God and The Cancer

"I am grumpy because of what the cancer did to Mommy," declared Maya on the sidewalk next to our car as twilight deepened yesterday. "I miss Mommy and I don't like the cancer."

"I miss her, too," I said. "Cancer is bad and evil."

Last week she asked me why God had made Verna die. I said, "God didn't make Mommy die. She died because she had cancer, and sometimes cancer makes you die."

A week or so before Verna's funeral, I met with Father Paul, the Catholic priest Verna personally asked to officiate at the ceremony. He is active in social justice issues in the community, especially in the Latino neighborhoods. Somehow the issue of death and God and the unfairness of it all came up.

"I hate it when people say 'God wanted her more'," Father Paul admitted as we sat across from one another. "God didn't want her more. She died because she was too sick."

"Yes," I agreed, as I contemplated hugging him, "the cancer won out this time."

Father Paul's theological view of death was comforting to me. See, I don't blame God for Verna's death. I don't even hold God responsible for the Holocaust. If we have real free will then I understand why God has pulled back from the world, though I wouldn't mind a little intervention now and then. Some good old fashioned Biblical fire and brimstone to smote the real, real bad people. Rwanda. Darfur. Just to name two for starters.

Father Paul's words soothed me because I am agnostic, but it was nice to know he and I were on the same cosmological page.

I've been an agnostic since I was 19. I was an undergrad at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was in a Sociology of Deviance class and the professor was talking about crime and moral relativism and it suddenly struck me that, maybe, there wasn't any God. I'd never had any proof of God's existence, so why believe in a Deity that is quite possibly fictional?

My mother freaked out when I told her I wasn't sure there was a God.

"Maybe you should talk to someone," she pleaded.

So I made an appointment with Rabbi Neil Gilman, then the dean of the Seminary's rabbinical school, who'd also been my freshman Jewish philosophy professor a year earlier. I confirmed everything with his secretary.

On the day of the appointment, I felt as if were entering a lower realm on the way to Heaven, my insides shaky and roiling. Gilman was a scholar who made me nervous. He knew so much and I basically ignored most of his class for I was a lazy undergrad for the first five years of college.

He ushered me into his office, lined with books and books and books. He asked me why I was there.

"I already told your secretary," I said meekly, looking down at my sneakers.

"I know, I just want to hear it from you," he intoned.

"I don't think I believe in God anymore," I said.

He got up from his black leather swivel chair and extended his hand towards me. "Welcome to the club," he said with a grin.

Over the next few weeks, we read different philosophers and Gilman expounded on his view that belief in God exists on a continuum. At various stages of one's life he or she is on the more believing side; and at other stages he or she believes less.

That made sense to me, but over the years I haven't budged from my proud agnosticism. But I was never ready to take the leap into full blown atheism, because atheism always seemed too absolute. I am a doubter, not a disbeliever.

A few months later I watched a bus filled with members of the local Jewish youth group, including my younger brother (and only sibling), pull away from the synagogue enroute to some weekend retreat. I told my mother as we walked to the car that I prayed to God for Scott to be safe.

She started crying. Joyfully.

But even for all my agnostic bluster, I have had experiences, still, that cause me to wonder about the world. Watching the births of both children was a miracle and a mystery that can't help but stir a sense that the world is guided by something.

In early 2009, I wrote a freelance article about the popularity of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition that has gained a fair amount of publicity because Madonna is one of its devotees. One rabbi I interviewed said the essence of Kabbalah is recognizing the Divine spark in everyone and treating everyone as if he or she possesses that celestial shard of light.

His words resonated with me, and I have never forgotten them. I have a few close friends and associates (namely a few elderly women at the retirement community where I work), and family members who are either devout or active in their faiths. Deep, non-judgmental faith impresses me. Always has.

I remember watching my late mother-in-law, Maria, a devout Catholic who lived the best of Jesus' teachings, in 1992 as she retraced her Lord's footsteps at a synagogue where he preached 2000 years ago just north of Tiberias, in Israel's Galilee region. Walking on hallowed ground was the pinnacle of her life.

I will admit I have a hard time understanding when a tragedy occurs and someone says, "God spared us" or "God was good to us." How or why does God protect some people and let others die? Did those who suffered not pray enough?

