Well it was mixed results with my father’s lung pet-scan. The good news: It hasn’t spread and there’s no new cancer. The not-so-good news: The tumor that was already there (very small and to be zapped with lightweight chemo eventually) has grown. Not a lot—just 10%. But it has grown. The hard part is that the last time Dad did immunotherapy (a more targeted form of chemo)he developed a very rare neurological disorder called Myesthenia Gravis, wherein he stopped swallowing, seeing safely, talking coherently.
The solution is unknown at the moment, but the oncologist mentioned ‘clinical trials.’ So we’ll see. Dad seems upbeat. He’s a man of stoicism, born in 1945 in New Jersey, son of a man who made many millions in the stock market and as an early investor in computers and also as CEO of several corporations, including Quotron. (Milt Mohr, my grandfather, deceased since 2000, the year I turned 17 and started drinking like a 56-year-old Charles Bukowski).
My mom is less stoic. She waffles between hysteria, loneliness, sadness and denial. I can’t blame her—they’ve been together nearly half a century. They bought this house in Santa Barbara in 2020–leaving Ojai after three decades—intending to grow into mature old age together, walking their two dogs early each morning, enjoying their Riviera view of the city and the Pacific Ocean, and one day falling together into that deep dark eternal sleep we call death.
But life, that strange, mirage-like surreal dream which sometimes morphed into a nightmare, had other plans. We make plans abs God laughs, some say. (They say this in AA, for one.)
How do I feel?, you ask. Hm. I don’t know. Surprised and yet not surprised. Satisfied and sad. Life continues to beat its drum. Mortality enters my mind a lot lately. As a sensitive artist (read: writer) I’ve always felt close to death in a way. My anger, insecurity and volatile emotions and actions throughout my teens and twenties were a testament to that. Many times I hoped I’d die back then.
Yet, despite my raunchy, anarchic alcoholism; superbly gnarly car crashes; driving drunk I don’t know how many hundreds of times; hopping freight trains (read my story on this:
); etc: I failed to die. I survived. This, I feel, is profoundly and humorously ironic. Everyone in high school said I’d die before I reached 21. No one agreed more than me back then.
So I’m ok. My girlfriend and I got into a verbal scuffle over the phone this morning about my ex. My ex and I bought a house together in 2015, got a cat, traveled Europe, backpacked all over California, did rugged road trips. We broke up five years ago. There’s nothing there between us anymore. She’s married and pregnant, living in the Bay Area; I’m in love in Santa Barbara. But jealousy—insecurity—is a funny thing. A mystery sometimes, even to ourselves. I have a very bumpy, highly imperfect past. Many women, many mistakes, much drama, much bad juju. Emotional abuse from me, especially in the drinking years.
But that’s all in the past now. I’m 12-plus years sober. Almost 40. In love. My ex is in the far distant past.
What does it mean to be in love with someone? To have a dying father? A lonely mother who I cherish and love but must hold boundaries with? What does it mean to choose not having kids? To desire world-travel and writing and selfish love instead?
What is the ultimate purpose of existence? To please others, satisfy society, worry about morality placed on us by others? Or is it to live free and true to oneself? I’ve always been a weirdo, a free-thinker, a long off-the-grid-living freak. I’ve always done things my way. I am learning to compromise more and be more vulnerable. Allowing myself to be wounded is hard but important.
Love courses through my veins like blood. Love for my father. My mother. My old angry alcoholic self. My girlfriend. My current self. God. Death. The unknown.
Nabokov in his memoir, Speak, Memory says ‘Life is but a brief crack of light between two abysses.’
Between pre-birth and post-death. Yes. And in between one might call it Art. I am an artist. You are an artist. Life is a masterpiece.
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Michael Mohr