The Human Remains….and that’s a good thing.

I woke from my dilaudid dream, and my stomach was churning. Seasick. I tried to get my balance as I stood up weaving, the effects of low blood pressure and nausea.

What is nausea anyway, this sense of dis-ease, this lack of focus? My head vibrates, and the bottom drops out in my stomach. I am hungry, but the thought of food revolts me. My tongue, burnt by the radiation, can’t taste. Even water and spit just taste like salt, or vaguely of blood. Metallic. The relentless daily accumulation of radiation, the nausea of chemotherapy. But there is end in sight, and end for me, does not seem like “ The End”.

The dog is up and pacing. She has a urinary infection, and it is driving her crazy. Also us. She is driving us crazy. Pacing, restless. We took her to the vet hospital, got her some antibiotics and pain killers. Now she’s sleeping. Laid out, like dogs do. You have to notice their breathing or you might think she was not breathing. Dead to the world. I see her rising chest, and a twitch of her brows. Dog dreams. What is it that dogs dream about? Bones? Squirrels? The large white dog?

I struggled, but I walked her. I started using my Dad and Grandad’s cane to steady me from the low blood pressure and dizziness. I fed her. Gave her the medicine. All the while, I am listening to one of my go-to records, Magic and Loss from Lou Reed in 1992.

I remember back to when I first heard this record.

I was ten years after I had just started to lose friends to cancer.

The first friend I lost was Diane Kilpatrick, back in 1982. She was instrumental in the foundation of the Manhattan Co-operative. She was a lawyer. She had a relationship with Eric Drew Feldman from Captain Beefheart. She also had a melanoma that progressed to her brain. Her cancer killed her.

I remember how she didn’t want anyone to know. When she did die, it was a big shock. For many, cancer is the long goodbye, but with her it was sudden. We did not have time to grieve along with her. That was her choice. As a lawyer, she did not want to give any advantage to her opponents. She silenced death by not speaking about it. When she died we named our rooftop garden after her, and a plaque in her name graces the lobby of the Manhattan. There is also a scholarship that is given annually at UBC to a woman law student entering second year in the Peter A. Allard School of Law, to a young woman who has demonstrated good academic standing and an interest in helping others.

At her funeral, they played Beatnik Party by Snakefinger. It somehow seemed right.

“Some things get stopped while others starting, like fingers snapping at a beatnik party.”

“ Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way, yeah
In this great future, you can't forget your past
So dry your tears, I say, yeah“ Bob Marley

My next date with cancer and friends was with our friend Liz in 2008.

When Michelle and I become a couple, we developed relationships with other couple friends. When we become parents, we developed relationships with other parent friends. We don’t necessarily lose all of our single friends, but we gravitate toward those whose experiences echoed our own.

We met Liz and her partner, Wayne through a very talented photographer, John Schneider, who was married to a model named Tish. We met them in 1979 or 80, I think. John specialized in high end fashion photography, both here and in Japan. Tish had modelled in Japan. It was not always so glamourous. When she told the gruelling story of the exploitation and progression from cocktail waitress to model.in Japan, it could have been worse, she inferred. They had a child named Aaron, who had a form of severe autism. We never met Aaron, as he lived in a home, but not their home. John and Tish were beautiful and glamorous, but were deeply scarred by this tragic situation.

I can’t even imagine…..

They introduced us to Wayne, who then introduced us to Liz. They were together for many years before they married, just like Michelle and I. We lived together for 13 years, and married in 1992. Less than a year later we had our daughter, our love child. Wayne and Liz really wanted kids as well. They had tried unsuccessfully for some time. Michelle remembers it all better than me. Rather than pay $50 for the in-vitro test, due to Liz’s frugal nature, and seeing our luck once we actually got married, they decided to jump the broom as well. And sure enough, not long after, Renee was born, and their son Joe followed. Was there something to getting actually married that primed the pump? A relaxation of the walls that we build to protect ourselves? In a relationship, surrender is a powerful concept. Surrendering to love is what allows love to grow, to flower, to give birth.

When our daughters and Joe grew up a bit we all started taking skating lessons. How Canadian! I remember moving back to Canada in the early 70’s, being promised ski lessons, by my parents, and being disappointed that all we got were skating lessons. Falling on hard white ice. Falling lots. I never got any good at it.

While the kids were taking their lessons, Liz and I decided we would also take skating lessons too, hopefully this time they would stick. For me, not so much. For Liz, Liz got pretty good at it. Me, not so much.

Then Liz got cancer. It was breast cancer. She had the most beautiful long black hair. When she shaved that off, it was such a shock. But she was brave. So brave. They fought that cancer until my daughter was 15, and Renee and Joe wee teenagers as well. But it was too powerful.

Cancer is like that. The treatments wear down the body, and sometimes, no matter how hard you try, or wish, or hope, you can’t win.

I miss Liz so much. I see her in her children, her beautiful children. Her kindness. Her frugality. Her food. Wayne and his children are still some of our closest and best friends. The people who are with you when you need them. I am blessed to have them in my life and blessed to have known this beautiful human, Liz.

