Saturday, May 22

Click to enlarge

May 22, Saturday - Felt so low today. Bud went on a rock hunt and was gone all day. Feel as if my whole life is a failure.

May 23, Sunday - Went to church. went fishing this afternoon with the group but got sick and spoiled everyone's day. No more social life until these treatments are all over. Windy, but nice.

May 24, Monday - Went to take treatment, to the store, and home for TV. Sick till I took my sick pills. Such an exciting life.

Rocks. Fossils, to be more exact. Kansas City is built on fossil-rich limestone.

We're in a long stretch where mom just goes through the motions of life. The radiation treatments for her breast cancer have laid her low, and the fatigue is setting in.

There isn't much to add today

Monday, March 22

Click to enlarge

March 22, Monday - More blood - and an Xray. Al Mathis stopped, Marv and Bud sent flowers. Marie and Betty J. came up and paid for TV for me whenever I want it. Nice group of people I work with.

23 March, Tuesday - Surgery at 8 a.m. Everything that has ever happened to me has made me a better person in some way. Whatever happens today will be all right  do the same and be all right.

24 March, Wednesday - Not much good today. Bud and Marv came over and spent the day. Oodles of flowers from so many nice people. All my family has been up at least once.

There are few things that will make you feel more helpless than spending the day visiting someone you love while they're in the hospital recovering from major surgery. Mom lost her left breast and a major amount of chest tissue and lymph nodes to cancer.

Dad and I spent as much time as possible on the fifth floor with mom, and then we'd retreat to the coffee shop in the lobby to decompress.

At one point dad went out to the parking lot to smoke his pipe. I stayed inside and tried to do homework, but I was so distracted, I went to find him. He was sitting on the curb, sobbing. It was the first time I ever saw him cry.

I only saw him cry one more time - the day in September 1972 when I left home and moved to Colorado. It shook me to see him like that, and it's only recently that I have come to understand the depth of hopelessness and painful despair that causes emotions to spill out like that. For all his faults and myopic shortcomings, my dad truly loved my mom.

Sunday, March 7

Click to enlarge

March 7, Sunday - Took Ron, Mom, Bud and Marv to the airport. Tried to go to church, no place to park. Had a good time, took mom home and watched TV in evening.

March 8, Monday - Carol did my hair, did washing. Marv found out about my left breast & rushed me to Dr. Sims. (Now what?) Sims rushed me to (Dr.) Hesser. Took Marv out to his birthday. May be pretty busy on 3/29, or I may not be busy at all.

March 9, Tuesday - Low day. Blue, blue, blue. Told Johnson about my operation - he was so kind and understanding. I bawled like a nut. Tomorrow will be better. Worked on the front end - real busy, too.

Again with the airport. No one is traveling anywhere - we're just going to look at the airport. It's real Wes Anderson stuff.

Then the shoe drops. Mom found a lump in her left breast the size of a golf ball. If I remember the conversations properly, she had known about the lump for more than six months, but didn't think it was alarming enough to see a doctor about. Dad wasn't so calm, in fact he was furious that mom had sandbagged the discovery.Her regular doctor, Dr. Sims, was equally concerned, and immediately sent mom to see a surgeon, Dr. Hesser, the same day. The surgery was scheduled immediately and would take place about two weeks later at Bethany Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas; the same hospital I was born in some fifteen years earlier. They had the nerve to tear it down in the 1990s.

Bethany Hospital's Early Days

Mom took dad to his birthday celebration early - which can mean nothing besides a dinner at Crane's Cafeteria at the corner of Truman Road and Hardesty. Crane's fried chicken was and still is, to my mind the best I have ever eaten, and while they closed years ago, the very mention brings the taste back to me as though it were hot on my dinner plate. This was pretty much the only restaurant my mom and dad ever went to on any kind of regular basis. Cafeterias were, in general, the venues of choice for my family. Cranes. Myron Green's, Putch's - we knew them all, plus a few more in Topeka. Standing in lines as we pushed trays along seemed like second nature. It was the time of the factory worker. 

Crane's Cafeteria

Dad's real birthday is March 29, but mom didn't know if she would be able to follow through when that date rolled around. My mom was strong, but the reaction of dad and the doctors terrified her, and rightly so. In today's parlance, mom had Stage III metastatic breast cancer. It was entirely likely that they would take her breast, some muscle tissue, and as many affected lymph nodes as possible.

The reality of what's about to transpire has hit mom, and she's laid low. I'm sure she dreaded telling her store manager the news. Mom's manager, Kenny Johnson, was a strong manager, and he treated his people like family. Mom, and most everyone who worked with him, was crazy about the guy. My mom was the store mom, and a lot of the employees there would have walked on hot coals to keep her out of the hospital.

We all would have.