Seize the Day

by Curtis Bunn

  When one of mine was damaged in a bad car crash and I needed a new one to avoid a life of dialysis, I was amazed by two things: Kevin was willing, without hesitation, to go through tests to see if we were compatible; and that he was a match. I had no siblings and my father’s kidneys were not healthy enough to share.

  If Kevin had any reservations about doing it, I never saw them. If there was any fear, he never revealed it. And he never expressed any ambivalence about donating an organ to his friend.

  For all I had done with and for him in the thirty years we knew each other, there was nothing I could do to repay Kevin for his deed for me. And as I read his letter as I had each day, something occurred to me the way an idea comes to a prolific author: As a way of honoring Kevin, I will live out some of the things he never got to do based on what he wrote me in that letter.

  That was the least I could do, considering the kidney transplant saved my life. Doing things he wanted to do would extend my life and give it more purpose. And I decided I would throw in some of my own unfulfilled ambitions, too.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALL OVER THE PLACE

  Ever since my diagnosis, my sleep had been interrupted almost every night by weird dreams about death and Kevin and people chasing me and other things I couldn’t remember. But I woke up terrified.

  At the same time, I could not hold a thought when I was awake. It was hard to concentrate. My mind flared off to someplace I was not, someplace I wanted to go or someplace I feared. It was a strange existence.

  It was a relief to wake up this particular morning feeling refreshed and somewhat inspired. I dreamed about Kathy Drew, my first love. We broke up when she took a job in San Francisco, leaving me behind in D.C. We were twenty-five then. I understood her decision; we didn’t have a life-long commitment and the opportunity was too good to refuse.

  But I didn’t realize I would love her all my life. The distance made our relationship fizzle, but the fire always burned within me. I dated and even loved some good women since Kathy. But she always was the pinnacle. Strange thing was, I couldn’t figure out why…until my life changed with death pending.

  Knowing you’re going to die did something to my thinking. We’re all trained to know our time will come at some point. But my case was different because I knew death was near, even though I felt fine. I didn’t have any headaches or stomach discomfort. I had some X-rays that show a growth in my stomach that shouldn’t be there. And the docs said it would kill me.

  And because I knew my time was near, my senses seemed sharper. I saw things clearer. So I could see Kathy for who she was to me: a love that was not on the surface, a love that was not driven by sex or a need for companionship or youthful exuberance. It was simply real love that was almost tangible and unconditional, even at that young age. Now I know: True love was not that complicated.

  It irked me that it took this long for this realization. I had twenty years to try to make something out of what we had. Instead, I played the tough, so-called manly role, the “There are many fish in the sea role.”

  The dumb role.

  Look at me now: understanding I could have had the love of my life when I have little life left.

  “Why do you think it’s too late?” Thornell said. He was one of my closest friends and golf buddy. When I told him I was going to die, he held it together, held me together. He was predictably stunned and looked me up and down and wondered, like I did, if the doctors knew what the hell they were talking about. He talked about getting second and third opinions. But by the time I told him, I had already made those rounds.

  “It’s too late because I don’t have any time to really have something with Kathy,” I told Thornell.

  “That’s the reason you should contact her,” Thornell said. “Do the things that make you feel good.”

  It made sense to me. Shit, whom was I trying to fool? Anything would have felt like a good reason. I wanted to contact her, to hear her voice. The problem was, I didn’t know where to begin in trying to locate her. We hadn’t spoken in seven years. But Thornell had an answer for that, too.

  “Facebook,” he said.

  And he was right. Kathy was the type of person who would thrive on that social media site. She loved people and communicating and sharing…all the hallmarks of what made Facebook what it was. Or was supposed to be. It morphed into something much broader than the original idea, in good ways and bad.

  In any case, I had signed up long ago, but hadn’t even posted a photo. I was a voyeur. Saw some interesting stuff and learned a lot, too. I also recall people posting about losing loved ones and thinking how sad that was. One of the few times I commented on something was when one of our classmates posted about Kevin’s death. I wrote:

  “This man was the best friend anyone could have. To lose him is to lose a part of myself.”

  And I meant it. I never thought at the time that someday I would die and be the subject of posts from friends. That made me feel strange. Almost everything made me feel strange. My emotions were all over the place.

  Anyway, I resisted the urge to post about myself on Facebook because I heard a lot about the drama that came with being on it if you connected with nosey people, messy people, critical people, people who would put their personal business out there for all to see, people who would be jealous of what you posted and on and on.

  I always thought that was an exaggeration…until I set up my Facebook account. I saw a lot of the bickering and wondered who those people were. I read about people’s drama. One guy was critical of seemingly everything in his life; he never posted anything uplifting. Women called women names and exposed their business, at the same time making themselves look silly. It was a mess.

  But it also was enlightening. I learned about history and news events and little-known facts and heartwarming stories and stories that showed the compassion of people.

  I also read where Facebook was among the new top reasons for divorce. And I knew through some friends that it could be a place to find people of your past. Out of all that could be gleaned from Facebook, that was my ultimate mission: to find Kathy Drew.

