Grief: Rage, and the Dying of my Light

I’ve been putting this off for a while. Months.

After being so open with all of my emotions and thoughts these last few years, I wanted to take a little break from being sad. It just got to be too much. Some of you more astute folks could read between the lines on the weekly updates I’d been sending out over The FaceBooks and asked after me. Maybe I gave you a platitude. Maybe I just said, “I’m hanging in there,” which is my go-to for moving on the conversation to the next topic. I just didn’t know what to tell folks who asked after me. “I’m still furious?” "Life is a tourniquet and my neck is turning blue?" No one wants to know how the monstrous depths of my anger. 

Because that’s what I am. Still.

I thought it might be worth a checkup on the ol’ mental health report card using the five stages of grief as our barometer. I got this list from one of my grief counselors, mostly as a way to check in with myself to see just how well I’m doing. Let’s follow along together.

 

Grief: "I Just Want Something I Can Ignore"

 Rob says that in the film version of High Fidelity, one of the great Gen-X films of the 1990s, played by Gen-X's poster child, John Cusack. I love that quote. It's one of those things I wish I'd written, damn you, Nick Hornby. It's such a succinct thought that conveys something we don't often articulate about mass media; namely, that there is, underneath the Must Watch Shows and the Trending Twitter Topics, and the "No Spoilers" Fan-Bombs on Facebook, a second layer of media, movies, and music. It's the stuff that, for one reason or another, serves as a kind of white noise machine for our overly-stimulated simian brains. 

Shows like M.A.S.H., for instance. That's a show everyone of a certain age remembered watching, both during prime time and syndication, for two or more decades. Now, well into our adulthood, M.A.S.H. is a show that is part of the glue of television. It's always on somewhere, and we've seen every episode multiple times. Even the episodes we think we didn't see...trust me, we've seen it. It's now a digital backdrop, visual Muzak, the kind of thing that can be on in the background during a family dinner and no one minds, because no one really pays that much attention to it, even the super serious episodes where Hawkeye cries or when Sidney tries to psychoanalyze someone.

Which leads me to Gilmore Girls. 

Cancer: Aftermath

I feel like I have a lot to say, but I don't really want to voice any of it. Instead, I'll just dump my brain out and we'll see how it goes. 

The funeral was nice, insofar as funerals go. I think everyone honored Cathy with their words and their expressions of love and admiration for her. Several friends showed up, unannounced, just to pay their respects and be present. Most of my family was here, too. I managed to mostly keep it together. The church was kind enough to post the video on their Facebook page for the many people who could not attend. If you want to see it, it's still up.

For my birthday this year, my middle name was Duncan, because I Yo-Yo'ed up and down all day. Low points included missing my wife, and figuring out that my car wouldn't work and making plans to have it towed on Monday. Because, you know, insult to injury, and all of that nonsense.

Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday, and also to everyone who didn't, because there wasn't anything particularly happy about the day. You were quite right.

But I tried. I really did. And I'm going to keep on trying, because otherwise, what's the use? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.

After the last two weeks, preceded by the last four months, my chest is starting to unclench and my breathing is back to normal. Somewhat. I keep getting into crying jags. I am still pacing the house. I'm still anxious, and scared. And sad. Just so heartbroken. I feel her absence, humming in the air like a high note that vibrates my sternum.

I'm going to look into grief counseling. After I fix the car. And pay the outstanding bills. And sign back up for health insurance (we were dropped.) And a half-dozen other things that suddenly need my attention. Somewhere in all of this, I need to have a real serious Come-to-Jesus meeting with myself about what happens next.

I have been incredibly lucky to have known from the age of 15 what I wanted to do with myself. And then I went and did it. Not a lot of people have that kind of clarity of vision, and I know it's a gift. But for the last twenty years, my goals have been intertwined with Cathy's goals. Oh, we had our side projects, too, but overall, we were always working on advancing our own desires and dreams as we helped the other person do the same.

Now I'm alone. And I have no idea what I want to do. For the first time since the age of fifteen, I have no direction, no heading, and no hand on the rudder. I hate the way this feels. I'll be taking some time off for a bit, so that I might figure out what the next phase of my life is going to be with the label "widower" attached to me like a barnacle I can't scrape off.

I'm tired. I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of getting hit with sudden waves of sadness, whack, in the face, like a creme pie made from depression and despair.

I can't get her deathbed out of my head. I close my eyes and I see it. I see her, arranged, eyes closed, and I can smell her skin and feel her hair on my cheek when I cradled her in my arms and sobbed. I have twenty years of great memories, good times, happy occasions, and all I can think about is her final minutes.

I'm not ready to accept this new state of being. It's still too raw. Too maddening. I was afraid of this happening. Alone in this house, pacing around like a caged animal, alternating between repeating lists of things I have to do, over and over, and crying out for my wife in an empty room , because I don't think I can do it all by myself.

