Goodbye Dad

I was driving on Randall Road last Saturday, my birthday, when a quick breeze ran through my body from left to right. I checked to see if the air conditioning was on. Nope. The window was rolled up, too. Then I became very sad. Very sad. Because I knew what had just happened. My dad was saying goodbye to me. About ten minutes later, my phone rang and my sister told me that he had died.

I know all of our dads are our heroes. And forgive me if this sounds familiar. By now, I'm sure you know that he was mine. But more than anything, he was just a good person. Maybe that is, in the end, better than being a hero.

Timothy J. Herlehy owned an excavating business. But he wasn't an excavator. He was a builder. Yes, he built many office buildings and parking lots. But he also made Kachina dolls. He built four or five houses and probably hundreds of different rooms for friends and family. He built flawless fences. I was jealous of his precision in those fences. He made driveways. He made a board game. And most important, he made me a man.

He made relationships that lasted much longer than the fences and driveways. He talked to his childhood buddy every week. I don't even talk to my college buddies every month. And he did it without Facebook. His life was always in building.

One week, he went to an Indian Reservation and built there just because they needed someone like him to help. He made me a home whenever I needed it. He made homes for a lot of people. It wouldn't be uncommon to wake up and see some strange person sleeping on our couch or in a bedroom. When people needed a place to stay for a night or a couple of weeks or even months, my dad put them up. I had the privilege of being introduced to Kenny Loggins' cousin once because he stayed with my dad for awhile. Really, he was the cousin of Kenny Loggins. He looked just like him and besides, who would lie about being Ken Loggins' cousin?

One of my favorite things about my dad was he made good things out of bad. One time late at night, he saw that I was hungry but couldn't find anything to eat. The next day was shopping day so you know, that night before the cupboards are pretty bare. This one was too except for a can of hominy. So he made that and while we both ate, he talked at length about the times he ate hominy and who eats it now and what goes with hominy. Hominy tastes like crap. I'm sure he knew it but he also knew what I have finally come to understand and that is, that it doesn't matter what you eat when you love and enjoy the people you're eating with. He told me some day we'll try some grits. I'm sure he was laughing inside because grits tastes like crap too.

My dad's wake started at four pm and ended at eight. The whole time, the line rarely thinned. You would have thought someone was giving away Springsteen tickets. He spent his whole life doing what I just figured out. Being a hater doesn't help anyone. Being a builder, now that is something noble.

Many people felt bad that he died on my birthday. They say that it was supposed to be your day. But I never saw the meaning of birthdays any more. Sort of a nuissance. Now, however, I feel much differently. If my dad were to die on any day, I'm actually glad it was on my birthday. Because I now know how to celebrate it. I'll do what he did his whole life. Why half-heartedly celebrate my life this one day when I can instead whole-heartedly celebrate his? That's what a builder would do. So every year on March 24th, I'm going to celebrate my birthday by visiting with his friends and family and saying goodby, again and again, to him.

I am very sad now. I don't know if this is grief. I am just sad. I wonder if I'll ever laugh uncontrollably. I sort of don't care. Where does time go? Life sometimes slips by us.

I'm just blabbing. I've gotten so bad, I'm just gonna blab.

I don't think they'll ever be a good movie about cancer. Certainly not an action movie. Matt Damon will never play me. Well, Matt Damon would never play me because I don't look like Matt Damon. He's cute. I'm more like Ernest Borgnine. Women have never fell in love with my looks. I usually need a couple of dates and long talks and walks along some body of water. The ladies like talking next to water. Then, eventually when I've done quite a bit of work and have exhausted almost all my jokes, they say some weird physical attribute is cute. Like my back. Really. Some girl, after knowing her for a long time and talking to her everyday about all kinds of stuff, said I had a sexy back. I didn't have a sexy back. It was a white, pale, fatty, baggy, lard. But you women, you will talk yourself into anything. Even a fatty lard back.

The reason you can't ever make a world shit-kickin'-Titanic-Celine Dion-Sings-the-Soundtrack movie about cancer is because cancer is so damn slow. He is a creepy bastard that is so creepy he moves slower than you can even track. You wake up one day, you feel like crap. Then you feel like crappier. Then crappier. Suddenly, you just feel like that pocket of lard on my back. Just some lethargic, buzzed blob. While you're laying there, cancer is killing you. First your blood, then your lungs. You never suddenly feel a puncture and hop into a car, rushing to a emergency center. It just slowly moves, a centimeter a day. Until, pip. It's in. Meanwhile, as the blob, you develop a cough. You think it's a cold because if it were cancer, there would be this big pop followed by menacing music. And then Matt Damon would crash through your window and carry you to a hospital. Nope. Cancer is a slow bastard.