There were some well-meaning people who said that Verna just needed to pray and think positively when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer and later when it returned. But what about all her friends who'd succumbed to the disease before her? Had they not fought or prayed hard enough?

None of this internal struggle means much or will necessarily help me help Maya as she alternates between utter sadness and demonstrable anger over her Mommy's death.

Two of my co-workers, both dedicated Catholics and very sweet people, told me today that I may be an agnostic but I am also very spiritual. I don't feel that way. I feel as if I am just muddling through when it comes to so, so much. And I do desperately want to comfort Maya and Miguel.

Maybe it's time to open my heart. Maybe it's time for some travel on that continuum that Professor Neil Gilman vividly rendered for me more than 30 years ago.

It's my choice. Thank God.

Maya At 5

Maya turns five tomorrow. Or Maya turns 25. Or 2,225. She's an old soul, for sure. Many of her insights and comments, filled with wisdom and compassion, make me shiver in awe and wonder how long she has been around.

Yesterday, while I was scrambling to prepare her breakfast and tend to Miguel (who has strep), Maya said, "I wish Mommy could come out of the stars and come down to see us. Then she could give us a big hug because her back doesn't hurt. But Mommy isn't alive anymore."

Boom.

Maya knows and sees so much. Before Maya was born, Verna and her friend Tony went to see some program at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The presenter, also a psychic, told Verna that her baby-to-be would be a healer. Verna was diagnosed a few weeks later with cancer, Maya was yanked out early, and Verna and I assumed the healing the psychic referred to was for her life threatening illness.

And Maya's arrival did provide Verna (and everyone) with physical and emotional solace and focus. While Verna labored through chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and days filled with horror and sickness, pain and fear, Maya's life force centered us on living and hope and the future. We still had a tiny life to nurture.

As Maya grew, oblivious to Verna's illness and the subsequent specter of cancer and disease that haunted us since Friday, January 13, 2006, she clearly absorbed life around her. It saddens me that Maya has had to grow up faster than most girls ever, ever should.

Last week she said to me, as we lounged in bed after I'd turned off the lights, "I don't want to be a Mommy, just a big sister. I don't want breasts."

I wanted to cry.

She added a few days later, "I hope I don't get the cancer. I don't want to die. Then you'll be sad."

Beyond sad.

Maya's world was irrevocably altered by cancer. Cancer robbed her of her Mommy and revealed (yet again) the grim reality that life is often not fair or just. But Maya shouldn't be acquainted with that painful reality as she learns in preschool how to identify numbers or that dinosaurs are extinct or sings songs about the seasons.

But Maya is still, in many, many ways just five years old. She wants to marry Daddy, believes in Santa, and wonders if all the characters in The Nutcracker ballet sleep behind the stage at night.

She is innocent and wise. She is my angel and princess. And I celebrate her birth (and also the amazing woman who birthed her, my late wife, Verna).

Maya the (almost) five year old is a total girly girl. She loves sparkly jewelry, bracelets and necklaces, and wearing her psychedelic pink and purple peace sign sneakers that sparkle when she stomps. She plays elaborately imaginative games in the house while I make dinner and Miguel does homework or, more likely, glues himself in front of his Play Station 3. She is the Mommy or school teacher, tenderly caring for her stuffed animals, baby dolls, Barbies, or Disney Princess dolls. Or she sets up tea parties in the living room on the blue table with the large pencil legs.

Maya is all smiles and sunshine and laughter. She embraces and enjoys life and friends and playing. I love how she and I make up silly words. I call her 'Basha basha' and she calls me 'Boopie loopie'. How she loves for me to tickle her back before she nods off to sleep or sing her a song about Bella (the Princess) who lost her umbrella and always enlists the aid of the other princesses: Aurora, Jasmine, Tiana, Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel.

I adore Maya because she has such a big heart. She brought a gift from her own toy pile to a friend's younger sister because we were celebrating the elder's birthday. "She will be sad," Maya said. "So I am giving her something, too."

I will never, ever forget what she said to me moments after I told her that Verna had died. First, she raced downstairs because she didn't believe me. Then when she came back to bed after having seen that the hospital bed was empty, she said, "Mommy died, I am sad. Poor Daddy, I will take care of you."

Where does that come from?

