There are moments in life that make you glad to be alive.
I tend to be more…focused with the things I post on The Juggling Writer, but tonight I feel the need to be a bit more personal.
Tonight was one of those moments; one that if I were to close my eyes and not wake up in the morning, I would have no regrets.
My wife went to bed earlier. I tucked her in, kissing her over and over, amazed that I — this one-time geek who thought he would be doomed to a life of loneliness — gets to spend time with somebody so smart, beautiful, and talented.
It’s a chilly night in Texas. According to the weather on my iGoogle page, it’s 38 degrees. People up north, where I grew up (Chicago, and then the northern suburbs), would laugh because they got hammered with the first real snow storm of the season. But in Texas, it’s breezy and clear. I know, because I’ve spent the last hour on the patio, alone, finishing a memoir about writing by Ann Patchett and smoking one of the handful of cigars I’ll smoke this year.
Sometime over the weekend, I’ll write a more detailed review of Patchett’s The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life (Kindle Single)
It’s been a weird couple weeks. My father in law died on Christmas morning, and in ways, it’s been harder to accept than the death of my own father when I was 22. It was cold when my father died, and it was cold the morning my sister died when I was 33. Come to think of it, it was cold the day my step brother died a year ago this week.
My father and my sister died from lung cancer, and I think about that every time I smoke the handful of cigars I smoke each year. But if the cigar I smoked this evening as I sat in the cold this evening takes several months off my life, it will have been worth it.
It was just me and the cold with a cigar and a memoir about writing on my iPhone. But damn, Ann Patchett can write! I’ve only read Bel Canto (P.S.)
I don’t think about other writers when I write, but one of my goals is to write something that affects somebody else like Bel Canto did with me. The best compliment I think I could receive for something I write is, “I don’t know why I loved it so much, but I did.”
Tonight, I love life. It’s after 2:00 a.m. and later today, I’m going to have tea with my wife and some friends. Nothing huge, but yet it is. There was a time that a night like tonight, even if I felt energized by the cold and the constellations above, would have left me feeling down. For most of my life, I struggled with depression. It’s not natural for a six-year-old to think about suicide, but I did. And it was something that stuck around in my head until I was almost 40, two years ago. At times, it was juggling that kept me alive. At times, it was family and friends. Later it was writing and my wife. But even still, in the back of my mind, it was always there…this weird urge to just stop.
I can blame it on the tumor, I suppose. I have a tumor in my head. Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s, in a journal I kept to try making sense of the depression, I wrote something along the lines about how it was like there was something in my head that made me…not me.
In 2004, almost a year to the day after lung cancer spread to my sister’s brain and killed her on one of the rare snowy mornings in Texas, I found out I had a 2.5 centimeter tumor in my head. I knew it was there before I knew it was there, but I really knew it was there because the friggin’ thing was driving me mad. It was pressing against my optic nerve, causing me to begin going blind in my right eye. It was pressing against my carotid artery on that side of my head. It made it hard to write, but I kept at it, even at my worst.
Somewhere along the way, things got better. My writing even got better. Life got better. And tonight, I sat in the cold so glad that the times I thought about things like seeing if I could kill myself by cramming a box of toothpicks down my throat with a wooden spoon are long behind me. (I once read that there’s a higher rate of violent suicide among people with pituitary tumors than that of people with diagnosed clinical depression. Pit tumors kinda suck!) Tonight I sat on the patio, in the dark, finishing Ann Patchett’s memoir about writing. And as I finished it, this is what happened:
Things just seemed clear. In the distance, the sound of a train. I love the sound of passing trains — always have. As the train passed, a couple coyotes called out. I finished the memoir and put my phone in my pocket. I watched the smoke rise up from the end of the cigar and into the sky. Above me, my favorite constellation: Orion. I realized I had been shivering the entire time I was out there on the balcony. The moment I realized this, the shivering stopped and I looked up at the sky, happy to be alive.
Behind me, a warm apartment, with my wife sound asleep in bed. I thought about all we’ve been through in our almost 20 years together. It can’t be easy to be married to a writer. But she’s an artist, so she understands, and for that — I’m lucky.