Someone once described the devil as not someone who is red with a pitchfork and fire in his nose. Instead, the devil would be someone you don't know but who slowly but surely lowers standards, kills things quietly. Wait. Someone didn't say that. I think it was in Broadcast News.
But that is cancer.

I'm supposed to be in complete remission now but I can't get over being sick. I am the blob right now. An Ernest Borgnine blob and I'm trying to get out of it. I can't even write well. The biggest bad news is because I've taken so many pops of oxy-anything, I've reached the Michael Jackson and Elvis level of drug use. Will I die on the toilet? I don't know. I like to poop. I like poop as much as the next guy. I think women every once in a while take a really great poop as well. But they have to quietly enjoy it. It would be great if a woman one day wrote on her Facebook wall, "I just took a great poop."

Maddie has pink eye. I think I might have pink eye. But being a blob, I have to unravel all my problems to see if a number of them is related to pink eye. Just not feeling good. I can't remember when I had a whole hour where I felt no pain, nausea or discomfort. It has to have been a couple of months ago. My biggest and best wish right now is to spend a whole day feeling normal. Even Ernest Borgnine normal.

I need to reach the summer. If I can stay in complete remission at that point, I can enjoy a day or two or three. In the summer, my treatment ends. Before that, I won't have any relief because my side effects are getting worse and the drugs are getting less effective. But just the summer. A couple days at the beach where everyone can see my fat blob belly, four or five scars on my neck, a port in my chest and then, tada! My back. Someone should film this because in the middle of all this ugliness, I will feel so happy. Okay, so sure, there will never be an action flick about cancer. But maybe a horror movie starring my midsection.

It was good while it lasted

I haven't posted in a while. No excuse. But I would like to update everyone even though I should be going to bed:

I've been to the doc twice since the last post. Heck maybe three times. Good news. I had no cancerous activity in me at the time. But the drug and my history keeps everyone with extremely guarded optimism. This was a while back. Things have changed.

My neuropathy is bad now. It hurts to type. I can't button my shirt really well. I can't write my name really well but I never did in the first place. Typing is bad, besides being painful. Fingers won't do much. I have a hard time going up and down stairs. My body aches constantly like having the flu. I can't sleep now at all. I'm getting used to my sleeping pills and the pain pills so they work less. I'm in either sharp pain of neuropathy or aches at all times of the day and night now. I'm trying to take some vitamins to help with the fingers.

I can't tell my doctor any of this because he'll take me off the drug and I need the drug to survive. His reason is sound: the drug can debilitate me, meaning I could lose function of my hands, arms and legs. But I have to gamble that it won't. I need the drug and be alive more than I need to walk. And really, the biggest problem here is I have to be judicious with the drugs I ask for since they can catch on and give me tests that I might not pass.

There is a great Peter Gabriel song on his second or third album (he never named them; he's an artist). it was about this burglar who liked sneaking in people's houses. The drums on that was excellent. I think he used Phil Collins so you know it's that hard, pounding. In this specific song it managed to be creepy and pounding. It gave you the feeling that Peter was slowly stepping and stepping into the house.

Now, I hear Phil Collins' drums in my body. The cancer that has already snuck into my body and was in hiding for awhile, is getting bored and looking for some elbow room, stretch his nuclei. The right side of my neck is hurting every so often. The muscles around my neck start throbbing for a couple of minutes. Then it goes away. Only to come back and throb for a while. From experience, I know that only two things will happen: either the node will start to appear or the throbbing will stop, never to be heard from again. If the node pops out, it's cancer and it's game on again. If it goes away in the next couple of days, it was a cancerous node but the drugs beat it back so silly that it won't get up to fight again.

This is a time I knew would always come but you're just never prepared. Before I had the reserve of SGN. But I used that up. Now I got no reserve. It's the slow march to the sea. For months, I was just hoping to just get the summer. In May, the treatment ends and Dr. O was going to give me a break for a few months as long as I didn't get sick. It would have been unbelievable. My first single day without drugs for four and a half years. That's more than a thousand mornings waking up to another reality. I just wanted the summer. But those drums. I'll give you an update with this as soon as it breaks one way or the other.

