Bill Eville - The Strangest Part of All

 

 

What can you say when you're nervous? You just love everybody. [audience laughter] I met my wife Kathleen when she was 13 and I was 16. Today, she's the minister at the West Tisbury Church, but you should have seen her back then. She was a punk rock and skateboard chick. [audience chuckles] In her backyard, they had this huge skateboard ramp. We used to say it was the second largest in all of New Jersey. I have no idea if this was true, and I didn't even skate. I just like to go over there, because I like Kathleen. 

 

She was the little sister, though, of a good friend of mine, and so we didn't date. This was high school, and there's rules against that sort of thing. But we were good friends, and we stayed in touch all through our 20s. But then, gradually, we started to drift apart, mostly because I didn't know how to tell her how I felt. We even lost touch for a few years. And then, when I was about 28, I got a call one night from a friend from the old neighborhood, Pete. He was calling to tell me that his parents had been killed. They had been out west and looking for a retirement community, and a truck ran a red light. 

 

We all went back to the old neighborhood, Kathleen, too, for the services. I can still see those two caskets, these two brown caskets, right next to each other. And inside were two people that meant a great deal to all of us, two people who had been like parents to us. And immediately after that service, I walked right over to Kathleen and I asked her out on a date. I wasn't going to waste any more time. 

 

For our first date, we both lived in New York City then, and I took her to the finest dive bar in all of the East Village. [audience laughter] It's called the Holiday Cocktail Lounge. And over several cheap whiskeys, I discovered, to my surprise, that she had always been in love with me, too. A few years later, we got married. We decided during the ceremony that since we had known each other for so long, we would walk up the aisle together. She wore a bright red dress. And then, about halfway through the ceremony, this guy in the back row stands up and starts waving his arms around and screaming, and he starts saying, "What about that moment? What about that moment? We get to say why they shouldn't be together." [audience laughter] The whole place went quiet.

 

And the guy makes his way to the aisle. I thought someone was going to tackle him. He starts walking up the aisle, and then he gets almost to the altar and he winks at us. It was our friend Paul. He had said he might do something unorthodox. [audience laughter] He turns around to the crowd and he says, "Isn't that a weird tradition? How about we flip it? How about we say why they should get married?" Everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief. [audience laughter] And then, they just started standing spontaneously and saying, “Why we should get married.” Everything from "We're both really short" [audience chuckles] to "We both looked really great in a red dress." That's a story for a different time. [audience chuckles] But mostly, they kept saying that we just seem made for each other.

 

A little over four years ago, we moved to Martha's Vineyard. Kathleen was called to the West Tisbury Church. We had two little kids now, Hardy was four, and Erynna, who everybody knows as Pickle, was six months. Seemed like a great idea. And it has been, other than February. [audience chuckles] But we settled into a routine. I started working at the Vineyard Gazette, and life was good. And then, one day, Kathleen called me at work. She was crying, and I couldn't understand her, and the office was noisy. I took the call outside, and she finally composed herself, and she said, "The doctor found a lump. They have to do a biopsy to be sure, but to prepare for breast cancer."

 

Usually, my mind, when anything goes wrong, it's like, “Okay, how do we fix it? We can do this. We can do this. We can do this. Check the boxes and we're good.” But I didn't know what to do then. I just kept thinking, not Kathleen. Me, sure, but Kathleen's the greatest person on the planet. Ask anybody. The early diagnosis was pretty good, maybe just a lumpectomy. They did some surgery, but they couldn't clear the margins. Cancer speak for there were still some cancer cells. They went back in again, but they couldn't clear the margins, and then they found it was in the lymph nodes. We knew we were in for the full fight.

 

We decided early on that we were going to be really open with our kids. Hardy was seven and a half now, and Pickle was almost four. We stalled as much as we could, but then one January, beautiful day, was like a 60-degree day, we said, "Let's go outside." Hardy immediately thought he had done something wrong. But we said, "No, no, no." We went outside, and I still didn't know what I was going to say. But we were walking to his little play area, and there's this stump he jumps around on. I find a rock as I'm going there, and I pick up this rock and I put it on his stump and I said, "This was the lump in Mommy's breast. The doctors took it out." 

