As an uber-music-nerd, there are a lot of moments in my life, that memories are triggered when I hear certain songs. And the catalogue in my mind is not only large, but diverse, when it comes to the genre of music.
I told my daughters that I would get better at accepting the fact that they have grown up. Our family impacted by divorce, I do not have the benefit of seeing my daughters every day as when I lived in the house with them. So, the days that I did not see them, either by visitation or by video chats, I would go through the thousands and thousands of files of photos I have taken of my daughters over the years. They have long gotten to the point of perfecting the “eye roll” when I ask for another picture. But as an adult child of divorce, I do not have many photos of my younger years, especially with either of my parents. The example that I have set for my daughters, these photos matter and will always help me to remember.
So, I am sitting in my car, stopped for a school bus stopped with its red lights blinking, loading what appeared to be elementary school age children. There was a gaggle of parents standing at the bus stop to make sure that their children were off and safe. Up until that moment, I did not have any other thought on my mind. And then… my Ipod began to play Thomas Rhett’s “Remember You Young.”
That is all it took. The time it takes to load the amount of kids onto a school bus, I got through half of the song. My mind had taken me back to the time pictured above, a time that I remember so well. With one away at college, and another soon to be, these memories will be all that I have. As I said, I have many of them to reflect on.
But this was not the only time in recent weeks that this flipped switch had occurred.
A friend and fellow Hodgkin’s survivor recently visited the “house of the mouse”, Disney with her young son. Like any doting parent, it took no time for her to share the beautiful and fun photos of the pure enjoyment that her son was getting to experience. Again, looking at the beaming photos of her son, I remembered what it was like for me, when I took my daughters, close to the same age, to Disney for the first time.
But I digress. I told my daughters that I would do all that I can, to let them grow up, and be grown ups. They each have an exciting pathway in life ahead of them. And hopefully many of the experiences they have had, their memories, will help them to be great parents someday as well. As they grown however, I will always remember them young.
If you have entered a convenience store to pre-pay for gasoline, or approached customer service at your local grocery store over the past two days, you undoubtedly have been stuck in a ridiculously long line, waiting for your task that was only supposed to take less than five minutes when you left your house. Welcome to Powerball mania.
In full disclosure, I think I have only played an actual lottery maybe once in my forty years of adulthood. Yeah yeah yeah, “you can’t win if you don’t play” is the war cry I always heard at work. My co-workers frequently pooled money together to buy a larger number of tickets to increase their impossible odds of winning even $5. But here we are again. Last night’s drawing was estimated to be $1.2 billion dollars. That’s right, $1.2 billion dollars. Alas, no one won. On to Saturday’s drawing for the Powerball, jackpot estimated to be $1.5 billion dollars.
It is either the way that I was raised, combined with the way that I lived my life fiscally, that I am truly uncomfortable with being the “fool whose money end soon parted.” I honestly have higher priorities, than throwing good money after ba… I mean good money after none.
I get it. I understand the excitement when someone actually wins a scratch off ticket, or a televised lottery drawing. I have known a few people who have won anything from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars, but nothing large enough to pull a “Johnny Paycheck” able to tell their boss to “take this job and shove it.”
There are likely two types of lottery players. You have those that play constantly, and consistently, whether it be with daily drawings or scratch off tickets. Astoundingly, it is not uncommon for me to be standing behind someone, who will purchase anywhere between $25 to $100 worth of chance, without the blink of an eye.
But then you have the other type, the opportunist, the “I feel lucky this time” player. This person may not buy scratch off tickets, but when a particular lottery drawing hits a certain jackpot level, that is when this person decides to join in the fun. Probably about two weeks ago, as the jackpot neared a half billion dollars, this person would walk down, and nonchalantly lay down a $20 for the Powerball drawing, not really believing they have a chance, but “what the Hell? Why not?” No one wins, and the jackpot increases, but so does the belief of the purchaser, their chances of winning have increased, resulting in a larger purchase of drawing tickets, as much as $50 this trip.
Tuesday evening, as I was standing in a customer service line, to resolve a two minute issue, I saw hundred dollar bills being placed on the counter in exchange for more chances at the billion dollar jackpot. Sure, nothing is impossible, but putting down $100 for 100 tickets, does not do much to increase the chances of wining something with 1 in a 292,000,000 chance of picking all the right numbers and power ball.
