To order a copy of
Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore!
order via paypal:

Willam P. Tandy
c/o Eight-Stone Press
PO Box 11064
Baltimore, MD
21212 USA
wpt@eightstonepress.com

Introduction

- Survivors -
Last spring, my Kiwi friend, Jim, sent me a package containing a pair of remembrance poppies (in honor of Anzac Day, April 25) as well as a poster bearing a poem entitled "Becoming Something Other." The author, a man named Chris Knox, scrutinizes mortality through the lens of his father's failing health. Rendering the piece all the more poignant is the fact that, according to the author's blurb at the bottom, Knox himself – "a New Zealand musician, songwriter, cartoonist & critic" – suffered "a life-altering stroke" in June 2009, just a few months shy of his 57th birthday. Later that year, his friends and fans released a benefit album featuring covers of his music to help support him in his recovery.

The whole thing struck a chord for me as a good friend of mine suffered a massive stroke (prior to which he had been in otherwise very good health) in late 2008 – two days after his 35th birthday. Kevin was fortunate in the sense that his mental capacities remained intact. However, the physical ramifications – countless surgeries, hundreds of hours of ongoing physical therapy and the need to completely relearn such basic skills as walking – are something else entirely.

We talk on the phone regularly, at least once every couple weeks. I owe Kevin, who still lives three hours away, in the hypertensive heart of the Garden State, that much, at the absolute least; when I underwent chemotherapy for non- Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2007, he never failed to call the evening that followed my treatment. He'd ask how the day went . . . but mostly we talked bullshit –movies, music, stories from college (where we first met one savage evening when I nearly smacked him in the head with an ironing board). Bottom line, Kevin recognized two things: 1) that often, at the end of the day, cancer was the last thing I wanted to talk about, and 2) just how much I truly valued the thought – a gesture of bona fide friendship.

So, when I received word of his stroke, I had some firsthand knowledge of what awaited him, at least concerning the reactions of others – the sincere initial outpouring of support from well-wishers that would, in time, fade to a trickle once the "novelty" of the situation wore off and many of them refocused their attention on their own problems, their own lives. It's nothing personal – that's just how it goes.

Hardly his only source of conversation, I nevertheless make a point of talking with Kevin as frequently as possible – bullshit stuff most of the time, more serious matters when they're obviously weighing on him – being all too familiar with the shelf life of casual sympathy. Kevin and I now also share a keen awareness of our own mortality that is statistically beyond our years.

Still, things are a bit different this time around. When I was sick, Kevin was the picture of health; in my mind, he still holds the land-speed record for evading capture by the Long Beach Township police by sprinting across the moonlit dunes while suspending a bench-sized cooler full of longnecks above his head. But for how ever closely I rubbed elbows with Death, within a year my treatments were done, my hair was growing back and I looked forward to making the most at this new lease on life. Today, nearly five years later, I'm the healthiest I've been since high school. I go to the gym at least twice a week, mind what I eat and, perhaps most importantly, have all but quit drinking. A tiny biopsy scar and an even more diminutive pill I take every morning are, in fact, the only physical relics of my ordeal – a very small price, indeed.

But more than three years after that stroke abrupty rerouted the course of his life, Kevin still relies heavily upon a cane for mobility. And I don't pretend to know the uncertainty he must face at the break of each new day...

* * *

It's funny – though I knew neither Knox nor his music (his biggest song, incidentally, is a tune called "Not Given Lightly"; check it out) prior to opening that package, some "life-altering" events stand immune to synthetic boundaries like Nationality, Race, Religion or Tax Bracket. In them we see only fellow patients...

And so long as we draw breath, we are all survivors. So here's to you, Knox – or, as Jim might say, "On ya, mate!"

WILLIAM P. TANDY
January 2012

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