She constantly jolts Miguel and me with her sublime view of the world. She loves to hug and kiss, and continually affirms her love for you. She is going to be five and has lived lifetimes through her mother's illness and death.

Through all of the madness of our Twilight Zone-like nightmare, though, Maya still clutches tightly to the reins of life as someone who has been alive for 60 months. She said to me last week, her eyes brimming with joy and abandon, "I am so excited. I can't wait to be five. I'm going to be a big girl."

Amen, sweetheart. Never, ever forget to let the sunshine in.

I Am Missing You

"I ain't missing you since you've been gone away
I ain't missing you at all
No matter what my heart might say."
~John Waite

"What's up honey?" I said into my cell phone last night as I joked with our neighbor who was expecting Maya and me for dinner. Miguel was already at their home.

"Was that Mommy?" asked Maya who was finishing up her first dinner with other neighbors. She thought if I said 'honey' it must be Verna.

"No, that was Corinna, wondering where we are," I answered. "But that'd be really cool if we could talk to heaven. But we can't."

Miguel, Maya, and I know Verna is gone from this Earth forever, but that doesn't make the reality any easier to swallow. And I know our devastating sense of loss will eventually evaporate and be replaced by a constant ache in our hearts. For now, though, the sadness and pain I feel is heavy and weighs down everything I do.

Not that I'd want it any other way, but everything seems to remind me of Verna. On Saturday afternoon, as I walked to the neighborhood park, where Maya was waiting for me with yet another neighbor and his two kids, I passed Matt, who was pulling apart the rollers on the bottom of his vacuum cleaner.

"Well, the reason it got stuck, honey," he said to me in mock anger directed at his wife, "is because of your hair."

His comments immediately reminded me how strands of Verna's hair, which was waist long before her initial cancer diagnosis, clogged our vacuum and spilled onto the sink, toilet bowl, and floor of our bathroom.

I wanted to say to him, "At least your wife is still alive so she can shed." But I didn't. Nor should I have gone that far over the edge to hurt a neighbor and friend.

Then late last night, as I was walking our epileptic miniature poodle, another neighbor walked by with tears in his eyes.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked.

"Oh, it's J----," his wife, "she's missing. She and I fought pretty hard a few days ago. She just left tonight, went somewhere without her wallet or driver's license."

He'd repeatedly phoned her cell, but she wasn't answering. He'd also called her first cousin and close friend, but he wasn't picking up either.

Frankly, while I certainly felt sorry for him alone with four kids, ages 5-20, I couldn't really handle the personal drama, nor muster up enough emotional energy to share his pain and truly empathize. I wanted to say, "At least your wife is still alive to run away." But I didn't because even in pain I am not that cruel.

Verna is gone but memories of her are everywhere. When I cross the Golden Gate Bridge, I think of how we biked across it in 1990 when we'd been dating for a couple of weeks. We left San Francisco, Verna on her mountain bike, me on a freebie I'd inherited from a friend whose husband probably should've donated it to a scrap yard.

We breezed into Marin County on a 40-mile bike ride (OK, Verna breezed while I chugged) that Saturday afternoon more than 20 years ago, looped around Paradise Drive and into Tiburon before our ascent through Sausalito and back over the bridge, urban pioneers, exercising our hearts and bodies on two wheels amid the freshness of our nascent relationship.

On Saturday afternoon, I stopped off at the video store for Miguel and me and ran into the director of Miguel's preschool. Just seeing her flooded me with memories. She mentioned how Verna was the best treasurer the school had ever had.

"She was so organized and efficient and dedicated," she said.

"That was Verna," I said, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

The thing is, I don't want the memories to fade or stop; I just want to feel better and have this deep, dark sense of emotional emptiness, which I know is raw grief, to subside. I happily summon Verna's memories. It's just that I miss her so much, and therefore the memories are also laced with sadness.

But I still punish myself by confronting those memories and testing my ability to handle them. On Saturday night, after Maya and Miguel went to bed, I watched When Harry Met Sally, a movie we'd enjoyed and was in Verna's instant DVD NetFlix queue.

Of course, as I watched Harry and Sally's animosity for one another grow into love, fondness, and deep friendship, as Meg Ryan brought herself to fake orgasm in a diner, and as Rob Reiner featured actual married couples waxing romantic over their long-term unions, I kept thinking, "All of them get a happily ever after except Verna and me."

