Glenn Rockowitz - Three Months

 

Hi. So, when I was 26 years old, I watched my grandmother die. She had colon cancer. It was a fairly slow death. And at the time, I was living in New York City and I had been doing comedy for many years. So, I made it my goal that every day I went to visit her, I was going to make her laugh. And one day in particular, I was visiting the hospital and she was off on some rant, as my people tend to do, and she was talking about something super important, like pudding or whatever. [audience chuckles] And I said to her, "Listen, old lady, you keep it up. I'm going to wheel you out to the parking lot and leave you there." 

 

She laughed, because she had a very dark sense of humor, which I love and probably, well, definitely inherited. She kept on with her rant. So, I stuck her in a wheelchair [audience laughter] and I brought her out through the front door of the hospital, across the parking lot to the far end of the parking lot. I faced her against a brick wall, I locked her wheels, and I left her there. [audience laughter] I just stood back about 20ft and just watched her laugh, [audience laughter] just belly laughing at the absurdity of it.

 

That night, she was telling me that the few seconds or minutes during the day when she could laugh, that it felt like everything was going to be okay, that she felt like, in her words, that she was being let out of jail. And so, a little 2-watt light bulb went off in my head and I said, “Hmmm.” And shortly after she passed away, I started an organization in New York City. Basically, what we did is we brought comedians to perform for people who were homebound with AIDS or cancer in the last weeks and days of their lives. 

 

So, we would bring three comedians. We had an actor playing a waiter and an actor playing a heckler, and we would recreate a comedy club in people's living rooms. [audience laughter] It was a pretty amazing experience, especially for me at this age, to get to spend time with people at the very end of their lives, because what I saw in people was they were not scared anymore. They were open and had made peace, I think, with the fact that it was over, and so much so that they could allow joy into their lives. That was a pretty amazing thing. 

 

We did probably 30 to 40 hours a week of these shows. And then, I had a 40-hour week job. And then, on top of that, my wife got pregnant at the time [audience laughter] and realizes that came out didn’t-- So, I was exhausted, to say the least. I had never been this kind of tired before. It was more than just you work 80 hours a week tired. The best way I could describe it, is that it's like my blood felt like it was electric. Like, I could just run and run and run and run and never stop, but I couldn't get out of bed. It was a really bizarre feeling. And so, in the insistence of a friend, I went to go see a doctor. 

 

Now, this was a doctor who had become my friend through the organization. We had done hundreds of shows for his patients, so he was now going to see me as a friend. He ran all the blood work and the scans and poked and prodded. He called me a few days later at my apartment, and I picked up and he said, "Hey, kiddo, why don't you come on down in my office and let's just talk about this stuff." And I said, "Okay." Not sure I said it like that, [audience chuckles] but I definitely agreed. I took the subway up to his office. 

 

When I walked in, I remember seeing the light box behind him with my films on it. I had no idea what they meant. But as I turned my head and looked at him, I saw that he was crying. It's not a great sign [audience laughter] when your doctor is crying. I feel like if you're on a flight and it's super turbulent and the pilot runs out crying from the cockpit, [audience laughter] that's how it felt.

 

So, he told me that I had a very aggressive form of cancer that was in its late final stages. And if he had to put a time frame on it, he would say I had roughly three months. So now, I was 28 years old, my wife was eight and a half months pregnant, and I was looking at three months. I don't really remember getting home that day. I remember being on the subway and it being very blurry. And I remember this mantra that I kept repeating. "Don't tell Jen. Don't tell Jen. Don't tell Jen." Jen was my wife. And her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and given a three-month prognosis and died three months later. So, her only framework for this disease was you get an expiration date, you hit the expiration date, and that's it. So, I decided I wasn't going to tell her. 

