and twitching at the slightest hint of…anything. Christ, I must be a pain in the ass. It’s his fault, he fails to give clear direction; he mumbles, so I can’t understand what he’s saying. I’m tired of asking him to repeat what he just said, so I don’t ask again, but have no idea what he said or wanted. This too is exhausting.
OK, so our lives ended up not being charmed, with everything falling right for us.
Another day has passed, and nothing is better. Or only more complicated. Exasperatingly so. I just get more and more tired. And more and more tired of all of it. I am constantly being presented with impossible choices, from recalcitrant Alec on the one hand to Mama’s wanting this or that. To help, yes, but …I bounce back and forth from one to the other; I can’t satisfy anybody. The more I bounce, the less I care about any of them. I just want out. Get in the car and go. To hell with everybody. Out. God damn him. I thought I had it made. Now I just want to get it over with. I don’t care what happens to me, him, or my family. And then I come back.
I look forward to the day when he helps me to get over to the other side. And I can say to him, “My son, thank you for everything.”