Not fair. Not fair at all.

Well, tonight I channeled Verna with memories meant to honor her (and sustain our children). I made her pasta with spinach cream sauce, a dish she and the kids renamed green pasta. Miguel and Maya have been asking me to make the recipe for weeks.

It was probably the healthiest dish Verna made, culled from an issue of Vegetarian Times. You prepare the pasta of your choice and top it with a sauce made from cottage cheese, garlic, broccoli, spinach, and milk. You swirl the ingredients in a food processor. I never liked the dish because the broccoli and garlic gave it a overpoweringly pungent aroma. A former boss of mine banned the dish when I brought it in for leftovers. She said the smell permeating the funeral home was not good for the customers.

I was nervous as I poured the broccoli-spinach sauce onto the pasta and began to stir. Would this dish hold up to the high culinary standards established by Verna, who always adored food and cooking?

It certainly was green, and looked just liked Verna's. "How is it?" I asked.

"Good," said Miguel with a smile. He liked it. Miguel liked it.

"Good," said Maya. "Just like Mommy's."

I almost reached over and smeared her face with a garlic green broccoli spinach kiss. But I stopped and just gazed at her smile. It reminded me of Verna.

Love and the Cathode Rays

At some point in the next week, I will finish watching season 6 of The Office on NetFlix and part of my connection to Verna will dissolve. I’ve been half channeling, half mirroring Verna since she died, and at the conclusion of season 6, the last one available instantly, I will probably stop watching the shows Verna viewed for the last several months of her life.

Shortly after she was first diagnosed with cancer in 2006, family and friends brought her DVDs to watch while she recovered from her biweekly doses of chemotherapy. We were reformed TV addicts at the time, but Verna quickly renewed her habit out of necessity.

A cancer memoir that appeared shortly after Verna first got sick captured Verna’s state of mind. Cancer Made Me Shallow Person, an illustrated narrative by another woman who ultimately lost her battle to cancer, is funny, irreverent, poignant, and a brash statement of identity amid a terminal illness.

Verna loved the book (which I also read) and used it to defend and rationalize her sedentary lifestyle. So she watched Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, The Sopranos, 24, The Medium, Curb Your Enthusiasm, MI5, both the original British and later American versions of The Office, countless movies. She said she just didn’t have the energy or ability to concentrate long-term on reading books, though she still devoured them, albeit more slowly.

I alternately resisted and embraced her TV viewing. I preferred reading, but TV is so mindless and, yes, watching a show together meant being together even if it was a very passive form of connecting. Sometimes I would read on the landing leading to our garage, huddled against the first step while Verna, resting in her recliner 20 feet away, cackled at some comedy or was engrossed in a tense drama. And at other times, I employed a can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em approach and sat on the couch and watched with her.

When we were laughing together or nervously awaiting the outcome of a show, I still preferred to be engrossed in engaging fiction or non-fiction, but it wasn’t as if Verna and I had no prior TV viewing history.

When we were first married, Thursday nights were Cheers. Then we drifted to Mad About You, a show that resonated because it was, like us, the story of a Jewish guy married to a non-Jewish woman. Tears of laughter streamed down our faces at the various family situations, often involving Paul Reiser’s neurotic Jewish relatives, Paul and Jamie navigated.

Then we had Miguel, and TV became less and less important. Verna went back to work, I did some writing, and we spent our evenings cleaning up or relaxing with books, magazines, or the newspaper. We still watched movies, pretty faithfully every Friday evening and often on weekends, but we avoided the boob tube (no pun intended).

So, now as season six winds down, and Jim and Pam just got married, escaping their own ceremony to secretly wed in the mist of Niagra Falls, I feel wistful and miss Verna so damn much. I sit in her electric recliner and, like her, have the computer propped on my knees, and I imagine myself laughing at the same scenes and instances in The Office as she did.

And that is why the soon-to-be conclusion of season 6 is so sad. In some ways, I feel Verna is with me when I watch her show. Once the show ends, I will have to confront in even starker terms what I have been living with since August 30: Verna has died and is not coming back.

Then, again, another one of our shows, the surprisingly witty and often hilarious How I Met Your Mother, season five, is now available on DVD. Verna and I watched seasons 1-4 together. I’ll have to see this one alone.