 

So, when I walked in the apartment, she was cooking, and she turned to me and her belly turned to me, and she said, "How did it go?" And I said, "Fine, everything's good." I couldn't keep the secret to myself, so I decided I was going to tell my father. So, I took the train to Boston. We went for a walk. It was so quiet. Like, all I could hear was just the crunching of our feet on the snow. And at a certain point, I turned to him and I told him. I'll never forget the look on his face, because he had these beautiful green eyes that suddenly just went black. His eyes got wide. I could see my reflection in his eyes. And he started crying. I'd never seen my father cry. I started crying. He just held me like I was eight years old again. And we stood there.

 

That night, I went to bed in the upstairs of his house, and I heard him come up the stairs, and I heard him go into his room, and I heard him crying, and I heard him talking, but I knew he was alone. I also knew he was a devout atheist, so that prayer was not probably something he was doing. But I found out the next morning that he had, in fact, prayed, and he had asked God to take away my cancer and give it to him.

 

Seven days later, I got a call at my apartment. I was back in Manhattan, and he was in Boston. He was crying. He had news of his own. The abdominal pain that he had felt that he'd been dealing with for the last eight months, the doctors had been treating his heartburn turned out to be pancreatic cancer. And the doctors couldn't tell him how long he had, other than the fact that he could not survive this cancer. So, he started treatment in Boston, and I started in New York. 

 

And my very first day of chemo, I went to the hospital by myself. I went and I sat in the infusion chair, and they started the IV, and they started the poison into my blood and I just cried, because I was so scared. Scared shitless of what was coming. As the day was winding down, I got a call on my cell phone. I looked down and it was my wife. I picked up the phone and she said, "It's time." So, now she was in labor. I got in a cab and I went home as quickly as I could and I walked in the door. She looked like she was in so much pain. She was timing the contractions. I grabbed her hand and I grabbed the bag that we're told to prepare weeks before. We went to the hospital. It didn't take long. Once we got there, this child was determined to be out into this world. I was grateful, because I knew how little time I had. I'll never forget the look, just the visual of his head emerging and his shoulders coming out and that moment when I'm holding him, and I thought, oh my God, I have a son, and he's never going to know his father, and I will probably lose mine as well.

 

I just held him there and I just kissed him a million times on the forehead. I love this little boy so much. I just kept kissing him and kissing him, and I wanted to swallow him up and protect him from everything. I eventually told my wife, and she didn't talk to me for a few days. She eventually forgave me, and told me she loved me and felt that I did the right thing and that she wouldn't change anything. And she thanked me.

 

I went to Boston to spend time with my dad. We're both in a race to the finish line at this point. It was a pretty amazing thing, because as we laid in bed together, I thought about the patients that I had worked with and I thought that I genuinely can say that I made peace with the fact that I was dying. I know he had made peace with the fact that he was dying, but I know that neither of us had made peace with the fact that each other was dying.

 

About two weeks later, we took him to the hospital because he had what was going to be a fairly routine bowel obstruction surgery. I knew when we're driving that I was never going to see him again. And that last day, that last night when I held him and I just kept kissing his forehead, and then he was gone. 

 

We were at his funeral. I looked across the grave, and I saw my wife and my son there, and I thought, the next funeral they're going to be at is mine. I got a call on my cell phone and I let it go to voicemail. After the funeral was over, I walked up to a hill in the cemetery and I listened to the voicemail. It was my doctor telling me that based on the most recent scan, it appeared that my cancer was now in remission. And it was. It was gone for now, but it wasn't for long. I have struggled with it ever since. But I think about that little boy whose head I saw emerge into the world, and just two months ago, that kid started his freshman year in high school. [audience applause]

 

The other night when I was putting him to bed, I was telling him how much I loved him. And I loved who he is. He's a very shy, introverted kid with this huge heart. He's so sweet. I was just telling him how much I love him. And I said to him, "You know, buddy, someday you are going to be a great father." He mumbled and gave me this devious little smile and said, "You know what, dad? One day you're going to be a great father, too." [audience laughter] Thank you so much.