Crying in the Movies

Lucas and I went to see Gravity last night while Dean and Drew were both working. I give it a thumbs up, though as we were walking out of the theater some guy yelled, "That was the absolute worst movie - I hope you people know that!"


I think Sandra Bullock was excellent...and in excellent SHAPE! In this scene she shucks off her space suit, and as she's arching backward, her THIGH muscle is larger than her BUTT. (I've got to get back to Pure Barre!)


But something weird happened first. They showed a preview of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is a book I haven't read, and stars Ben Stiller...who looks like my dad in some of the scenes. Well, he apparently daydreams about doing wild, adventurous things, and for some reason I started crying.


Here's an old pic of my dad for comparison, but throw some gray hair in there and maybe you see a slight resemblance.


Well, he doesn't look anything like him on second thought. But I've always thought he looked like Bruce Dern....my dad, that is, not Ben Stiller.


And in the 90's I thought he looked like Alice Cooper, minus the creepiness.


Oh, so during that preview the character is jumping out of buildings, climbing mountains, skateboarding down a highway, etc., and all of a sudden I've got tears running down my face and my SHOULDERS are shaking up and down - a sobbing fit snuck up on me! (They call them "grief attacks" in the literature that hospice nurses give you.) Anyway, that was just weird and random, but Gravity was really good. Oh, and I'm nearly finished with the back of my corset, but I cut my finger with my very sharp embroidery scissors Becky gave me at the GCGSW, so I had to stop for a Bandaid. (They're the perfect scissors for Alabama Chanin work, Becky, thanks!) Back to work!

Now This is an Obituary

At first, I thought what a ridiculous obituary. Almost 2 full columns in the paper with sentences like, "Over the years they [the deceased and his wife] have had many dogs and innumerable cats in their personal care." Really?

But then it was like reading a book and getting to know the guy. "He was an indefatigable shopper at garage sales. He will be sorely missed at Hudson Salvage. [Are you serious?] Ready for every emergency he had one of the largest private collections of flashlights, batteries, chainsaws and other supplies. [He hasn't seen my father-in-law's barn!] He was rather famous for giving unsolicited advice to his tenants, merchants and friends. We recently found in a file a letter to PetSmart recommending a different way to package cat food."

By then I was hooked. There were paragraphs about his philanthropy to the Boy Scouts, local university, and various charities. "Other than one trip around the world on his way back from service in Vietnam he never took a vacation." Then the one that made me laugh out loud, "He had many long term business partnerships with various prominent businessmen and women all of whom can attest that he never arrived to a meeting on time, contending that he was 'born late' and had never been able to catch up."

When I finished, I felt like I knew this guy. Somebody did a really nice job of writing this obituary - he was obviously well-loved. That made me think of my dad. We didn't do anything special with his obituary, but we spent some time thinking about the headstone. (My first thought had been, "He stopped loving her today" from the Conway Twitty song, but I was overruled.) We came up with "Our fun dad. Adored by all for his humor, he shaped our life with his love and child-at-heart nature."

Man, I hope somebody will write something good for me when I die. Something like, "She couldn't match up her stripes consistently, but God seems to have put her in the right place at the right time for a couple of people." That would be nice.

Sewing Retreat - Free!

Well, I'm officially signing up for the Sandra Betzina sewing "retreat" tomorrow. The shop owner said Sandra's coming from San Francisco, charging $1100 per day plus airfare, etc., and the $350 price does not include fabrics, patterns, or notions. Hmmm...She said if you lived in SF and went to Sandra's studio for this retreat it would cost thousands. (Really? Women who make their own clothes would lay out thousands for this?).

Anyway, the owner wasn't sure it would happen because she only has 6 women coming so far, but she emailed me tonight and said it's on! (I'm wondering if she advertised in Pensacola and New Orleans, you know, because this is a big-name woman.)