Part of the Plan?

Maybe the Azande had it right.

A water tower collapsed, killing two tribespeople, while anthropologists studied the north central African tribe. The Azande blamed witchcraft. The social scientists surveyed the water tower and concluded that termites had eaten through the wooden posts and weakened the entire structure, causing it to fall on the men. The Azande thanked them for their explanation, but asked, "Why did it happen to those two men at that particular time?"

Whether life is a series of random coincidences or is fated one way at the most profound times, as the Azande clearly believed, has occupied my thoughts since Wednesday.

Shortly after Verna was first diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2006, she commissioned a photographer (thanks to our dear friend Christa), who specialized in mothers and their newborns to take a picture of her and Maya before Verna had her double mastectomy. In the photo, Verna reclined on our bed, virtually bald, naked from the waist up, her full breasts supporting the back of Maya.

A year later she had the same photographer shoot Maya and herself in similar poses. Maya the toddler smiled at Verna, sans breasts, and her full head of black hair.

The framed dual photos adorned the wall above our bed for nearly four years until Wednesday. I'd noticed a slight gap in the frame about a week ago but thought it could easily be repaired once I made the time. But when I went into the room Wednesday morning, two sides of the frame were dangling off the photo.

Again, I don't believe much in signs or messages from beyond, but I did pause to wonder why the frame ripped apart at this time? As Verna battled between a state of hallucinations and semi-lucidity, was what happened to the frame some cosmic communique or an explainable coincidence that was bound to happen at some point given the weight of the photographs and the cheap frame?

I know what Verna's answer would be if she could offer me anything. She believed in signs and portents with utmost conviction. She suspected she might have had something wrong with her before her original diagnosis after a series of dreams in which a poisonous spider lowered itself onto her chest.

But she cannot look me in the eyes right now and shout, "Aha! I told you so. The breaking of the frame clearly represents or is a message from the universe." Or tell me that it symbolized the damage we are witnessing to our beloved Verna and to our lives. Or that I am no longer supposed to have the framed pictures in the house.

She cannot speak because since last night, about 24 hours earlier, Verna has been asleep and, I fervently hope and pray, comfortable beyond measure after hospice upped her pain medications yet again.

I don't have the answer to the dilemma of the dangling frame and wires. And I don't believe the Azande's superstitious notions of the world make them primitive versus the rationality of trained scientists. I just don't know how to explain what happened here. Maybe the Azande were right.

Heart of the Matter

Yesterday was Terms of Endearment meets the Twilight Zone meets the Wefald and Friedman household. Verna basically said goodbye to Miguel and Maya. And, like the moment when Debra Winger addresses her children from her hospital bed, buckets of tears gushed forth.

It all started last week when Verna asked the spiritual support counselor in a barely audible voice, "I want to say goodbye to my kids."

So hospice arranged for a social worker and a bereavement counselor, who is also trained as a therapist, to help Verna facilitate the conversation. We decided on yesterday because Miguel was still home (school started today) and Maya returns from preschool in the early afternoon.

Prior to the meeting Verna asked me, "So hospice thinks I'm going to die?"

"Yes," I said. "But they don't think it's imminent. They just wanted us to schedule the meeting sooner rather than later."

Verna was pretty alert on Saturday, but dazed and slightly confused most of Sunday, so I was worried how coherent she'd be when she spoke to the kids. But she was surprisingly present once the gathering began.

Our social worker Deborah Schwing started by asking the kids to assess how Verna was doing through their eyes. Miguel said, "She's been getting weaker and is in a lot of pain." Maya parrotted Miguel's view.

"Maya," I said, "What's happeing to Mommy?"

"Mommy's going to die," Maya said.

"And then how will we see Mommy?" I asked.

"She'll be in star in heaven like Grandma Chela," Maya said.

Deborah then asked Verna to describe her feelings and how she understood her situation.

"Well, I'm dying," Verna said. "I'm angry that I won't get to see the kids grow up, won't be there for so many milestones--graduations, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings. I am sad I won't ever meet my grandchildren."

Tears were flowing freely down Verna's face and mine. I felt intense anger and sadness as well that we and Verna were being robbed.

Deborah asked Verna to talk to the kids and share her hopes and dreams for them.