  Thornell and I sat at my kitchen table with my laptop and started the search. He was as excited as me, a real friend hoping I’d find something, someone, to make my remaining days brighter.

  Problem was, there were a lot of Kathy Drews on Facebook, and none of the photos looked like the Kathy I remembered.

  “What about her?” Thornell suggested.

  I looked at the photo closely. Her privacy settings did not allow multiple views of her profile images. But the face was similar, from what I could tell. So was the smile, which always made me smile. It was sort of an “I have a secret kind of smile.”

  You always had to say, “What?” when she flashed it because you felt like she knew something you didn’t.

  “The smile makes me think this could be her,” I said to Thornell. “But the face is a little wider.”

  “That don’t mean shit,” he said. “You ever been to a reunion? Women who were thin turn fat real quick.”

  “Men, too,” I said. I always tried to be fair. “I could be wrong,” I continued. “But I don’t have her gaining a lot of weight. She wasn’t vain, but her appearance meant a lot to her. I have her being close to what I saw about twenty years ago.”

  “Yeah, well, I think you should prepare yourself for the worst,” Thornell said, laughing.

  “I’m trying to find the woman, not marry her,” I said. And in that moment, I wondered what finding her would accomplish. Sometimes, a lot of times, battling the strange emotions that came with knowing I’m going to die…soon had a depression component that was difficult to manage.

  I learned to not get mad at myself about not being able to handle the realization of it all. How many people could? It was the reality of all realities. There were times, when I was on the golf course or absorbed in a good book or movie that I didn’t focus on dying. But it didn’t last; it was fleeting.

&
nbsp; When the toll of it all burst out—that’s what it did; it didn’t seep out, it flowed like water out of an opened fire hydrant—my mind and disposition went various places, depending on the day. The psychologist the doctors recommended I visit said this would last for a while, but could get better as time progressed.

  I wanted to say, Really? Just how much time do you think I have? It’s not like I’m on a three-year plan, doc.

  But I let it go because what would have been the point? But that was how my emotions fluctuated: I’d wake up depressed, hardly able to get out of the bed, paralyzed with fear and sadness. Or I was angry and lashed out at the person in front of me. Other times I would shut down and say very little. Still other times I would cry—no, bawl—until I would almost become breathless.

  Trying to find Kathy on a social media website gave me a new emotion, though. Hope. Momentarily, I was down about it—what would finding her actually do? But that passed when I looked at the bigger picture. I needed to find this woman. I needed to tell her that I loved her.

  “Maybe that’s not what you should say right off the bat,” Thornell said. “I mean, you haven’t seen the woman in a long time. Maybe a ‘hello’ would be a good place to start.”

  I laughed. That’s the meaningful thing about true friends—they treated you the same no matter what.

  “I’m dying,” I said. “But I ain’t brain-dead.”

  Thornell laughed loudly. I took a swig of the bottled water I had next to me and kept my eyes on him. When he stopped laughing, his face made a remarkable transition to sadness in a nanosecond. What I said was funny…but it was sad, too.

  “Let’s concentrate on finding Kathy,” I said. “This woman isn’t her.”

  But there was a profile that was mysterious and gave me hope. The person’s listed name was Kathy Drew-Turner. There was no photo, however. But she listed San Francisco as her current city and Washington, D.C. as her hometown. There was not much more I could see about her without being her Facebook friend.

  “Why are you excited about this?” Thornell said. “There’s no photo. And this person is apparently married.”

  “Kathy would be married,” I said “She deserved to be married to someone who appreciated who she is. Plus, what do I care if she’s married or not?”

  Thornell seemed uncomfortable, one of the rare times in our friendship. “Well, I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I know you just said what you said, you know, about dying. But I had forgotten that quickly. It’s hard. It’s hard to put my head around this. It’s hard to believe.

  “I look at you and you don’t look sick. You don’t sound sick. You don’t act sick. And, most of all, I don’t want you to be sick.”

  I was determined not to fall apart, to hold it together so he could hold it together.

  “It’s been about more than a month since they told me…told me the news. I’m good with it. Not like I’m ready to go. But what can I do? It is what it is. I just want to do some things my boy, Kevin, never did and a few things I never did. If I can do that, when the time comes, I’ll be OK…I think.”

  We didn’t say much after that. I sent the friend request to that person I hoped was Kathy.

  “But how are you feeling?” Thornell asked. “I mean, you went to the doctor for a physical and he told you you had cancer. But you were feeling fine. Do you still feel good?”

  “I do.” That was true but with a gray area. A few days before, I started to feel pain in my stomach. It wasn’t so bad, but with my condition I was panicked. Before I knew it, in my mind cancer was running wild, eating up my organs like Pacman.

  The fear was almost overwhelming. I convinced myself that this was it. That notion of believing I was about to die extracted much of my soul and all of my faith…for a minute. Somehow—and it could only have been the Lord—my mind became clear enough for me to reason with myself: “God is here.”