To my youngest and happiest

Dear Maddie,

Today you gave me one of the best days of my life. I spent most of it with you. According to science, you will probably never remember anything. You're too young. I just wish that maybe today will come to you in a dream. And I don't think remembering it or replaying will be good enough. I wish you could have felt today. If you can feel it in your dream, that will be cool.

You dream that we went to the pool. You were afraid to go down the alligator slide because you don't like getting water in your eyes. We bobbed together and did all the cool things dads do with their kids in pools. And then we came home. You had half of mom's peanut butter and jelly sandwich (she packed you a lunch) and a whole banana. One day you were trying to figure out how to say the word banana and you looked at me while you were figuring out like it was an algebra question. Then you cried because you didn't want to take a nap only to fall asleep within five minutes of laying down in your bed. You woke up and watched Nemo. And then we went to your Father Daughter Day. We both wore pink. You were supposed to play hot potato but you loved the music so much, you decided to dance instead. You made me dance with you. It's hard to dance to children's songs, especially when people are waiting to play hot potato. Your happiness is so infectious that you got everyone to stop playing hot potato and half the party danced. Hot potato be damned. You are only two but you got twenty or so people to dance because you like to dance. A lot of dads dancing and Maddie, let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. But it was beautiful to me. You created it all. Your happiness.

The thing is, Maddie, this will all end for me. In a couple of months, I'll have to stop getting treatments. It was my last good bullet and I really enjoyed my time. The side effects have caused me to have extreme pains in my hands and feet. The pain has traveled up to my knees and to my shoulders. My lower legs are lumpy and it's hard to walk. Every step hurts now and I'm running out of drugs to help it. Every day I have to wake up and relearn how to ignore the pain. This must be what it is like getting old. But it's been easier because of you. I swam and danced today. The pain was somewhere but it wasn't on that makeshift dance floor. It was still one of the best days of my life.

Don't lose your happiness for anyone. Nobody should ever take it away. I hope that includes me.

I'm sorry, Maddie. I wish I did something different to change what is happening to us right now. I will cheat you. It hurts really, really bad to think of that. I can't now. You're sleeping. I need it too. I'll see you in the morning. Maybe we can have a better day. I have a feeling the closer I get to ending my last magic bullet, the better my days will be. let's keep laugh. Stay happy. Always stay happy. That will be your gift to the world. Maybe it is my gift to you.

Love,

Your Dad

Excuse the typos.

As a father of one son, I worry, as do many fathers of one son, about my line. It sounds so unbelieveably arrogant and it is. But I think there is some evolutional physiological make-up to it. The line is my line of succession. Having one son means that this branch of the Herlehys only goes through him. This is stupid and did I mention arrogant? But I think of my grand-parents and how hard they lived and struggled and just believe it would be a big shame to ever continue the history of the world without at least someone waving their flag. My grand-father pounded in railroad ties most of his life and met his wife right on the job because she was the cook. The day after my father graduated from eighth grade, my grand-father put him alone on a caboose and told him he had to ride on that train all summer and spray fertilizer. To repeat for dramatic effect, he was alone on a train, working every single day during the summer after eighth grade. Today, of course, my grand-father would arrested but they needed the money. From there, my dad was used to working non-stop from morning to night. I figured out that he worked two jobs for around forty years.

Everybody has similar tales about their parents and grand-parents and as far as I'm concerned, they're all heroic. It's what makes us the biggest, bad-ass country in the world. And even if we all have those stories, none of those people should ever be forgotten. Just because there were thousands of them, it doesn't means they can't all be our heroes.

Having one son means I only got one shot at getting the succession line right. Considering all the crap that is out there, it is conceiveable that my one son could go on to be a meth addict, never marry, have no kids (at least none that call him Dad) and the world will never see this branch of Herlehys ever again. Or, he could turn out worse and become an announcer for Fox News. Hey, I gotta get in any dig I can. And it did happen to Mike Wallace.

