CANCELLING OZ

By December 1, 1985, I had cancelled everything—I had quit my job, broken my lease, sold my car, and flown back home to Memphis, hoping it was not too late. I’ll forever be glad that it was not too late.

I had moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Lincoln, Nebraska in January 1985, in the middle of a blizzard sweeping across the Midwest. I’d quit my job as a theater professor at a small college in a huff, handing in a six-page handwritten diatribe which used the phrase “…and another thing…” far too often. I’d disliked the job from the beginning, so when a colleague called to offer me the set design position at the community theater in Lincoln, I jumped at the chance. Theater design jobs weren’t easy to come by, and this seemed like the best solution.

But that’s a story for another time. I’d started the westward drive in early January with all my earthly possessions in my Dad’s old green Plymouth Volare. I didn’t get very far. I was rear-ended in a blizzard in Ohio and the car was totaled. That is yet another story, but I should have heeded the warning and just headed back home to Memphis.

Wearing a neck brace, I arrived for my new job at the Lincoln Community Playhouse. Once I got my insurance settlement from the wreck, I bought a used Mercury Zephyr station wagon. I’d never heard of the brand, but I liked the name. I found a small bare bones apartment and furnished it with a mattress, dresser, table and chairs borrowed from the theater. Theater jobs usually required long hours, so I figured I wouldn’t be home much anyway.

Lincoln is not a bad place if you like everything flat, few trees, and streets laid out in a grid, with alphabetical and numerical names, none even as exotic as Maple Street, and constant wind, causing frostbite in winter and hot and stinging with dust in summer.

The theater was well-equipped and new enough, and my boss was a director I’d worked with previously. The local community, however, were suspicious of newcomers. I wasn’t on the cutting edge or forefront of the design world, but if I suggested a slightly different design approach than what they were used to, I was told by the rest of the staff, with a scornful look down their noses, “That’s not the way we do theater in Nebraska.” And here I’d thought it was New York theaters that were the trend-setters.

But I needed to stay at the job at least a year, so I muddled along. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind, having had a terrible experience at the job I’d just quit. The real issue eating at me wasn’t that job though. It was my dad, my favorite person in all the world. In January of 1984, he’d been diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer which had already spread to his bones. Our family was new to dealing with cancer. We were all frightened and worried. Dad was only seventy-two and still working. I was thirty-five and just assumed that both my parents would be around quite a while longer, at least into their nineties. Although they never voiced it, I think my brother and sister felt the same. 

           The doctors did surgery on my dad but said there wasn’t a cure since the cancer had metastasized. We were all learning these big and horrible words. They prescribed female hormones for Dad. Those were supposed to suppress the male hormones which helped this kind of cancer grow. Amazingly, after just a short period, the hormones seemed to be working. Dad felt and looked better; his life insurance sales were doing great; even his golf game improved. We were blindly hopeful. Dad didn’t look or act sick. Maybe the doctors had been wrong. We had a big family reunion that August. I’d finished my MFA degree in Wisconsin that year and had moved back home in Memphis, staying with my parents while I looked for jobs.

           When I got what turned out to be an awful teaching job in Pennsylvania, my parents were both thrilled, but especially Dad. He was the oldest of five, and had always dreamed of going to college, but he graduated from high school in 1929. So instead he went to work, and helped his four younger siblings pay for college. He insisted all three of his kids go to college and was so proud of each of us when we did. Ever the optimist, he figured he could go to college more cheaply as a senior citizen, after he retired. When I got the college teaching job, Dad burst out, “Son of a bitch! My daughter’s going to be a college professor! Damn!” He gave me his Volare and bought a new car, and he and mom followed me to Pennsylvania, helping transport my stuff.

           As I dealt with the stress of my new job, I put Dad’s illness on the back burner. He was still doing well when I went home for Christmas. I told him and Mom that I was quitting but had a new job across the country. They were supportive, relieved, and I think, impressed that I could get work in a new place I’d never been to before I quit the old job. Dad and Mom planned an April cruise. I minimized the effects of my blizzard-induced wreck so as not to cause them more worry.