I have never gotten caught up in this mania. I just cannot rationalize taking money, and getting nothing in return. I am not just like this with the lottery, but gambling in general. I have been to casinos a few times in my life. Often times, I just walk by everything. On occasion, I have walked by a card table, and “felt” something (could have been the subliminal tugging on my wallet), and would sit down to play. I would put $20 down (I only played the $5 dollar tables). I would play four hands minimum, until the $20 was gone (losing all 4 hands), or if doubling my money setting my original $20 aside, playing one more hand. If I lost, I would leave with $35. If I won, I would guarantee leaving with $40, continuing to play off that $5. I would not normally play longer than a half an hour. In contrast, I had been involved with someone who held the belief, that even if they hit a jackpot on the slots, and it did happen at least once, there was an intent to put it all back in the machine, because “it was all about the fun.”
“A fool and their money…”
When it comes to luck, I have experienced my share of it, both good and bad. I do not dwell on the bad luck events of my life, but use those as springboards to recover and rebuild. In 1990, I defeated Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and since 2008 I have faced six other health issues that could have ended tragically, not to mention, just barely escaping a head-on car collision turning at the last second.
Nope, if I am going to use my luck anywhere, I have had it at the right time. I respect “my luck.”
I do not begrudge anyone who does play, of course, depending on the state the lottery is from, proceeds can benefit anything or anyone from seniors to education. So, lotteries can be a good thing. And someone, will eventually win. The question that will have to be decided at that point, is how to collect. With the option of having to wait over time to collect the estimated $1.5 billion dollars over many years, or just take the very reduced lump sum amount, which is clearly enough for someone to live on, the decision is not an easy one. How much money is enough?
If I could spare any luck at this point, I would throw some towards the Philadelphia Phillies, a team seemingly set on destiny, to wrap up the World Series Saturday night. Others, will be watching for the Power Ball drawing at 11pm.
Decades before Jack and Rebecca (in full disclosure, I had to look up their names as I have never seen the television show “This Is Us”), there was my fiance and I.
We had been dating for a couple of years, in actuality, most of it as “engaged”. We were social butterflies, looking for parties to attend, just wanting to have fun. She was slightly older than me, and she had an established career. At age 22, I was still barely “legal” drinking age (yes, having to stress the word “legal”). I still really had not figured out my life, and it did not matter. I found someone that I wanted to hang around with the rest of my life, which sounds different than “spending the rest of my life,” and perhaps it was. All I knew was that we were happy with each other. We had fun with each other.
In November of 1988, that all changed. I had just come from two other locations in this order, an oncologist (cancer doctor), and my employer, who would be the first person to find out, that I had just been told that I had cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It was an odd choice that he was told before my fiance, but it really just happened to be circumstance. My fiance lived forty-five minutes from where I was, and I was upset enough, I struggled driving and knew that I should pull my car over. My workplace was actually on the way to her house where I planned to tell her in person. But as I drove by my work, I saw a light on in my boss’s office, and I pulled into the parking lot, and went inside. This story is for another post, but long story short, we talked about what just happened to me in the last two hours.
While that detour actually ended up being unintentional, it ended up being a dry rehearsal, for gathering my thoughts, what and how, I would tell my fiance, that I had cancer.
When I got to her house, she was in the back room with her mother and father. I asked her to join me up front in the living room, that I had something I needed to talk to her about. She was expecting me that evening, as was usual, but did not expect what I was about to tell her. She got the cliche “you need to sit down for this.”
“The doctor thinks I have Hodgkin’s Disease (it was referred to as disease back then instead of lymphoma).” She looked confused, not sure what that meant. I had to clarify for her, “cancer.” A tear welled up in her eye, and she uttered out, “so what does that mean? Are you going to die?” More tears were coming out, a lot more. At that moment, I just hugged her.
She had a previous boyfriend that was killed in a motorcycle accident. I was certain that she did not want to face another tragedy of another significant other. But I had one conversation in my head up until that moment, some further testing that needed to be done, and likely treatments, to hopefully reach remission. That is not what came out.
“Listen, this is not what either of us had planned on. And while I do love you, I love you enough to understand, that this diagnosis is going to change everything that we had planned for our future, and what you may have dreamt of, quite possibly in a very bad way.” My mind had switched from caring about my needs, to thinking about my fiance. I knew her well enough, that she would not just bail on me because I had cancer. She had a great heart, and would never do that. Even if it meant exposing her to yet the possibility of another boyfriend dying. Call it arrogance, but I did not want that to happen to her.
