The Rake Magazine

Tag: cancer

  • The Neglected Breast

    He
    couldn’t help glancing at her legs. It wasn’t just that they
    were long and slender and perfectly tapered, or that she had swung one
    over the other and now tapped the air with a sling-back stiletto, or
    that they were smooth and tanned and flawless, but that they were bare.
    Like so many young professional women down here, she did not wear stockings
    and for a man of his age and tradition, he found that slightly crass
    and sexy as all get-out.

    She
    had dark eyes and olive skin and over-the-shoulder black hair — too long,
    he felt, for a marriage counselor, although she usually had it in some
    kind of bun or twist or something that held it up. Today, she
    was wearing a pencil skirt, navy blue, a white silk blouse, and
    black-rimmed glasses. He fancied her tossing those glasses on
    to her desk and in one fluid motion, reaching back and releasing that
    bounty of hair. But hell, he thought, even if she had, what would
    I     do about it?

    "Mr.
    Raffort? Mr. Raffort, do you agree with what Mrs. Raffort just
    said?"

    "Art,"
    Mrs. Raffort said. "Doctor LaMetti is speaking to you.
    Arthur!" she jabbed him.

    "What?!"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort says your affection for her has waned."

    "Aw,
    Jesus. Do we have to talk about everything?"

    "I’m
    trying to help you understand each other, Mr. Raffort. I’m not
    asking these questions out of idle curiosity."

    "Right.
    How old are you, anyway?"

    "I
    don’t see the relevance of that."

    "What
    difference does it make, Art?"

    "I
    want to know. For the last month, we’ve been answering every
    little thing she’s asked about us. Can’t I ask one question
    of her?"

    "I’m
    thirty-seven."

    "See?
    I told you. She’s not even Mimi’s age. I’m not going
    to sit here and discuss our love life with a total stranger, especially
    one who’s not even as old as our youngest child."

    "Mr.
    Raffort," she said, taking a breath. "Is it true what Mrs.
    Raffort said about your affections waning?"

    "None
    of your business."

    "It
    is, Doctor. He hardly ever makes love to me anymore, and when he
    does, he never touches me. Not like he used to at least."

    "What
    are you talking about? Of course I touch you when we’re having
    s– Aw, geez, can’t we just get out of here?"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort, would you like to tell Mr. Raffort what you mean by ‘not
    touching you like he used to’?"

    "No,
    she wouldn’t."

    "Well,
    for one thing, he never touches my left breast."

    "My
    God, Helen."

    "Well
    you don’t!"

    "Do
    you have anything you’d like to say to that, Mr. Raffort?"

    "Yes.
    ‘Goodbye.’"

    "Please,
    sir. Sit down. Go ahead, Mrs. Raffort."

    "Well,
    that’s it, really. He touches the right one, but never the left
    one. It’s as though he’s intentionally neglecting it."

    "Oh,
    for Christsake."

    "Ever
    since I had that lump removed."

    "I
    didn’t want to disturb the sutures."

    "They
    were taken out over a year ago, Art."

    He
    glared at his wife, his face reddening.

    "I’ll
    be in the car," he said, and against their pleas, he walked out.

    The
    heat rose visibly from the blacktop as he crossed the parking lot, never
    mind that it was the dead of winter. This was Naples, Florida
    and if it wanted to be 85 degrees with 90 percent humidity in mid-February,
    then by God, that’s what it would be. He opened the car door
    to a plume of hot air, reached inside for his cell phone and saw that
    he had a message. It was the call he had dreaded, or at least
    it had been before he’d had these few days to try on the possibility.
    He pressed ‘call-back’ with an air of acceptance.

    "I’m
    sorry, Art."

    "You’re
    sure."

    "Yes.
    You’re free to get a second opinion, but–"

    "No,
    I figured as much. Well, shit."

    "We
    need to get you in for surgery right away. It’s just on the
    edge of the pancreas, so there’s a chance–"

    "No,
    I’m not having any surgery. No chemo either."