But I'm having my own little sewing retreat this weekend, because Dean and Drew are flying to Washington, DC, and Lucas is with the grandparents in Birmingham. I couldn't go because I'm on call, so looks like we'll be doin' some sewing! (And watching scary movies that only I appreciate, and eating leftovers with Jake, and getting kinda scared at noises in the night, and eventually sitting in the corner flicking the light on and off while crying.)

That reminded me of something my Dad always said. We'd call when we were in college and ask how everybody was doing at home and he'd say, "Well, your mother's been sitting in the corner crying since you left..." You'd ask about anybody you hadn't seen in a while and he'd give you the same, "Well, they've been sitting in the corner crying and I can't get 'em out." Another funny one was when he'd say, "That Scott, he's a dick!" (Meaning that one is terribly funny, not actually an asshole.) Then he shortened it to, "That Scott, he's a.....well, we know what he is." That became a family line. So if you ever hear us refer to you as "a...well, we know what you are," know that we mean it in the nicest possible way!

Let's Wrap It Up

I'll get off that cancer kick - sorry 'bout that! Just to reassure everybody that it was a double-edged sword, it was the worst thing I've ever been through and I felt like my life ended (the first half of it anyway), but those times with my family were some of the best ones we ever had. We got together more than we would have and we didn't sweat any small stuff. We actually looked forward to tests and doctor visits because we knew it meant a get-together.

I just remembered a funny thing from the time the hospice chaplain came to meet us at my dad's house. She asked if we could all pray together, so we're all sitting in the den listening to her pray (more of a discussion with God, it was going on for quite a while), and Drew (4 at the time) says, "Excuse me." She says, "Yes, sweetheart, did you want to add something?" Drew says, "No ma'am, I pooted."

With stuff like that happening, how can you not laugh and enjoy the moment?

Just Some Photos for the Cancer Saga

Playing with Drew in New Orleans. (Pappy, can I ride it now? Please???)








This one's really old, but such a great shot of Tracey supposedly cracking that hand. He was really good at getting the joke pictures.





Gettin' jiggy at Pawley's Island. This was some song and dance to put the boys down for a nap - probably gave 'em nightmares!







Very tired after an intense game of "There's a Bullet in My Foot."

The Cancer Saga Cont'd....

So I left out the part where we decided to take a trip to Pawley's Island for one last week together before my dad died. (That's kinda heavy, huh.) My mom was living in New Orleans with us as our nanny, so she, Drew (4 years old),and I drove over to Mobile to pick up my Dad. Then we got Mamaw (my mom's mom who'd had a heart attack a couple of years earlier) somehow - maybe we drove through Sylacauga to collect her and headed on up to Birmingham for my brother Scott.

Scott wasn't home yet from work even though it was after dinner, and when he came in the door I was the only one sitting in the den. He told me, "It's time for a come-to-Jesus meeting," and he had an MRI in his hand. It is here I should mention that Scott told me about some blind spots in his peripheral vision a few weeks earlier, to which I flippantly replied, "Well that's a brain tumor." (You learn such useful things in medical school!) Well, turns out it WAS a brain tumor, and he'd just gotten his preliminary MRI results. So we set about Fedexing the MRI to my husband Dean in New Orleans (he's a radiologist - you couldn't be married to anyone better when your family's got a cancer epidemic!). But we had to continue on the road to South Carolina to pick up my sister Tracey and 3-yr-old Parker. I said, "Hey! Maybe when we get to Tracey's house she'll tell us she has ovarian cancer!"

Anyway, that vacation week was something else with my Dad not feeling well from his radiation and Scott constantly on the phone trying to find out what the tumor was and what they were going to do about it. Scott and I really wanted to sign the guest book with, "Between the 5 adults we have lung cancer, a kidney tumor [my dad, incidentally], a brain tumor, and severe heart disease. The group sessions have been very inspiring." My mom wouldn't let us write that; she wrote something generic like "You have a nice house."