“Listen, I am about to undergo a lot more tests, including a major surgery, all to determine how bad this is going to be. And I could have to go through chemotherapy and radiation therapy, all which have the potential to interfere with our wedding plans. We may have to postpone, or even if we go ahead, I have no idea what will happen to me. There is a chance that we could not have children. There is a chance I could die.”
She had been listening carefully to everything I was saying, yet she remained stoic. And then I said to her, “I would totally understand, and be okay with, if you wanted to call things off. We would part as friends, and I would completely understand, because I know what you have gone through before and do not want you going through it again. I would never hold this decision against you, because in the end, our lives will never be the way we had planned after this.”
As I now read what I said, and wrote here, what a stupid thing to say. But as I said, I was 22 years old, and clearly not ready to even make a decision on getting married, let alone, face the road that I was now on.
She made the decision to stay with me and we were married six months later, following six weeks of intense and extreme levels of radiation therapy. Our honeymoon was nowhere near what we had planned, as expected due to my recovery. When we returned, my follow up appointment revealed that I had new disease located, and this would mean highly toxic chemotherapy. This course would leave me unable to have biological children. It seemed, what I had warned her about ended up being correct. Our lives together would never be as we had imagined, and now, we were “stuck” with the decision of having gotten married.
There is a common expression amongst many cancer survivors. “Don’t let cancer ‘define’ you.” That is not to say that you cannot change, but perhaps even improve. You do not need to go through the rest of your life with a huge “C” on your chest. But there is nothing wrong, with seeing things in a different light, another perspective, a reorganization of priorities, or what might or should be important in life. When you have faced something life threatening, it is an understatement that there is a new lease on life.
One problem that can occur, while the survivor definitely knows what the experience has done to them, those around the survivor, caregivers such as spouses or other family members or friends, do not. They may have witnessed the struggles, and may have been able to empathize, but those closest to the survivors have no idea the changes that have taken place, and may continue for many years later.
That is what happened with my wife after my treatments ended. My wife was ready to move on with the lives that we were living prior to my diagnosis, which relied a lot on socialization and partying, fun. Again, while cancer has never defined my life, it did have an impact on it, and if there is anything good that did come of it, it was the change and awareness of what I felt was important in life, things that should matter, wanting to make a difference. The only problem is, my wife did not share that same direction. And though we gave the appearance of getting along as a married couple to those looking on, inside our house, we just co-existed. We both were going in our own directions. Until…
My wife was hit head on while driving home from her night class, a dark, two lane rode, with high embankments, nowhere to go. She was driving a Geo Storm. The other driver was driving a Ford Crown Victoria. The result was like an army tank running into a Mattel Big Wheel toy. My wife was flown by helicopter to the hospital with serious injuries. As I went to the junkyard the next morning to retrieve her belongings from the car (if I was able), the image of what was left of the car, left me with a sunken feeling of my skeleton having been removed from my body, total collapse. The front end of the car was completely crushed as easily as a soda can, and the top cut away to remove her from the car. The other person’s car, hardly any damage except noticeably broken headlights. How my wife ever survived this accident, I would never know how.
Now remember, cancer is a life threatening moment. And I was not going to let it define me. It could lead me to want to improve myself, appreciate things and life more, good things. I had been frustrated that my wife could not understand what I was going through. But as the weeks went on following her accident, I held out hopes, that now, having been put in her own life-threatening situation, she not only would understand how it felt for me, but that she too might see the difference her life could have, our lives, I felt, for the better.
As time went on, and her healing continued, change of perspective did not happen. And I did not fault her for that. Epiphanies do not happen to everyone. Her goal upon recovery, was to get right back to what she was doing and enjoying before the accident. She was not interested in anything different. From that point on, we continued in our separate directions, albeit civilly, until one fateful conversation, that resulted in not being able to turn back from, leading to our divorce. As I said, our situations affected each of us differently, and looking back on that fateful day, when I broke the news to her of my diagnosis, I wished either she had taken me up on my offer to walk away from me, or perhaps I should have just ended it myself.
While this was not a period in my life I am happy with, combined with my attitude of not letting cancer define me, the changes in my life that occurred because of my cancer, and the many challenges since, have made me the person that I am today, most importantly, an example for my daughters to look up to and respect. That when the time comes for them to get involved with someone, they expect someone who will share their similar values and dreams, not just be willing to support in difficult times.
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Paul's Heart 