Maybe I'm just wallowing. I don't want to let go of the pain, because I don't want to let go of her. I'm just so angry at everything right now. Things are going to move on with or without me, and I know that. This will likely fade into a dull ache. I'll have an epiphany or two and reorganize (and maybe even reinvent) myself and as time marches on, so shall I, older, wiser, ready for what comes next.

Eventually.

Right now, I think I want to just wallow. And I don't want you to see me like this.

 

Cancer: An Obituary

Cathy Day lost her fight with ovarian cancer on 10/15/2020. She was 56 years old. 

Catherine Day was born in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Richard Day and Diane More, and attended Vernon High School. After graduating in 1983, she attended the University of Texas, where she received a master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology. She taught in various public and private schools in California, Maryland, and Texas, helping learning-disabled children to read and speak, for two decades.

 Cathy was a lifelong student of the theater and she acted in plays throughout her school years. As an adult, she was active in community theater in Austin, appearing in Different Stages productions, and later with the Violet Crown Radio Players, of which she was a founding member. In Wichita Falls, Cathy was proud to call the Backdoor Theatre her creative home and she appeared in several productions, including “Sordid Lives” which earned her a Genesius Award for Best Actress in a Non-Musical Role, and “Dirty Laundry,” where she co-starred with her husband, Mark Finn.

Cathy met Mark in the Summer of 2000 and they were married in October, 2003. They later moved to Vernon as co-owners of the Vernon Plaza Theater where they lived and worked. Cathy was a member of First Presbyterian Church of Vernon and was active in the community as a founding member of Leadership Vernon, The Vernon Main Street Program, and the Vernon Farmer’s Market. She always had a smile and a laugh for everyone she met, and the memory of her kindness, her gentle nature and her warmth will be a comfort to her mother Diane; her step-father Pat More; her sisters: Susan, Barbara, and Erin; her brother Mike; her many nieces and nephews, and her husband, who survive her, but will never forget her.

 In lieu of flowers, the family has requested giving a donation to the Backdoor Theater in Wichita Falls in her name.

My thoughts are below. Fair warning: this is uncomfortable, and I don't recommend  you reading past the break unless you want my raw, unfiltered take on all of this. 

Health: Weight Loss, Week 1

We’ll start with the good news: I have been on a really aggressive and restrictive diet for the past week. It’s been…an adjustment…to say the least, but I have lost 8 lbs and 5 inches in that week.

And before you say anything, let me stop you right here and say, “I know.” This is not my first rodeo. I know all about it. Your advice is, and I say this with no acrimony whatsoever, not welcome. You can’t help me. No one can help me. The only person that can help me is me. And I’m doing it this way because that’s the only way that I can move forward at this time. So, 8 lbs and 5 inches.

Hospice: Our New Normal

 Cathy has been in Hospice for five weeks now. It feels like forever. I am struggling with watching Cathy's gradual shutting down. She is at the point now where she is bedridden; her leg muscles can't support her and so any scenery changes she wants to make are done with nurses and a wheelchair. Her short term memory continues to fade, as well. People, faces, events and things are all crystal clear to her. But she can't keep up with her phone. In bed. She can't quite remember from day-to-day how to work it, either. She learns it in the morning, but by the evening, she needs help again. Hospice keeps telling me it's "disease progression." It's getting on my nerves. She's not sick, she's hungry. 

Cancer: The Devil Defeated

In the middle of all of this insanity comes the best good news we've had in a while: Cathy is through with her course of treatment on the Red Devil. That doesn't mean we are done with chemo, or done with cancer. Only that we are done with the horrible poison they were putting into her body for the past seven months. Or to put it another way: we're not out of the woods, yet, but the deranged mutant bear that has been pursuing us this whole time finally gave up the chase and we can take a minute to catch our breath before resuming the hike to get out of these woods.

Health Update: Cancer and Quarantine

Cathy and Sonya, rocking the matching sweaters.

It's been a while; too long, in fact, and I sincerely apologize. 

We're all friends here, so I'm just going to dive right in. 

I'm not in a good place right now. About two month ago, I realized that with the stress of the recurrence of Cathy's cancer so quickly on the heels of the successful surgery, and the subsequent difficulty of Cathy's chemo treatments on her (and by extension, me) this time around, I had slipped back into a state of depression. 

I wish I'd caught it sooner. This self-diagnosis was a result of some tangential health concerns popping back up and me realizing that I'd not been addressing them like I had been before. Mostly therapy stuff, but also some physical symptoms, too. 

Man, this whole ordeal has just sucked. 

Cancer: The Devil You Know

The water she has to drink
prior to the CT scan.