We both have our moments when we need to be out on the balcony alone.
Some may believe the little moment I experienced on the patio as I finished reading The Getaway Car was fated, but I don’t believe in fate, and never have. I am an atheist. Always have been, and always will be. I do not believe that things happen for a reason, unless that reason is a reward for hard work. Writing is hard work — that’s why I love it so much. And because I don’t believe things happen for a reason, those moments are even more special to me, because I realize that as life goes on, eventually, cool moments like that are just a part of the odds as long as you have the fortitude to stick with the things that matter.
Writing matters. More than that, my wife matters. Family and friends matter. Life matters.
It would have been a shame to end that.
Looking up at the stars, it hit me: I could never bring myself to stop because that’s it. I don’t believe in anything more after death. So it’s all worth it in a big way. Just like when I’m out hiking, I always want to see what’s around the next bend. When I’ve had the mechanisms with which to stop it all before me — something to finally end the pain I felt for decades — I couldn’t do it because I always wanted to see what was around the next bend. In a weird way, atheism kept me alive because that would be it.
The end.
Finis!
Sometimes what’s around the next bend is a perfect moment like tonight. To some, it might not seem like that — they might think, “Big deal, you read a short memoir on the balcony in the cold while smoking a cigar and you heard a train and coyotes and looked at the stars. But I think everybody reading this knows what kind of moment I’m talking about. Just one of those moments when you’re glad to be alive.
As I write this, I hear another train in the distance. I hear coyotes again. (Apparently, trains drive coyotes crazy.) I look at my iPhone sitting beside me and think about what I’ve just read. I’ll think about it all weekend, I’m sure.
And in a few minutes, I’ll go into the bedroom and look at my wife sleeping and know that right now, I’m the luckiest man alive.
I’m glad you’ve stuck around. It would have been an indescribable loss, losing you. Not just for me as a mother but for the planet. And I’m glad you shared your time on the patio. It was nice to be there with you, in your writing about it.
I’m always on alert for such “perfect moments.” If find them more often when I’m watching for them than I did when I just waited for them.
You’ve shared a lot in this post, but a question lingers: what brand/size cigar do you smoke?
Mom: Yeah, I’m glad I stuck around, too 🙂
Paul: I’ve always been good at recognizing those moments — it’s one of the things that always kept me going. When the depression was at its worst, I really began recognizing those moments and using them like soundings, these moments when I stopped and told myself, “This is one of those moments that makes it all worth it.” After some time, some of the moments became things I forgot, but I remembered that they happened.
And since I often give other sides an equal chance, I did also recognize those moments that made it not worth it. But the power of the good moments, even when there was some distance between them, won out. I don’t know what compelled me to write this entry other than I know sometimes that those who write sometimes struggle with depression. Everybody’s different, but I figured if somebody read this who needed it…well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, even though it’s sharing a part of me that seems so long ago.
As for the cigar…since I only smoke a handful a year, there’s no real go-to cigar. If I pick up something I’ve had before, it’s usually a Romeo y Julieta robusto, or some Macanudo I recognize by sight. Last night, my wife and I were picking up gin in a new store for martinis tonight, and she noticed the humidor and wandered in. I wasn’t planning to have a cigar, but there we were. I was considering an Ashton Cabinet, but a guy entered the humidor, which was a bit small for three people. As we stepped aside, he said, “No problem–what I want is right here,” and he grabbed two cigars near the front. So, on a whim, I grabbed one of the cigars he grabbed, which turned out to look gimmicky when I looked at it, but was better than I expected. It was a Gurkha Evil Toro.
Sometime in the next 6 months, I would not be opposed to having another. And I assume, since you asked, that you like cigars? What do you like?
Beautiful, thanks for sharing.
Both my maternal grandparents died from inoperable brain cancer, and my parents have brain abnormalities. In high school, my neighbor shot his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s mother, and then himself in the head after a days-long manhunt. He had a brain tumor. I have what I believe are mild, very manageable life-long symptoms, but I’m not in interested in a diagnosis at this point.