 

And then, Hardy just reached forward and he grabbed the lump and he threw it in the woods. And I thought, “Holy shit, this talk is working.” And then, I reached forward and I grabbed some dirt and I put that on the stump and I said, "This was the second surgery." And he swept that dirt away. Then I looked around and I found some sand and I put that on the stump. I said, "They can't get this out with surgery. Mommy's going to have to take some really, really strong chemicals, and it's going to make her hair fall out." Hardy laughed at that. He thought that was funny. But then, he stepped up again and swept the sand away.

 

And then, he walked over and he grabbed this stick, and he started marching around pretending it was Kathleen, saying, "Good health for me. Good health for me." And so, then Kathleen grabbed a stick and I grabbed a stick, and Pickle, who had been wandering around kicking a soccer ball, she came over to join the freaks, and we all started jumping around. "Good health for me. Good health for me." I didn't really know how much Pickle got out of this little talk.

 

But then two days later, it was the end of the bedtime routine, and we were lying in bed and we'd finished reading, and she turns to me and says, "Dada, when am I going to die?" And I was like, “Whoa, Pickle, not for a long time. No, no, no. Not for a long time.” I'm hoping now that the conversation is over. But she turns to me again and says, "Will I die before you?" And I said again, "No, Pickle, you're safe. You're not going to die for a long, long time." And then, she says to me, "I want to die before you. That way, I won't have to miss you."

 

I wanted to tell Pickle then that she was never going to die, that I was never going to die, that Kathleen was never going to die, that Hardy was never going to die, that anybody on the whole planet was ever going to die again in the history of the world. But I couldn't. I wasn't going to lie to her. So, I just held her until she fell asleep. Now, if this wasn't enough, we ended up being really open with the community, too. Kathleen's role as a minister is a really public one. She would preach about cancer, about what she was going through in her sermons. 

 

Being a minister's husband is a strange role even in the best of times. But sitting in the pew when she's talking about her cancer, and she would break down, and I'm up there, I'm sitting there watching a girl I've loved since she was 13 years old, and I can't get out of that pew, and I can't go to hold her, and I can't do anything. Then I remember about two days after one of these sermons, I'm standing in the Scottish Bakehouse, waiting to get a croissant, and this woman comes up to me. I barely know her. She's in her 80s, but full of life. She comes in, and she just gives me this huge hug, and she wraps her arms around me, and she's squeezing me hard, and then she backs off and she points at her breasts, and she says, "These aren't real. [audience chuckles] Cancer took them 30 years ago, but I'm doing great." [audience laughter]

 

These were the stories we like best. The old survivors. And then, the community, they started bringing over food, and they started taking care of the kids. And then, when Kathleen had chemo, they started bringing over their minister. The congregants started bringing their minister pot brownies and pot sugar cookies. [audience laughter] I mean, these pot sugar cookies were art. They were perfection. They were definitely not their first baking experience. [audience laughter]

 

Back home, I mean, back when we were just together, I tried to-- The cancer treatment, it took almost a year, and I tried to splice it into three spots. There was the surgery, there's chemotherapy, there's radiation, and surgery. You know what? You're getting chemo. That's some weird shit. Kathleen and I would go into Boston to Mass General every three weeks, and she would have these chemicals dripped into her four hours, these bright red chemicals. The nurse called it the Red Devil. And then, we'd go home. About a day and a half later, she'd leave us. 

 

Are my words for what happened when she became just a ghostly presence on the couch. Pickle would create a little snuggle spot down there, bring in her blankets and her animals, and she would just pet her mother's ankles. She called it her jewel box. When Kathleen's hair fell out, Hardy got this bright blue wig, and he would parade around, and I tried to keep it together, make sure everything seemed normal. 