"I want you to find your passion in life. Always be good," she said. "Do unto others as you have them do unto you. Work hard. Work hard in school. Always do what is right. Be a good role model."

Miguel was quiet, head down, and preoccupied with a booklet near him on the recliner chair. Maya moved from the hospital bed, snuggling against Verna, to my lap. She was growing restless. At one point the beareavement counselor, Andrea, who will soon see Maya for play therapy, took Maya upstairs to play.

"The two best days of my life," Verna said, "were February 9, 1998, when Miguel was born, and January 19, 2006 when Maya had to come early through a c-section (so I could start cancer treatments)."

Maya and Andrea returned. "I love you both so much," Verna said. "And I will always love you forever and ever."

Deborah asked Miguel how he was feeling about Verna dying. Tears welled in his eyes, one of the few outward expressions of emotions he's allowed himself.

"I've been thinking about how I'm going to be without a mother," he said. I lost it again and rubbed my wet, wet eyes.

"And it's OK for you to be angry sometimes, Miguel, with your dad for not being your mom," Deborah said.

"I could wear one of her dresses," I said as Deborah and Miguel smiled.

"Just be gentle with each other," Deborah added. Then she turned to Verna, "Is there anything else you want to share?"

"Miguel's 12 so he'll have memories of me, but Maya is so young. I am worried she won't remember me as she gets older," Verna said, tears streaming.

"That won't happen," I said. "We will always remember you."

"No, Mommy," Maya said, "I won't ever forget you," a look of unconditional conviction on her face.

We will never forget Verna. Her life will always be a blessing and a legacy for the children, me, her friends and family. I truly hope our session brought her comfort. As her pain increases, she needs that positive energy to cope and rest.

What The !@#$&%?

Verna picked out her casket today. Yes, that's right. I wheeled her around a room filled with steel and wood caskets, ranging from $3200-$11,000, and she chose a dark wood one with the Pieta (Mother Mary cradling Jesus) and the Last Supper etched into the metal moulding around the perimeter of the coffin.

Surreal beyond the Twilight Zone would not begin to describe the swirl of emotions we experienced today at Montes Chapel of the Pines in San Anselmo (we get 10% off if I mention him in a blog--just kidding), about five miles from our house.

As I pushed Verna in her wheelchair to the front entrance, the door opened and two friendly beagles greeted us. Verna immediately smiled. I was worried for many reasons how our appointment might go. As hospice has increased her medication she has grown foggier and drowsier, so she spends a chunk of the day sleeping on her hospital bed in the living room. Would she even be awake or semi-lucid?

I'd promised Verna months ago that she'd be able to choose her casket. Knowing that her situation was becoming graver by the day, I called the mortuary this morning. The receptionist transferred me to the voicemail of one of their intake counselor's, Ed, who we later learned is the funeral director, owner, and sole fulltime employee. He also drives the hearse.

"I've worked here for 15 years," he told us. "And I bought it two years ago from the family that'd owned it. Mr. Montes still works with me parttime."

Well, my fears about Verna's cognitive condition were unfounded. I haven't seen her this alert in at least two weeks. She chose her casket, guest book, and prayer card scenes and poem, and decided to forego embalming and a rosary service on the eve of her funeral.

And as I sat there amazed yet again by my wife's unshakeable spirit, I also kept thinking, "This is not happening. This is not happening. When will our nightmare end?"

We shared that crushing anxiety with her father, brother, and his wife before we left the house for the funeral home. Maya was at school, Miguel at baseball camp. In the presence of a hospice nurse, the five of us kissed Verna's forehead, rubbed her arm, and cried. She cried, we cried, and all of us not so silently railed against how unfair it is that we are days, weeks, months away from Verna's death.

"The hard part is not knowing," Verna said to the hospice social worker as tears streamed down her face. "I just wish I could know how much longer I have."

The social worker nodded and then said, "I know."

In the middle of our appointment with Ed, the phone rang. "You can take that if you need to," I said.

"It's the Humane Society," he said. "I have to."

It turned out that either Ed or his assistant left the door open after we wheeled in and one of the beagles ambled into the neighborhood, where he was found by a Good Samaritan who'd called the Humane Society and left her phone number. While Verna and I surveyed the caskets, Ed walked a couple of blocks away to retrieve Fletcher.