  I didn’t know if I actually heard the words or if the thought was thrust into my head amid all the chaos. But it hit me and it calmed me down. I was not overly religious. My parents made sure I went to church and I established a relationship with God as I got older. I prayed daily and I sure enough lifted my head up to him after learning my days on earth were limited.

  It turned out that the pain in my stomach was just a stomachache. But I learned from that frightful experience: I had to trust in God through all this. I did not have a church home. I visited numerous churches to get various views on life and God and religion and spirituality, etc. I looked at it like joining a golf club. Why join a country club and be compelled to play the same course over and over again? Golf was much more enjoyable for me when I experienced different courses.

  Doing so, I got to see various course layouts and scenery. I was challenged differently on different courses, as no two are alike. Visiting churches allowed me to experience many pastors’ styles and teachings. I heard different choirs and met different people. The variety helped me from becoming jaded about religion and religious leaders. The way things were, that was not so easy to do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE POWER OF PRAYER

  When the time came to get some spiritual, Godly advice, I called on the Reverend Davis Henson. He was the pastor of a mid-sized church called New Covenant Baptist in Southeast, D.C. I refused to try the leader of one of those mega-churches with five layers of people to go through before you got to meet with the pastor, who sat on high, like that Creflo Dollar guy in Atlanta who asked his followers to pay for a $65 million private jet. The nerve of some so-called religious leaders…

  I chose Rev. Henson because during each of my four visits to his church, he never asked for a love offering or new building fund offering or a fuel my private helicopter offering. They passed around the plate, but there was none of the guilt that some churches tried to make you feel about not contributing your electricity bill money to their cause. Rev. Henson seemed to be committed to offering the Word and helping people, as best I could tell.

  “Brother Calvin, the note says you had an urgent need to speak with me, so I made sure we scheduled this right away. How are you?”

  “Pastor, thank you for your time. I know you’re busy. I’m here because I went to the doctor and I got some bad news…I’m going to die. Terminal cancer.”

  I kept my eyes on Rev. Henson; I wanted to see if he would flinch. He didn’t. He said, “Let’s pray.”

  I was not expecting that. I was expecting, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, brother,” or something to indicate sorrow. But he called on the Lord. We bowed our heads.

  “Father God, our brother Calvin has been told he will receive his wings soon. That’s what the doctors say. We know that You control all things. And as believers in You, there is no fear now. There is only faith that whether his days number one or one thousand that they be lived out in God’s will. We pray that You cover Brother Calvin in strength and courage and that he honors You and honors himself as he walks in his daily life, looking ahead to glorification and nothing else. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, Amen.”

  I was impressed. To utter that prayer with no warning was amazing. I felt his anointing. When he was done, all I could say was, “Amen.”

  “So, you’re here to do what?”

  “Well, we already did one of the most important things, which is pray. I guess the other thing I’m trying to do is make sense of this. How did this happen to me? Why?”

  “Is that really the question to ask?” he said. “I have a question for you: Why not you?”

  Again, he stunned me. “Why not me? Because I want to live.”

  “Then live,” he said without hesitation.

  We looked at each other a few seconds. I figured he was trying to let sink in what he meant. Finally, he added: “Brother Calvin, we do not know what is promised to us. We all will get our call home at some point. We all know that. Mine could be tomorrow or some time before yours. We just don’t know. That’s why it is important to live our lives uplifting God, doing
for others, praising His name.

  “It’s natural for you to ask ‘Why me?’ and to be scared. Would you want it to be someone else? Would you wish death on someone else? I’m going to say you wouldn’t. The diagnosis has been made about you, and I would say to look at it as a call from God to touch people. You have time to do that. He could have had you fall dead on the ground where you stand. He has not cursed you by taking your life; He’s blessed you with an opportunity to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

  I had not even remotely looked at it that way. I always considered this some sort of punishment or just plain old bad luck.

  “Listen,” Rev. Henson added, “you’re going to continue to have moments of despair and fear. It’s natural. I’m not saying to leave here feeling like you’re never going to have issues with this. But you’re in a unique position. An enviable position, believe it or not. You can spend your last days uplifting God, telling people you love how you feel, making a difference. And when the down times come, pray this prayer:

  “Father God, I know You have called me home. My time is coming. Give me strength and courage to walk in Your path in these final days. Thank You for the blessing of life. And thank You for the blessing of death, for I know the greatest gift is coming home to You.”

  Tears seeped through my closed eyes and down my face. For all I had attempted to resolve in my mind, the spiritual peace gave me a strange mix of fear and stability. I was scared but I felt a new sense of purpose. My borderline depression surely would get me down at times. But I now had something to hold me up when those occasions arose. Before meeting with the pastor, that was my underlying fear: How would I bounce back from the inevitable bouts of feeling sorry for myself?

  “So, what kind of cancer is it, if you don’t mind me asking, and what treatments are you taking?”

  “It’s a rare form of stomach cancer called intra-abdominal desmoplastic small-round-cell tumor,” I said. It was one of the few times I was technical about its name. “It’s a soft-tissue sarcoma that grows in the stomach. It’s rare and usually is detected in kids and young adults. I’m forty-five, so it’s even more rare.