Anyway, I never considered the fact that my dad remarried and had a son named Luke. I just had lunch with Luke and he seems to be such a good person. He's very honest, respectful, diligent and smart. In fact, one small thing I noticed is actually quite a gifted trait. He has a unique ability to tell you things that you might not want to hear and still make it sound okay. Anyone who is in any kind of business understands how this is a rare and valued talent. The only other guy that I know who can tell you that you've screwed up in a nice, understanding, hey-everyone-is-an-idiot-sometime way is my partner Greg. These next months, Luke is studying to be a lawyer and when he passes the Bar, he'll make a great one because it seems like half of a lawyer's job is telling clients things they don't want to hear. It's sort of strange that honesty is often rare.

Luke said he read my latest post and nicely mentioned that I have yet to kill my typo problem. He did it very well. Luke was understanding with other things, too. I wasn't a very good half-brother. I was too involved with my own life in college to realize that I had a little brother who could have used an extra older ear in his life. But he turned out great. And to brag here for a second, he got a swimming scholarship at Ohio University, came within two seconds of setting an all-time school record and did through hard work, which meant he got up at five in the morning to swim in a cold pool. Yes, while you and I were getting home, he was getting up.

Today I realized that Conner can, in fact, go on to be a loser meth addict without any kids who would call him Dad. It's just perfectly fine! Luke is also there and it doesn't seem like he enjoys meth all that well. It looks probable that some kid, some day, will be annoyed by his Dad because he constantly tells stories of his parents and grand-parents.

So sorry for the typos. I now use an iPad and it sucks for punching out any message longer than a noun. Still, that is no excuse. I'll get better at this. I swear. In the meantime, maybe we all can re-evaluate this whole male-carrying-on-the-family line thing. It's probably a little pre-historic. And fuck it. In three generations, if we're not fried from having no ozone or debilitated from having no oil, nobody is going to remember any of us anyway.

My kidney is someone's lab experiment.

Cancer is great. Yes, it is. At least tonight it is.

When I was ten, I had only one goal life. I wanted to be the next Walter Payton. Only without the pain killer habit. I went to football practice, ran and hit as hard as I could and then came home to practice again. I'd come inside when it was dark and before I'd go to bed, I'd practice inside. During school I would draw up plays. Teachers would tell my mom that if I would just ignore football for ten minutes, I would possibly be a good student.

Then one day I went to the allergy doctor. The right side of my back was hurting that day as it did about once every month. When it hurt, man it pretty much shut me down. The allergy doctor did what few allergy doctors do, he saved my life. He told my mom that I should get an X-ray. I complained and whined. But then I got another X-ray and then a CT scan. All of them showed that I had a blockage going from my kidney to my bladder. A month later, I went into surgery at Loyola Hospital in Maywood. When I came to, my mother said that the doctor had to take out my kidney because it was a shrivelled-up ball of nothing. And she said that because of it, I could never play football or any contact sport again. While I was crying, my mother told me that I should use this as a sign. Instead of making it a tragedy, she said that I should turn it around and make this event meaningful. It took a couple years but eventually I realized that I liked being creative. I never would have found writing and creativity without getting my kidney out.

Tonight, I walked into Maddie's room. She was startled, dazed and confused and now awake and without her binky. Where was it? She was crazy upset. She couldn't find her binky. We looked around for about a minute. And then I found it on the ground under her bed. I gave it to her and she put it into her mouth, grabed her blinket and went right to bed. It was only us two. It was a rare, innocent moment. And I loved it as much as any moment in my life. A healthier me would have been worrying about work, if I would have ever bothered to get out of bed in the first place. But this was not the case tonight. The cancer is here. It is still bad. But tonight it is great. It has yet to make me stop. But it has been successful in making me slow down.

Just a silly little thing.

A friend of mine, Amy Markley, and I are huge documentary fans. One day we figured out that people who love documentaries would rather watch something really boring than watch a really exciting fiction movie. Literally, that same night I got hooked into a doc about Tom Petty. Sherri came downstairs and said, "What in the world are you watching? You don't even like Tom Petty." As usual, she was right. Wives are always right even when they're wrong.

Recently I saw a doc that was very interesting, much more interesting than Tom Petty. By the way, I challenge anyone to name a relatively well-played Tom Petty song that isn't about transportation. Free Falling. Running Down the Road. Break Down. See? I am digressing here.

Back to the doc. It was good. You can still watch it on HBO. I'm not sure about Netflix, mainly because it seems like the only movies on Netflix are eighties karate or coming-of-age movies. Or both.