Although we found out last Thursday that Verna could be dead within a few days, according to hospice and her oncologist, she seems to be doing pretty well after hospice adjusted some of her pain medications. "And I still have things to do," she has said.

She's been writing cards to the kids for all the birthdays, graduations and other special occasions she will miss; she's helping plan her nephew's wedding in mid-September. He and his fiance, who have a gorgeous 20-month old daughter, decided to take the marital plunge sooner in order to accomodate Verna. Today was also part of Verna's process of accomplishing tasks and creating more peace of mind for herself, and another of example of how she controls as much as possible in a situation that has mostly spiralled beyond all control.

"Well, we took care of that," she said as we left the mortuary.

Yes, we did. Verna picked out a casket today and I still can't f@#$%ing believe it.

The Power of Positive Thinking

Verna did something she rarely does last night: she went out alone. OK, she only traveled about 100 ft., but, hey, it was progress. She joined a few of our female neighbors for a couple of hours of ping-pong. After I put Miguel to bed, I was content to plop on the couch and read my thriller (which turned out to be more or less a dud) as she stoked her competitive fires with a Girls Night Out.

One of the women recently took a pap test and it came back questionable. Her mom died prematurely from cancer a few years ago, so she freaked out at the doctor’s office when she went in for a follow-up. She left without finishing the test.

“She’s probably suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome,” Verna said as we lounged in the living room after she got home.

Another woman, who is a former neighbor, took the quasi-fatalist approach when talking about cancer and recurrence. She said, “People do die. We could get hit by a car at anytime.”

Verna laughed and responded to her, “Yeah, but the car has my name on it.”

Living with cancer and recovery means heightened stress for the rest of one’s life no matter what one's status. The sword never really stops dangling from above unless it is too late.

Verna said to me, “I wish I could go back to just feeling I might get hit by a car. Then you don’t worry about it.” She paused. “Do you ever think about it?”

I did admit that, since I’ve become a father and since she was diagnosed with cancer (and her life expectancy dropped dramatically after we found out it was Stage III), my death anxiety levels are higher than normal. But, no, I told her, I rarely ponder my demise.

Our former neighbor’s attitude is really a variation, I think, of the if-you-only-think-positive-you-can-beat-cancer notion that some people spewed at us when Verna was sick. Frankly, we found it insulting, especially since we lost a dear, dear friend to breast cancer. And if we accept the power of positive thinking model, does that mean our friend didn’t pray, hope, fight hard enough?

Bullshit!

Yes, we could all die and eventually we will all die. But Verna’s point is she is now a marked person, and that is something that only cancer survivors and other related sufferers can truly understand. It changes how one physically and emotionally interacts with the world on a daily basis.

It’s frustrating sometimes that people push intentionally or not their own mental-health-karmic-cosmological agendas without truly walking in the shoes of the ‘patient’. Easy for me to spout right now because I, too, have not slipped on Verna’s footwear. But I have witnessed up close and personal her suffering and anguish, so I guess that gives me some kind of right to express these opinions.

None of this is to say that Verna is waiting for the Angel of Death to tap on the door and whisk her away. Hardly. She is enjoying life with family and friends. She is rather upbeat and extremely healthy. But her emotions and hormones constantly wreak havoc on her body and mind because of the gnawing fear that the cancer will (and the odds are highly likely) return.

Sometimes I think all she needs is a little acknowledgement and understanding. Sometimes those are my strong suits. Other times, I am an abject failure. For the record, however, Verna played three games of ping-pong and lost only once, to someone she has yet to beat.

She hasn’t given up hope of winning, but she is realistic. Time will tell.

Meatless in San Francisco?

I became a vegetarian in 1979. After I read my friend Ziva’s freshman composition about vegetarianism and how our food choices affect the world, I gave up meat and chicken within a week.

Four months later, while I was eating in a Jerusalem café with friends, I gave up fish as well. My entrée that night was whitefish, with the head attached, so the sight of it made me realize that not consuming animals included water creatures as well.

I maintained my commitment to vegetarianism for 30 years. It was an ethical decision: I simply didn’t want to eat anything that had been killed for me. Yes, I know, ripping off lettuce leaves may constitute murder to some of you, but I just didn’t want to be a carnivore.