    "But–"

    "I’ve
    already thought this through. Look, my wife’s coming.
    I’ll call you later. Not a word of this to anyone, you understand?"
    and he flipped the phone shut.

    "Well,
    that was the rudest display of behavior you’ve ever exhibited,"
    she said as she approached.

    "I’m
    sorry, I just can’t– Why are we doing this anyway? All these
    years, we’ve been able to solve our own problems and now you want
    to share our most intimate moments with some kid who’s not even–"

    "She’s
    not a kid; she’s a woman. And she’s trying to help us."

    "She’s
    a kid. She says like all the time and sooo.
    ‘I’m like sooo proud to be like
    working with you.’"

    "She
    does not. She never talks that way, and even if she did, so what?
    Every generation has its idioms. God knows ours did."

    "I
    feel as though I’m talking to the grandkids, to Billy. When
    I disagree, I half expect her to say, ‘So sue me.’"

    "Quit
    being ridiculous. Besides, none of this excuses your rudeness."

    "I
    said, ‘I’m sorry,’ OK? Let’s just go home."

    "I
    have to pick up my medication."

    "All
    right. I’ll browse the liquor store."

    "We
    have enough booze."

    "I
    said, ‘browse.’"

  • The Leo Chronicles, Part II

    As I was saying, we Crystal Methodists have some unusual customs and rites when it comes to preparing our loved ones for mortal coil off-shuffling.

    But first I must apologize for the delay in posting this entry. My mound of dirty clothes finally reached a point where I could no longer get out of my bedroom door and I was trapped for several days without computer access. Fortunately a passing neighbor finally heard my pitiful cries for help and shoveled the snow away from my bedroom window so I could escape, albeit as a quivering and shrivelled husk of my former self. However, you’ll be happy to hear that I wrote a bunch of blog notes on my cat with a Sharpie so I’m ready to leap back into this whole thing with a vengeance. Lucky for all of us I have a white cat.

    Anyway, my brother Leo lay dying of cancer in his apartment so my family and I and members of the local CM church all worked together to improve his odds of landing a cushy night-watchman job in Heaven.

    The first thing we traditionally do for a bed-ridden hospice patient is to turn on the TV and leave it on 24 hours a day. In Heaven’s Trailer Park one spends an eternity watching standard cable, so we like to get them used to it here on Earth where the family can support them in the initial stages of having their brain turned to mush. If the patient is in the more advanced stages of death, they are unable to change channels themselves or hit the mute button on the remote so we can make them watch whatever infomercials we choose and they can do nothing whatsoever about it except make feeble whimpering noises. This is particularly true if we leave the remote control out of their reach entirely.

    Next, the entire Crystal Methodist congregation works out a schedule whereby elderly couples stop by with casseroles each night for the family and dying person. For some reason these are called "hot dish" here in Minnesota, probably because the word ‘casserole’ looks like one of those foreign words that can’t be pronounced correctly so why bother. At any rate, the rules for a traditional CM casserole are that it must be beige (or at least an earth-tone of some sort), it must have cream of mushroom soup in it, and it must be bland and mushy. Other than that, the sky’s the limit. The better casserolers try to include a vegetable, usually peas, somewhere in the mix, but this is considered "fancy" and is entirely optional.

    The purpose for bringing casseroles over to the family is unclear, but we do it because we always have. The dying person is not able to eat it at this point but the mother makes him eat it anyway while the elderly couple stands there and watches him. Of course, as soon as the elderly couple hobbles out the family calls out and orders pizza for themselves. But of such things are traditions made.

    Another rite we perform is to sit around the dying person and mouth platitudes. We Crystal Methodists actually have a Book of Platitudes from which we read, much like other churchs have hymnals. Some of the Platitudes are intended for the dying person: "…" is the most common one by far. Others include "…?", "Hey, Leo, you’re looking good, how are you feeling?" and "Sure, you cheap bastard, go ahead and die and stick me with the cable bill." (I made that last one up.)