It's been a while since an update, and that's because we've been overwhelmed with the new chemo cycles and the crippling downturn of the entertainment industry this year. I'm used to not being busy due to high school football, but it's been worse than that, and for months instead of weeks. We are both dealing with life, the best way we know how. My way, for example, includes bourbon.

At the last visit to the oncology center, Cathy was chatting with one of the nurses she's gotten to know better and we found out that there's a cool, fun nickname for the melted Flavor-Ice looking stuff that she gets at the beginning of each new cycle.

They call it "red devil."

I wish I was being funny.

Health Update: Cathy First, and then Quasimodo

It's been a while since we had an official update, mostly because I've been in and out of consciousness like Robert Di Nero in Sleepers. But while I am "sitting," and before the pills crowd me out, I want to report that Cathy will be going in for surgery on February 7th. We expect to be out of pocket for a week or so. There's a lot of logistical things to work out while we set all of this up, but we are excited to be moving forward with her treatment plan. It's the shortest part of the process, if you don't count the recovery time, but it's certainly the most nerve-wracking. I will keep everyone posted if things change.

I will now give you an update on my condition, so for those of you who do NOT want to read about scrotal edema, please veer off.

Health Update: Pneumonia Sucks

I will keep this short.

Cathy got out of the house today, for the first time since coming home from the hospital. With her portable oxygen tank strapped to her back, we made it down the stairs, to the hospital for a chest X-ray, and then over to our primary care physician for a check up, in just under two hours. Considering that all of the above locations are a five minute drive from the theater, you can be assured that yes, it took a long time.

That's what pneumonia does, apparently. In blocking your airway, it starves your body and your blood of oxygen. I mean, we're looking at a four-to-six week recovery time...and we caught it early. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had waited a couple of days. Cathy would probably still be in the hospital.

Still, she is feeling better. She's out of the hospital, at home, in her own clothes, and dealing with me, playing the role of Patch Adams. Here's a free life lesson for you: when someone you know is on home oxygen, connected to about fifty feet of tubing, and trying to cross a room, moving very slowly, you may be tempted to make space-walk astronaut noises, and imitate the radio crackle of Neil Armstrong talking from the surface of the moon. My advice to you is this: the person will not find it funny, no matter how dead-on accurate your Neil Armstrong impression is.

Health Update: Well, Shit.

It's been a difficult month. I've been prepping for surgery for the last two and a half weeks. Lots of logistical loose ends to tie up, everything from assigning various theater duties to minions and/or training them, to dealing with insurance companies and the vast sums of money that prop up the medical health profession, not to mention my own normal fears about doctors, needles, surgery, and body invasion that have been hounding me for as long as I've been aware that I will need surgery.

I've done my best to embrace the change: "This is a good thing," I told myself, over and over again, usually whilst rocking in a a near-fetal position with a glass of bourbon. "These are necessary for your ongoing health, wellness, and recovery." I've used every moment of physical discomfort or an inability to lift something as a way of reinforcing the idea that soon, this will be addressed, and then you'll have some mobility back as well as a quality of life that you haven't had in years.

Friday Night Flight or Fight

Some people have a monkey on their back. I also have
a monkey on my front. Basically, I'm all monkeyed up.

I know I’m not the only person that struggles with anger management, depression, and anxiety. Many of you have shared with me your own stories, either recently or throughout the course of our friendships, and I confess, I haven’t always completely understood your struggle. I have sympathized, of course, but it was difficult for me to really empathize with what happens in your brain until I found myself on the other side of it.

I had a meltdown recently. It came quickly in a barrage of incidents that piled up too fast for me to deploy any of my practical tactics. I wanted to share what happened so that those of you who maybe don’t quite understand yourself can sneak a peek behind the mask and get an idea of how things can quickly escalate.

Cancer & Obesity: an Up and Down Update

We are casting for the part of Zu-Zu.
Must love dogs.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of it, I want to take a minute to recognize all of you who reached out to me with your own stories, your own struggles, and offers for advice and more information. Also, the sheer volume of unflagging support for both of us continues to give us whiplash. I say that in the best possible way. Thank you all for being in our corner. It's Bedford Falls every day around here.

Okay, it's been a rough week, and we're in the middle of it, but I wanted to update everyone on what's going on. Read on, if you dare.

It Never Rains, But It Pours...

For those of you keeping up: thank you for your interest and your support in helping us navigate Cathy's cancer diagnosis. This post is not about that. She's hanging in there, and we're just working toward getting her chemo done so we can do a scan and see how much the tumors have shrunk. It's a waiting game, and we both suck at it.

This post is about me, and a recent diagnosis I received, because, apparently, Cathy's cancer was not enough drama and excitement for us. I wanted to talk about what has been going on with me since October of last year for a while, and was planning on doing so, but Cathy's diagnosis has taken priority for obvious reasons. I can't do that any longer, as my situation has come to something of a head.