Bac to the doc. I don't know what it's called. But it was about this law in Oregon that allows for assisted suicides. First the movie followed the political part of the issue, basically the passing of the bill through a special election. Really. More people in Oregon believe you should be able to kill yourself.

That was sort of boring, like an interview with Tom Petty. The other part of the story, however, followed this woman who had liver cancer. She was smart, funny, caring, creative. Sort of like my wife, except the caring part. Um, just kidding. I kid.

It seems like liver cancer is an unbelieveable bear. Despite her best effort, she was struggling and in a heck of a lot of pain. Finally, she decided she needed an assisted suicide. The pain was unbearable. And believe it or not, planning for death seemed easier and cleaner for her. Her belly really protruded from her body. She was taking a bunch of morphine. Yes, morphine. Not even an oxy. She was doing a lot of hard stuff. She was ready.

But then something weird happened. She started feeling better. She had already scheduled her suicide and it was only a few days away. So, she rescheduled. Now, I'm the father of a daughter who takes dance classes. And you can't ever, ever, ever take a day off. They are the dance Nazis. And I'd like to point out that if a lady in Oregon can reshedule her suicide, why can't my daughter rescheduke a dance class every now and then?

Back to the doc. So the lady was feeling better. And one day she said, "Ya know, I realize this is gong to sound naive, but I wonder if I'll ever have to schedule that suicide ever again. Maybe it won't come back." The production crew followed the lady for a month or two and, well, as you can guess, the cancer came back. A couple more months passed and she was worse than before. Eventually she was bed-ridden and went through with that suicide.

It was both fascinating and sad to see the lady and her husband go through with this suicide. I'd love to watch it again, but I know it would be too difficult to get through. Even through the story had many memorable moments, that statement when she was seemingly getting better about how she didn't see the cancer coming back really got to me. I'm obsessed with not seeming like that. I just don't want to look foolish when the prognosis isn't so good.

But still, I guess I have to look foolish today. I just got back from the doc and from receiving my sgn treatment. I've already passed the average patient's experience with this drug. I believe that the majority of patients come off the drug by around the fifth month. Some come off the drug because the cancer comes back. Others, a good many others, come off the drug because the side effects become too debilitating.

Way back in August, I had scans done and they showed that I was almost in a complete remission. Just a few spots here and there. That was an amazing feat, by the way. I mean, I had it all over my body and in really large boulder sizes.

My doctor, who once couldn't make one of my appointments because he was testifying to Congress about it, is just amazed. Each time I come in, my blood counts get better. I'm almost to a normal level. He said he doesn't want to scan me again for a couple months unless my bloodwork turns bad. I guess I don't need it.

Here's where I look naive. The doctor and the statistics both say that the prignosis for the next year or two or three is good. The deal is, I gotta make it one full year. If I can do that, the stats are, as Conner would say, really Boss! If I get a complete remission, I could stay that way for the next two years. It's not overwhelmingly the case but a good portion of patients have no problems for that amount of time and even later. The drug is too new to know how much later that is. Some people are still going.

Now the chances are about the same that the cancer will come back. Could be fifty-fifty. I'm not sure. But even if it does, often the cancer is more manageable. Of course, tomorrow I could relapse and the cancer would not be so nice. In fact, it usually acts like it's really pissed. Like your son took the car to a crack house in the city, got into an accident and had his hooker call you to tell you. That pissed.

I've heard and seen great news like this before. I told the doctor that the pattern has always been the cancer goes away and then within a month it comes raging back. But today and the next many days after, I am going to choose to be naive.

Like Tom Petty's career, this story doesn't end just yet. It's going to be tough to get to one year. The side effects are doing a number on me. I suffer from a lot of fatigue and a heck of a lot of something I mentioned before, nuerapathy. My hands and feet give me a hurtun real bad. Even though I spent the last two months getting off of all kinds of drugs, I can't function without pain killers and neurapathy pills. When I'm on them, the pain doesn't go away. It just gets a little tamed. I also often have a hard functioning. Walking can be hard.

I'm getting tired. I'm going to go. I hope this makes sense. Before sgn, I just wanted to make it to Christmas. Now, my goal is much more ambitious and at the same time, more naive. I'd love to see Conner graduate high school. I don't think my body will take the shock of the cost of college. So I'll just keep to graduation. That is my silly goal.