So for three decades I never willingly ate meat, chicken, or fish. Being the slightly obsessive guy that I am, I still remember several of the times I accidentally ingested animal flesh.

One time, a family whose son I was tutoring invited me for a healthy dinner: spaghetti squash smothered in tomato sauce, which, they’d insisted, was vegetable based. As soon I as I started chomping on the stringy vegetable, I knew there were bits of meat in it. As politely as possible I just stopped eating. I can’t recall now 21 years later if they said anything to me or me to them.

Another time, at a party with friends, the host assured us the baked beans were vegetarian. We scooped out several spoonfuls and started eating. Soon we found a chunk of bacon in the sauce.

Then there was the infamous Appleby’s vegetarian burger episode. Shortly after Verna finished her chemotherapy in 2006, amid a sweltering heat wave when the temperatures soared to 106, we escaped to the air-conditioned confines of the local Appleby’s.

I ordered a vegetarian Mexican fiesta burger, which, when it came, tasted like a Boca burger, not my favorite veggie offering. But I asked Verna, who humors my paranoia that meat might actually touch my lips and tries everything that makes me suspicious. And she usually responds, “No, that is not meat, Steve.” It’s always mushrooms or chopped tomatoes.

But this time she hesitated before answering. “Yep,” she said. “That’s meat.”

Someone in the kitchen had goofed up and I was pissed. Before my anger grew too much, Verna halted me, “Excuse me. I’ve just had toxins running through my veins and body for four months, so you can handle a quarter of a hamburger.”

And she was right.

Since Verna’s cancer diagnosis, she has eaten more meat, chicken, and fish, after 15 years of catering to my vegetarianism and cooking from the pile of recipes and cookbooks we’ve collected. And she has suggested on several occasions that maybe I should jump ship as well.

Verna’s cancer was aggressive and carries a high likelihood of recurrence, so she wants me to be as healthy as possible for logical reasons. She worries that I might not be getting all the vitamins and nutrients I need as a vegetarian who is about to turn 50.

So last Sunday I decided, after much internal anguish and debate, to eat chicken. I’d always said if I were to renounce my vegetarian ways it would be with the rotisserie chicken and potatoes sold at the local Farmer’s Market. The blazing hot broilers drip fat and spices onto red potatoes and season them to mouth-watering perfection. (Only sustainable, free range animals for me)

Rain was pouring down, so we left the kids in the car. Verna went to get Maya a Belgian waffle; I went to buy oranges from Sonia and apples from the mountain grown girls.

“I’ll meet you at the chicken guys,” Verna said with a twinkle or particle of dust in her eye.

I was nervous, though Verna said she’d believe I was abandoning my vegetarianism once she saw it.

Well, I bought the chicken; then we dropped off the warm package at home before running some errands. When we returned Verna sliced chicken off the bone and heated it up with the potatoes.

I grabbed the plate from her once it was done, but she shouted, “No, wait.”

We had to document the moment. She had the digital video camera and Miguel held his digital camera, both poised to record what was for them a momentous occasion. I was still in a state of shock, not quite believing that I was voluntarily going to eat the roasted chicken.

But I did. And I felt weird. I faked having terrible stomach cramps, though everyone, even Maya, knew I was kidding. It tasted fine. I was never a chicken fan, but the potatoes were very sumptuous.

Right before I ate, Miguel said, “I know this is going to be better than quorn,” which is a tofu-like substance probably derived in some laboratory on a former commune tucked behind hills of marijuana plants and patches of organic fruits and vegetables.

Was it better? I don’t know. Was it healthier? I don’t know. How do I feel about this sudden and drastic change in my life, where I’ve dropped a label—vegetarian—that has been an intimate part of my life since I was 20? I don’t know.

Two days before I ate the chicken, I spoke with a friend whom I’ve known since the early 1980s. He’d been a vegetarian for many years, but ditched it after his wife, Laura, was diagnosed with cancer several years ago. She died in 2003.

I started explaining to Dan that some people have said people need certain nutrients from animal sources, especially as they age, and maybe it was a good time for me to switch. Then I said, “And Verna has been gently hounding me for years. Now that she has cancer she figures…”

He stopped me there and said, “Well, if your wife wants you to, that is reason enough.”

Meatless in San Francisco no more.