From My Book

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Look for sneak peeks of it here...

Life Changes in an Instant

I keep thinking back to one of the opening lines from Joan Didion’s book, A Year of Magical Thinking.

“Life changes in an instant.” 

Although, when I first read the book, I thought I knew what she meant. I don’t think I truly considered what it meant.

Didion describes sitting across from her husband at their dinner table having a typical Sunday 

evening dinner. A night they’d routinely lived and relived, together, many times. Only that time was the last. In the middle of their conversation, his head suddenly fell forward, chin resting on his chest. And he died of a massive heart attack. Life changing forever in that single instant. 

Soon after, her daughter was hospitalized with septic shock, her life lying uncertain for many months. Hence the title.

Today, I do know what she meant when she wrote that, “life changes in an instant.” The universe rises and draws a line in the sand to differentiate where you are then and where you’ll live thereafter. While there are likely many of those instances in our lives, we often don’t even realize how much life has changed. Until sometime later. We look back, see the aftermath, and wonder how we missed it.

Like the day one of my sisters called to tell me my father had passed. I didn’t cry. I was brought up not to, by my mother. Hearing the news was surreal. Maybe that’s why I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to. And it wasn’t until years later, when I was working as an extra in a movie, that something triggered a childhood memory that made me suddenly miss my father.

The director was walking the actors through a scene where they would have an argument on a busy city street. Watching him reminded me of when I was 6 years old and my father took me downtown to watch a film crew shoot a movie. Holding me, he pointed out some extras and said: 

“See those people standing over there? When the crew starts shooting, they’ll walk across the street by the main actors having a conversation. Then stand there for a minute, until that man over there, the director, waves them back over. Then they’ll all take turns crossing back to their original spot and stand there for a while. And so on. That way to those of us watching the movie, someday, it’ll look like it’s a very busy street scene. Even though it’s just the same people going back and forth”.

I was very impressed that he knew that. And proud that I’d learned about a movie-making secret. Thinking about that made me tear up. And I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down my face, so I rushed off the set to a nearby bathroom to regain my composure but was unable to. I ended up having to leave for the day. The silent grief finally caught up to me. Making me realize how much I missed my father and released the pain I’d been holding.

Even when you have one of those “life-altering” moments, life eventually moves back in to fill the void. You get busy at work. Start going out again. And you forget. Then months or even years later, when you least expect it, boom!. Another one slaps you in the face to remind you.

Like the day my doctor, during another routine awkward prostate exam, with a finger still up my ass, said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but I feel a small bump on the right side of your prostate”. Finger feeling the side of my prostate and causing a dull, ugly pain in my groin. Like having your testicles squeezed too hard. “Just a tiny one,” he followed. Though his statement hardly registered. My mind was still stuck on the word “bump.” Too late. The alarm had sounded. 

“BUMP!?” “BUMP!?” “BUMP!?”

I somewhat remember saying to myself, “Ok. Don’t freak out! You’re not the type of person who freaks out”. It’s true. I’m not that kind of person. But some other part of me was already moving the chess pieces about looking for a strategy to “figure it out”. To solve the puzzle! That’s how I cope. I look for ways to take control of the moment as soon as I fear I’m about to lose something.

Even as a kid, when one of my teacher’s suggested to my mother that I might be “a little slow in my ability to learn,” I set out to fix myself. Started going to the library multiple times a week and spent all my free time, even during play time at school, with my head in a book. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn. So much so, that by 5th grade, I was already at the 8th grade reading level. Even secretly reading most of Arno Karlen’s 666-page book: Sexuality and Homosexuality.

But even all that knowledge didn’t prepare me for how to deal with the potential loss of my sexual ability. “Are you concerned it might be cancer?” I heard myself ask. In a voice that didn’t sound like me. It was the voice of someone else. A man or boy who sounded scared. Wounded. Lost. And because that was so unlike me, I started analyzing what was happening inside my head, instead of my prostate. Whatever came out of his mouth after that was just mumbled gibberish.

What would I lose in the course of this journey? My manhood? My sex-appeal? My confidence? MY PENIS!?

I stepped outside and stood under the golden aura shining over Pacific Heights. Signaling dusk was approaching. Generally, a welcoming and familiar sight. But that day, it didn’t look the same. Nor feel the same. Nothing did. And despite how much my eternal optimism tried to think of it or see it in the same light, it wasn’t happening. Had I lost my superpower? My ability to power through, over, under, or around whatever obstacle was tossed in front of me. And still see the light!. Because even though I was literally bathed in the universe’s golden light, it felt like a golden shower.

Cancer! The line in the sand.

In rote motions, I made my way to Peet’s Coffee as I’d always done post my urology appointments. Got coffee, from the smiling, cute guy who seemed to remember me from previous times. But even that seemed hollow. Like when you have a cold or break-up with someone and you feel detached from the world and all you want is to feel like yourself again. I worried that everything was going to feel that way until I found out if “the bump” was something to worry about. 

I was already making deals with God to let it be nothing. Please God! Please!. Even an infection was preferred. Though I’d later learn that cancer was sort of like a slow-growing infection that’s been around so long it turns into a tumor. Maybe it’s the body’s way of slowing it down even more because it knows the infection isn’t going away on its own.

The test results would take three weeks!. Three weeks? “Of magical thinking!” How could they make me wait that long, I wondered. Pushing away the tug of self-pity. Meaning, I’d have to put on a happy face for at least 21 days and go through life B.A.U. No way I was going to tell anyone. After all, there was nothing to tell. Except the discovery of “the bump”.

In that moment, I was really glad my mother had brought me up to suffer in silence and focus on the task at hand. Life. Early on, I learned whatever happened or how much it hurt, she expected me to keep it together. Even when 2 boys in my neighborhood had their dog chase me, one day as I was walking back home from a corner market. I was 7. They were older and liked picking on me for a laugh. 

“Get ‘im, boy!” They yelled to their dog, as I ran into the creek to get away. I was terrified and crying as the dog barked and chased after me. And right before he reached me, they called him back. Clothes drenched; I sat on the side of the creek. Relieved. Humiliated. Needing my mother and having to face her in wet clothes. How would I explain myself without crying?. The trauma I’d just suffered wasn’t something I could just wipe away, but to prove to my mom that I wasn’t a baby anymore, I kept traumatic events to myself. Including “the bump.”

Whatever “the bump” was, it wasn’t causing any pain. Nothing had really changed. I could still do everything I was doing before. Eat. Drink. Smile. Have sex! Drink!. In that sense, I felt lucky. 

Because if there was anything I’d been dreaming of doing before receiving the news (and there was a lot), then this was the wake-up call to start doing it!. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

I headed home. To figure out life on the other side of the line in the sand.

More to come...

--Gregg