Two other beautiful humans are our friends Peggy and Saeko. We became close friends when we moved into the Manhattan in 1982. They quickly became two of our most dear friends. We would spend many nights, talking, drinking, coming up with all sorts of creative endeavours. Watching movies. Having dinners.

Word games with Peggy and Saeko, Rob and Kelly, and Dennis and Michelle

Saeko made the perfect gin and tonic. She made the perfect rack of lamb with mustard and rosemary and garlic. We all called her The Great One, in reverence to her giant intellect but also to her heart. But it was much more than that.

Peggy went through cancer first, but she came out the other side. Saeko was not as fortunate. In 2009, at the age of 63, cancer took her from us. Her loss was devastating. She and Peggy had been partners for 30 years, the same as Michelle and I at the time, our friendship coinciding all those years. Long friendships are the best. We have so many great memories.

Saeko was born in 1946 in a Canadian Japanese Internment camp. She was an editor with Douglas & McIntyre. Naturally, word games became favourites of our’s to play. She was a part of the ground breaking publication Makara. At D& M, when she took early retirement in 2009, she was remembered for her quiet intelligence, incisive judgement, and unfailing grace and good humour. She was passionate about Emily Carr, and Art, history, and First Nations. We called her The Great One, so when breast cancer cruelly took her a year after Liz, we were devastated.

Saeko remembered

In 2013, Peggy and I went to Montreal to see Neil Young and Patti Smith perform. We wrote about the trip in Geist Magazine, later reprinted in the Tyee. Peggy and Dennis review Patti and Neil

The next loss was my dear friend Lenore Coutts,aka Lenore Herb, aka Doreen Grey, who left us in 2010. Three years running, and three incredibly different, but strong women stolen from us by cancer. Lenore’s cancer was pancreatic cancer. She had been having incredible pain for some time, self medicating with Marijuana and a hot water bottle. I kept telling her to go to a doctor, to go to Emergency.

Finally she did, and they discovered the stage 4 pancreatic cancer. When she asked what was the treatment plan, they told her to consider her “spiritual options.”

She died within less than two months of this grim statement. We were crushed again.

As we age, death just gets closer and closer. I’ve had my share of conversations with God. When I had my heart attack in 2007. When my friend Scott, who didn’t die in a car accident, became a quadriplegic. My bypass in 2021.

This experience with cancer is just another. In a sense, death doesn’t scare me, but of course I’m lying. You think about the people who remain. The bonds you have nurtured and created. And the friends and people who we have lost along the way.

I’m almost done with my treatments. 9 more to go. Don’t think I’m not counting them down, because I sure as hell am. I’m not so idealistic as to think that the day after the treatments, everything go back to the way it was. Nothing ever goes back to the day it was. It changes. It grows. Every action is now informed with this experience.

In the end, it will make me stronger. It makes all of us stronger. I have so many projects to do, so many plans. One way or another.

But I’m thinking of all my friends, here and there, now and gone, and I am once again listening to Lou Reed ‘s Magic and Loss. Lou himself died of liver cancer in 2013.

In 1992, Lou Reed released Magic and Loss. There are some records that just instantly resonate, and Magic and Loss was one of those. Lou Reed has made many essential records for me, from Berlin to Street Hassle, Coney Island Baby all the way back to the Velvet Underground. So many great ones. Some not so great. Metal Machine Music comes to mind. I remember smoking hash at my parent’s house in Richmond and listening to Metal Machine Music while vacuuming. It seemed right. But around 1992, when Magic and Loss came out, we were still coupled, not parents. By 2013, when Lou died, our couple friends, our married friends and our single friends all lost partners to cancer.

Most recently, another dear friend Bob Mercer died of cancer in 2021, leaving behind his wife and life partner, soul mate Joyce Woods. Once again, our relationship goes back more than 40 years. But it never gets old, even as we get get older, just closer and closer. Which is a funny word, because “closer with an s”, can also be “closer with a z”.

As in the close of a show.

This morning I am reminded of a song I wrote when I was 21. I am 65 now. Almost 65 and a half, as if that half counts extra. Long last the time I counted life in days or in months. 785 months for those still counting. That’s over 23,000 days. More than a half million hours. Almost 34 billion minutes. My calculator stops there before I get error messages.

As always, much love to all who are still with us, and the brave folks who have gone before. Through all of this, the human remains…inside of us.

“The Human Remains”

I wrote this in 1979 with AKA.

The Human Remains

Somewhere inside of us

A shell that contains

Somewhere that part of us

The bodily crust

Submerging lust

Love, are you kidding?

You must.

The Human Remains inside of us

The Human remains

It walk with a bobbing head

For as much as you retain

It could walk right through you dead.

The bodily crust

Submerging lust

Love, it’s the illusion we trust

The human remains

Inside of us.

Dense Milt 1979.

Here is a link to AKA playing this at the Western Front.

The Human Remains