What follows is personal and dark and kinda gross. If you bail out right now, you won't have to read it and I'll completely understand. This is deep dive stuff and it may be more than you want to absorb. We're living in weird times right now. You do what works best for you.

If you're still with me, read on. It's a little longer than I've been posting lately, but I wanted to get it all out in one fell swoop.

O Captain, My Captain: Robin Williams (1951-2014)

I watched this show religiously for Mork's antics.
Bonus: I had a thing for Pam Dawber, too.

If you were in grade school in the late seventies/early eighties and your name was Mark, and if you happened to be the class clown, then you were "Mork" until middle school.

Robin Williams was my first comedian. "Mine" in the sense that I took ownership of him. Sure, I listened to my mother's comedy albums (Kids: Google "album"): Lily Tomlin, Flip Wilson, and especially Bill Cosby. Great stuff, all, and very funny. But Robin Williams was the comedian that I discovered myself, first on Happy Days and then in Mork & Mindy. My god, he was funny. I don't know if the act holds up, but at the time, there was nothing like him to be found anywhere else.

Because of Williams' performance as Mork (and mostly any other comedy role he ever took) I learned about improvisation, the art of the ad-lib, and best of all, he re-introduced the world to Jonathan Winters.

I was fascinated by him. That stream of consciousness babble of ideas, each one spilling out on top of one another... Of course, later, I found out that was the cocaine talking, but even when he quit doing blow, he was whip smart, and his observations were sharp and funny.

Over the years, his vast movie career has been a series of ups and downs. Lord knows, I haven't liked everything he ever did (Kids: Google "Hook"), but it's only because when he was on, he was brilliant. It made the lame projects stand out in sharp relief.

Some of the movie is very good. Loved the boxing scene.

I kind of want to talk about Popeye right now. I know not everyone liked it, and it lacks, well, a lot in terms of what people were expecting to see. But as far as recreating Thimble Theater (E.C. Segar's strip in which Popeye appeared) goes, it was pretty good. For recreating the Famous Studios cartoons where Bluto is always grabbing Olive and saying, "Hey Doll, Howzabout a Kiss?" the movie was a flop. However, when I'm in the right mood, I love the movie. The art direction is brilliant, the characterizations are fantastic, and to my chagrin, I even like the songs. Mind you, if you ever ask me my favorite comic book movies, it will never be on the list. When I watch it, it's because I'm feeling nostalgic for the early 1980s.

So much of how I approached being funny was tied up in trying to figure out what made Robin Williams tick. Dropping instantly in and out of character and being able to sell a bit onstage are about as far as I got. No one put stuff together like him. His timing, along with his ability to economically cut out everything that didn't look like the joke, was his singular gift.

I was there for all of it. His HBO specials, his early critical acclaim, his later critical acclaim, his transition to elder statesman, all of it. I hated it when I didn't like a movie he was in, or the film was bad, or whatever. I wanted to like everything he did. And looking over his incredible resume, I liked way more than I didn't like, and you can't ever say that a .500 batting average is a bad thing.

Mime Jerry, from the Cult Classic Shakes the Clown.
These smaller, art house movies he did with Bobcat
Goldthwait and others are among my favorite things he
ever did. You must watch World's Greatest Dad.

In the back of our minds, I think we all knew there was something wrong; he was laughing to keep from crying. We could certainly see it in his sobering film roles, or the occasional interview where he's not climbing over the furniture. That razor sharp observational humor cut both ways, and sometimes, you'd see it nick a wrist. I've seen a lot of references to the old joke with the punchline, "But Doctor, I AM Pagliacci," and I think that's apt, and sadly, very prescient for a lot of performers, writers, and actors. Some people need the energy to thrive, and some need the energy to just keep their heads up.

I don't know about all of that, really; it's pure conjecture, and I don't know that we'll ever really know the whole story. I don't know if I want to. In the last few years, I had noticed when he had a heart attack, got divorced, and then very recently, went back to rehab. Those things were happening a little too close together, and I was actually saddened and concerned. Then this. It feels like someone just slammed the door on my childhood. I never met the man, but he's a part of my humorous DNA.

I hate that he felt he was out of options. I don't know if anyone knew how much pain he was in. All the laughter--the belly-aching, side-splitting, howling and crying laughter, and all of the cathartic tears and genuine anger, rage, and sadness, he brought out in everyone over the years, and it still wasn't enough.

Dammit.

Go listen to Marc Maron's very poignant eulogy and rebroadcast of his interview with Robin Williams on his WTF podcast. He really nailed down a lot of things for me, and if you're struggling to cope with this, his words may help you, too.