 

But then, sometimes I would just break down. It would happen in the weirdest times. I'd be walking down the street, it'd be bright, sunny day, and I'd be walking along, and then I'd smell something or see something, and it would flash me back, and I'd just break down, and I'd start bawling. and I’d start bawling so much, I'd scare myself. And then, I'd start bawling some more, and then I'd scare this person who was just walking by, some stranger. They'd come over, and they'd say, "Are you okay?" And I'd say, "No" and then I'd run away. [audience chuckles] But then, I had to be a parent when I went back home.

 

Then one morning, we're getting ready for school, and Hardy has a tantrum, something about his socks don't fit right or whatever. Something small. But it's a big tantrum. age of three would be annoying, but the age of seven, he thought he was going to grow up to be a horrible person. I start yelling at him, and he starts yelling at me, and we're yelling, and then we get in the car and we're still yelling. And then, we get to the school and we're still yelling and I think I can't take him in like this. So, I keep driving. 

 

Little while he notices, and he says, "Dada, where are we going?" I'm still so angry, I just can't speak, so I just keep driving. And then, he asks again, "Dada, where are we going?" And I sense the fear in his voice. I don't answer again. Not because I'm angry, but because I'm happy. I'm happy about his fear. The tantrum's over, and I've got the control, and I just keep driving. And he keeps asking me, "Dada, where are we going? Where are we going?" His voice gets scary, and then he starts to cry. I keep going, and I can't answer him.

 

Here I am, torturing my son, my little boy, and I can't stop. I just keep driving. And this goes on for miles. And then, finally, I get to the Tashmoo Overlook and I almost throw up. I'm just sick to my stomach. I turn around, we drive home. We go inside, and we sit on the couch, side by side. I'm apologizing and apologizing. He turns to me and he says, "Dada, the reason I had the tantrum, I wasn't just thinking about that thing. I just started to think about everything. Everything that can go wrong." I tell him I understand exactly what he means.

 

The last part was radiation. Kathleen had to go in every day to Mass General. So, she moved to Boston. Friends gave her an apartment, and she stayed there, and we stayed back home and held down the fort. The kids and I, we created a calendar and we'd mark off the days, getting ready for that last day. Kathleen had said there was a bell. There's this bell in the reception room, and you get to ring it the last day for good luck. In my mind, I had built that bell up. It was like the Liberty Bell. I was going to ring the shit out of that bell. I was going to ring it, and I was going to keep ringing it, I was going to keep ringing it. The orderlies were going to have to come and take me away. [audience chuckles]

 

And on the last day, we all went in, me and the kids and my mom and Kathleen's sister. We're treated like celebrities. We're given a tour of the place. And then, we get down and Kathleen finishes her radiation, and she puts back her street clothes, and we all go walking over to the bell. It's a tiny bell. It's about the size of my fist. Kathleen gets up there and she rings the bell, and Hardy rings the bell, and Pickle rings the bell, but then I don't want to ring the bell. Just seems stupid. It doesn't seem like anything's going to change. I'm still scared as hell. And ringing a bell's not going to change anything. And so, I fell back into the back. I just want to go home. So, that's what we do.

 

Since that day, Kathleen has had checkups every other month. And then, this spring she got her six-month cancer all clear. That was something to celebrate. So, we all got together, and the kids and we're having a big dinner, spaghetti and meatballs, and we're all just laughing and having fun. Then Pickle turns to Kathleen and says, "Mom, remember when you had the cance? [audience chuckles] Remember how we used to snuggle all the time?" So weird. She was nostalgic for cancer. [audience chuckles] 

 

But I also got it. It was a horrible, horrible year, and yet there were so many beautiful moments. Family, the community, so many of you people out there, we all jumped in open arms into cancer. And here we were sitting at dinner, laughing, hanging out just like any normal family, like it had never happened. I got to tell you, that's the weirdest part of the whole thing. Thank you.