I wonder if the sound of a train whistle is similar enough to a wolf howl that it triggers a primitive reaction in people. The sound of a train whistle or a plane overhead always fills me with a longing. For what, I’m not sure. But it’s a feeling I treasure- it helps define myself in my mind.
You have a gift for meaningful sharing.
I’d say your tumor is in remission. 🙂 Thanks for sticking around.
CMS: An autopsy of Charles Whitman, after they stopped e shooting spree at the University of Texas in the 60s, revealed a brain tumor.
I think there’s something to the sound of trains, especially at night. As a kid, I’d listen to trains go by and imagine all the places they were going, and what adventure could be had if only I jumped on one. Planes at night…same thing; although we live between two airports, so it’s not quite the solitary thing it was as a kid looking up and seeing planes way up there and wondering where they were going.
As far as the tumor I have, it’s still there…only smaller. With the kind of tumor I have, there’s a good chance for recurrence after surgery, so I side-stepped surgery by minutes. (I was prepped and ready to be taken to the operating room, but kept trying to find a way out, and I did. They were going to do surgery without knowing what kind of pituitary tumor I had, and it turns out the kind I have can be controlled, to a degree, with medicine.) I know the tumor is there, but knowing what’s making me tired, dizzy, or distracted makes it easier to deal with. I’d rather not have it, but in the world of brain tumors, there’s a lot worse out there.
Just knowing what’s up there helps.
I have — at most — one cigar a month, and that’s when I go out to my cabin in the woods (and none of my offspring are around to witness my sin). I smoke Upmann Cabinet Seleccion Churchills. I can get about an hour of contemplation out of them, which is nice when I’m sitting in a comfy chair on a shady porch overlooking a sparkling lake.
Paul: A cigar in a comfy chair on a shady porch overlooking a sparkling lake sounds nice. I’m glad you’re able to get away and relax like that…gotta be nice for writing!
You would think, but it ain’t! I cannot concentrate when I’m in the woods; there’s too much going on — in the woods and inside my head. I really thought my cabin would become my writing retreat, but it hasn’t. I can make notes, scribble in journals, and such, but my mind wanders the paths I’m not walking or the chores I’m not doing or the dreams I’m not living.
I have had some “revelations” for my stories while sitting in that comfy chair, but I’ve never been able to get into that mental place where I can sustain creativity.
I don’t mind so much. There are other compensations to a cabin in the woods, but I’m surprised that it being a writing retreat is not one of them.
Paul: I can see that as a person who loves walking and thinking.
It’s understandable to think that a cabin in the woods would be a place to write, but…my time in that kind of solitude has always been spent walking trails and on the water in a canoe. By the end of the day, I suppose I would be tired and ready for sleep. The upkeep of a cabin requires chores when not walking. Still, I have to think it’s a good place for a writer to be, and I’m glad you have that retreat.
And back to cigars, I broke free from the cigar every few months and had an Ashton Cabinet tonight after two martinis and must say, on a breezy Texas evening as the sun went down behind layers of clouds, it was quite an exquisite thing. A bit on the pricey side–not something I’d do often–but a nice way to [potentially] end a weekend. (We get tomorrow off where I work, but if there’s stuff to do, I will take the day off another time.)
Here’s to a good week of writing for us all!
Thanks for this post. That’s a lot of personal stuff to share, and I imagine it might have been scary to write and post, but I’m glad you did.
Lisa: I’m very open in real life, but on this blog — for some reason — I’ve never been that open. It just seemed like a good time to open up, and I’m glad you liked the post 🙂
BTW, I tried an Ashton Cabinet the other day. (I really don’t smoke cigars much. Honest!) Some day I should send you a couple of H. Upmanns to try.
What did you think of the Ashton Cabinet?
I plan to have some friends over this coming weekend, and one of them likes cigars. So…I’ll look for a couple H. Upmanns. If I can’t find any in the area, I’ll let you know. Thank you so much for the offer, Paul.