           The call came from Mom in late April: Dad had started having trouble walking on the cruise. As soon as they got back, he’d gone to the hospital. The cancer had spread to his spine, and he’d already had surgery before she called us kids. I was dumbfounded; why hadn’t she called us right away? In retrospect, I don’t think she was aware of how serious this turn of events was at the time. She was probably in denial too. We all flew home right away, my sister, a lawyer, from New York City, and my brother, a doctor, joined us from his small town in North Carolina.

           Seeing Dad in the hospital was a shock. He was diminished—gone were his jokes and his hearty manner. The neurosurgeon had no bedside manner. He said the surgery had been successful and that he was discharging Dad. When we protested that Dad could no longer walk, he shrugged, and filled out orders to send Dad to rehab. While there, Dad was also going to undergo radiation to try and shrink the remaining tumors.

It was heartbreaking to see Dad in that state. He was sinking into a depression from which he’d never recover, but he wouldn’t talk about it. I think he thought if he didn’t acknowledge what was happening to him, it wouldn’t be real. He must have been picturing the death of his dreams of college, of a happy retirement, of travel with Mom. Mom wouldn’t talk about the future either but went into overdrive of her familiar worry mode. We three kids reluctantly flew back to our jobs, making Mom promise to keep us updated, to not delay if Dad got worse.

           My heart was not in Nebraska though. Even though I liked working in theater, the job now seemed meaningless. After a couple of months, Dad’s walking was somewhat improved. They sent him home with a wheelchair and a walker. When I visited again in the summer, he was gaunt and hollow-eyed. More depressed if possible. He couldn’t drive or do his work as an insurance salesman. Talking to people, learning their stories, and feeling he was helping them was his joy.

           I returned to Nebraska with an even heavier heart. I sought out a therapist who dealt with people whose families were undergoing cancer treatment. In late November, I was onstage painting the set for the Christmas show, the Wizard of Oz, when Mom called again. Dad had been hospitalized again, this time with a urinary tract infection. I barely knew what that was, but it didn’t seem serious. Thank god the therapist knew a lot more than I did. She explained that when a cancer patient was in Dad’s condition, that something as seemingly slight as a urinary infection could be life-threatening. I told the theater I had to leave immediately and took the next flight to Memphis.

           My brother Jim and his new girlfriend Margie had already arrived when I got there. Dad had been released from the hospital. He was laying on the couch in the living room, very weak, and barely able to walk, let alone able to climb the stairs to his bedroom. Jim and Mom told me that the hospital said there was no more they could do for Dad besides the antibiotics for the infection. That his cancer had spread, that he had about six weeks to live, and that we should look for a nursing home for him. That afternoon, the three of us looked at a few places while Margie stayed with Dad. We couldn’t face Dad being in one of those places. What was the alternative? The hospital wouldn’t take him back. We’d have to care for him at home.

           Of the three of us, my job was the most expendable. It was a no-brainer. I decided I would quit my job and move home to help care for Dad. That way Mom could still work – I feared she’d get really depressed to if she had to quit the job she loved, as secretary to the Catholic bishop, and then if she quit, what would she do…after…

I flew back to Lincoln, called and told the theater I was leaving right away. I never heard another word from them. I don’t know, and didn’t care, what happened to the Wizard of Oz production. All I cared about was whether Dad would still be alive when I returned. I broke the lease on my apartment, packed up my stuff, shipped what I couldn’t carry on the plane via UPS. Left the exotically named Zephyr for my mechanic to sell and hoped for the best. Within three days I was back in Memphis.

All my life I’ve struggled with making decisions, been slow to make them, hemmed and hawed and dithered, should I or shouldn’t I? Endlessly weighed the pros and cons. But I had no indecision about this decision, no wavering. It turned out that cancelling my work in the middle of a production, my apartment, and what was just beginning to be my life in Lincoln—was the easiest decision I ever made. I knew I had to be with my Dad, the person I loved most in the world, during his last days, and to support Mom as Dad slipped away.

When I got home it was December first. Dad was in a wheelchair in the kitchen. “Son of a bitch!” he cried, with a hint of his old jocular self. “You came back! Get my girl a barbecue!”

Dad hung on for longer than six weeks. He was with us for four more months. They were the most important four months of my life. I wouldn’t trade them for a trip to Oz itself. Sometimes canceling is critical. I’ll be forever grateful that just this once, I didn’t hesitate to make a decision. Cancelling all my plans to share those four months with Dad was the best decision I’ve ever made.