Long story short, we come back home and my dad is promptly hospitalized with metastases to his adrenal gland, and Scott is admitted a couple of days later in Birmingham for his first brain surgery. My dad's employer at the time was an old Sylacauga friend who amazingly offered to fly my dad and me up to B'ham on his private plane so we could get there in time for Scott's surgery. So Daddy got discharged from one hospital and we flew straight to another hospital for Scott. Have I mentioned that Scott and Elizabeth were expecting a baby girl?

Well, Scott is recuperating well after a couple of days, so Daddy and I are heading back to Mobile and go to the hospital to tell him goodbye. Before we leave, Scott says, "Daddy, we've decided on the name for our baby." Daddy says, "What is it?" Scott says, "We're going to name her Kaye." (My dad's name is Kay.) I'll never forget the sound my father made. He almost sobbed, but he nipped it after a second, though the tears were rolling down his face. He said, "Noooo, Scott, you don't want to do that!" Scott said they most certainly were naming her that, and then we had to leave because my dad was breaking down.

As we were driving to the airport, he said, "They don't really want to name her that! She'll hate that name! What kind of a name is that for a girl?" (I hated to point out the obvious - that my dad is probably the only MAN named Kay.) I reassured him that Scott and Elizabeth really wanted to do it, but when you're arguing with someone on a morphine patch, it's really a moot point.

So it's kind of cool that there's still a Kaye Arnold running around this joint, and my youngest son's middle name is Henry, after the man. Bits and pieces...we do what we can to keep him close.

This One Warranted Some Kleenex

Oh, I was reading a friend's blog about health issues and it reminded me of my favorite movie line of all time: Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List, dying of cancer, looking in the mirror saying, "Somewhere some lucky bastard just dropped dead of a heart attack." I laughed till I cried (but I was really crying, one of those confusing times when it started out funny but it really wasn't). I've always thought I was going to die before I hit 30 - I mean this is when I was 9 or 10 I didn't think I'd see 30. I used to lie there at night and think I'd die of some disease in my teens or 20's, and all my classmates would file by and THEN they'd miss me!

But I'm in my 40's now. My last lipid profile actually showed a really low total cholesterol - everything was perfect! I declared that I had a cholesterol deficiency and needed to take up smoking and drinking (well, heavy drinking). I know it's going to be cancer that gets me - got both grandmothers, one grandfather, and my dad. I knew my dad was going to die of cancer because he smoked so much, I just wondered why his doctor didn't order more frequent chest x-rays. When I was in medical school I used to go home and do physicals on him to see if it had happened yet.

But when he called me after Thanksgiving in 1999 and told me he had something on his shoulder that my sister-in-law thought was a lymph node, I just got pissed and went straight into denial. A lymph node on the top of his shoulder near his neck would mean cancer, so that wasn't right. Then it was hurting him and they finally did a chest x-ray. He called me in New Orleans on New Year's Day and said they saw a mass, so did I think he had tuberculosis? I just sat there and said, "Daddy, you know what it is."

Then there followed the most intense 6 1/2 months of my life, cramming in every possible family gathering while trying to finish fellowship. We all tried to go to every doctor's appointment with him and be there for every test, and we did a good job because the doctor would joke about it at visits. We fit in a week at Pawley's Island, South Carolina (or North?) before things went really downhill, and then we handled that, too. I think my family does cancer well - we got the most out of what we had left with no regrets. We could be consultants now - the top 10 things to do when you find out your loved one has cancer. (It would include going to a hockey game then coming home and re-enacting it in the kitchen with the kids, eating all the oysters you want at a nice restaurant and who gives a shit how much it costs, listening to all the stories you can about their childhood - and here's an idea - videotape it!)

And when Dean and I bought our vacation spot, that was the first thing that popped in my head and I said to the realtor (who probably thought I was really odd) - "this is where I'm going to be with my cancer - sitting right here on this porch." Of course, if I'm sitting alone on that porch for awhile, that's okay too.