    Other Platitudes are meant to comfort the family and are best said in front of the dying person as if he can’t hear: "He’s going to a better place," "His suffering will be over soon," and "Can I have his stereo?" are all examples of this type of Platitude. Generally everyone just tunes these out and ignores them except for the dying person who thinks to himself "Um, hello, I’m right here, why are you pretending I can’t hear you and wasting my precious last minutes with conversational goo?"

    One of the stranger rites we Crystal Methodists have developed as we are faced with more and more cases of prolonged and agonizing deaths from cancer is something we call Character Building. We take the God-given opportunity of having a bed-ridden loved one completely at our mercy and make him as miserable as possible in his last days. He is alredy completely unable to get comfortable in his bed because of the disease itself and because of the various rashes and atrophied muscles that accompany it, so we Build His Character by putting steel wool in his adult diapers and duct-taping Brillo pads under his armpits. While it may seem cruel to outsiders to watch a dying person writhe in agony with tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, we CM’ers take comfort in the fact that his character will be totally buff when it comes time for the Big Hearing. And if the person should end up going to Hell, it might not seem so bad after what he’s been through in his last days on Earth.

    In the final installment of this short treatise on rural Midwestern customs associated with death and dying I want to talk about the many Crystal Methodist sacraments and how they are administered and discuss the esoteric rituals that occur after the person’s death. That is, if someone comes over and does my laundry for me. Otherwise all bets are off.

  • The Leo Chronicles, Part I

    My younger brother Leo died of cancer this past Halloween. He was bedridden the last couple of months, but my aged parents and I were somehow able to keep him in his rather small 1-bedroom apartment in North Central Iowa until the very end. We wanted him at home where he could be with his cat and where we could prepare him for the afterlife.

    The people in my family are all members of a rather obscure sect found mostly in the rural Midwest called Crystal Methodists. Our beliefs occasionally seem strange to outsiders, so I thought I would write here about some of our quainter customs associated with the death of a loved one.

    The name for our church comes from our traditional representation of Jesus on the cross. He is depicted as having a large crystal in his navel, which if I remember correctly from confirmation class represents a figurative umbilical cord to God from whom he receives (and we all receive) spiritual sustenance while living on this earth. Many older Crystal Methodists wear a crystal in their navels as well, at least when they go to church, but most of the younger generation just get their nipples pierced.

    Our churchs, called "Labs," can be found scattered throughout the farmland of Iowa and Wisconsin. A Crystal Methodist Lab generally resembles a cross between a Christian Science reading room and a high school chemistry classroom, hence the name. We men somberly study the Bible in the reading rooms while the women cook up the sacrament and gossip about slutty women in other denominations. Our numbers have been reduced somewhat of late because our Labs occasionally blow up, killing the women and causing the men to use profane language. But so it goes; we phlegmatically remind ourselves that it is God’s will and remarry and build another Lab on someone else’s farm.

    One of the more interesting beliefs we have is that, no matter how good we are in this life, we Crystal Methodists aren’t going to Heaven per se. Heaven, we feel, is reserved for Catholics and Lutherans and frankly we’re a little miffed about it. We believe that if we faithfully follow the teachings of Jesus in this life and do God’s work, the best we can look forward to is a menial job in Heaven doing maintenance work for the more privileged residents. We are Heaven’s janitors and handymen. The Pearly Gate is squeaking, call a Crystal Methodist to oil it. The Lutherans want to have a (rather restrained) celestial orgy, guess who cooks the food and cleans up afterwards – the Crystal Methodists. We have a trailer park in Heaven where we live, and those of us who were the most devout in this life get standard cable. There are rumors that if you’re a Crystal Methodist and live the life of a saint here on earth, you get HBO when you die, but none of us really believe that.

    Oddly enough, our conception of Hell closely resembles our conception of Heaven except that in Hell you also have fallen arches, carpal tunnel syndrome and constant diarrhea. And the only channel you get in the trailer park is an eternal infomercial of Fitness Made Simple starring fitness celebrity John Basedow. Follow this link and Heaven starts to look a whole lot better, doesn’t it?

    In my next entry I’ll explain how we prepared my brother for his passing the Crystal Methodist way. Casseroles (what you Northerners call "hot dish") are involved, so don’t miss it.