Bear with me, everyone. This is not going to be such a happy post. One of my oldest and dearest friends is in the hospital with a brain tumor. This isn’t he first time he’s been there.
I think that everyone will remember where they were on that day in September when our world as we know it in the United States turned upside down. On September 10, I had flown to Maui with Dave for what was supposed to have been a relaxing two-week holiday. We had rented a house in Maui Meadows and we were looking forward to having two whole weeks with nothing but each other and the fish.
I was training for the Disney Marathon at the time and woke up very early on that Tuesday morning to go for a run. I ran all through Maui Meadows and as I was running I would catch bits and pieces of radio and television broadcasts coming from the homes and cars I was passing. I kept hearing about a plane and a second plane and all airports being closed. I ran for about an hour and when I got home, at 6:30 a.m. Maui time, I woke Dave up and said that I thought something horrible had happened, that perhaps a plane had crashed.
I turned on the television and at that very moment watched as the towers collapsed. And then I screamed and burst into tears.
When my mother’s youngest child, my youngest sister Robin, was finally settled in elementary school, my mother took a real estate course as a lark. Two of her friends from the country club were taking it and she decided to join in the fun. None of us ever expected her to actually do anything with it. She was a professional housewife and a professional volunteer. The American Cancer Society and AFS and the local Girl Scout chapter all counted on her for her management and marketing abilities. She had plenty of “work” to fill her time.
However, when she got her real estate license and went to work for H.M. James and Son, none of us could argue that she’d found her niche. My mother is a born saleswoman. She can sell snow to Eskimos and get them to pay her three times market value. It wasn’t long before she had SOLD signs sporting her name all over town.
John Carlin first met my mother on a summer’s day in 1975 when he came to her to buy a house. He was twenty-three years old and had just been promoted by the Cargill Corporation to come and run their Seaford, Delaware operations. John was originally from Chicago and grew up in a family with five other brothers and sisters, including a twin brother named Jimmy. His own mother had died a few years before and it was obvious he missed her. He started calling my mother “Mom” almost immediately.
My mother sold John his house, but unlike her other customers who got a nice plant at settlement, John got invited to our house for a home cooked meal. It was then that I first met him and I know that I fell in love. Well, as in love as an eleven year old can possibly be with a man who is twice her age and thinks she’s just one of the kids. John soon became part of our family. He would call every night around 5 and ask what was for dinner. I would tell him. And he would ask that I set a place for him at the table and let “Mom” know that he was coming. Five nights out of seven, John would join us. The other two nights would often find either all of us or at least my parents and John at the country club drinking at the bar and eating whatever it was that the country club was serving for dinner.
He came to our swim meets, he came with us to our beach house for the weekend, and he came and watched me ride my pony at horse shows. He’d sit on our screen porch after dinner and talk to me for hours and then suddenly pick me up and throw me in the swimming pool just because he could. He was the big brother that I had never had, but had always wished for and I was so grateful that he had finally arrived.
John had a college sweetheart named Nancy. When John moved to Delaware, Nancy was a French teacher at a high school in Illinois. A few months after we adopted John, Nancy came to visit. I hated her immediately. Not because she was mean or nasty, but simply because of the way John looked at her whenever she was in the room. I felt threatened by her and wanted her to just disappear, but being the charming child that I was, I tried to prove to her that I was just as sophisticated as she. I had taken French nearly all my life and tried to wow her with my fluency. I’m sure she found this more than amusing, but to her credit, Nancy played the part and actually brought us a French Monopoly game on one of her summer visits to our beach house. She insisted that we only speak French while playing. I have wonderful memories of all of us sitting on the floor around the coffee table trying to negotiate grand real estate deals in French. She was growing on me.
One night, late at night, I heard John and my father sitting on the back stairs of our house talking. I snuck out on the landing and hiding in the shadows I listened as my father tried to convince John that marrying Nancy was a good idea. Somewhere in the conversation the words move and leave were also batted about and after putting two and two together, I cried myself to sleep that night. John was getting married. And he was moving away.
John and Nancy were married in the summer of 1978 in Chicago. My father was a groomsman in the wedding. It was my first wedding where I cried during the vows. At some point that day I learned that Nancy and I had the same birthday. While this didn’t make the wedding any easier, I reasoned with myself that John really wanted a girl just like me. It all seems so silly now, but when you’re 14, it all makes quite a lot of sense.
I went off to boarding school the next year and found myself a rather serious boyfriend. Again, as serious as a boyfriend can be when you’re 14. But John heard about it and actually called me at school to get the details. And then he came and visited! He took me and Hunter out to dinner and grilled poor Hunter on everything from his family background to drugs to his views on premarital sex. I couldn’t believe it? I remember thinking then that he was taking this older brother role just a little too far.
It wasn’t long after that visit that John and Nancy moved to England. John was still working for Cargill, and England was where he was needed. During those years, we heard from them both at Christmas time with Nancy writing us long letters updating us on their lives. My family moved back to the Washington, DC area from Delaware, I graduated from high school and went on to Trinity and life just seemed to move forward.
During my junior year at Trinity, I chose to study writing and theatre in London. I was lucky to find a program that allowed me to also find actual playwrights and poets with whom I could apprentice for a year or more. I had been in London for about a month when John came for a visit. He was actually in London on business, but insisted that he had come just to see me. His visit coincided with my “black phase” and I remember spending much of the night defending my clothing and hairstyle choices. I met John in his favorite pub that night where he introduced me to his favorite ale. Afterwards we headed to the Hard Rock Café. A silly choice in retrospect, but at the time, I really was craving an honest to goodness American milkshake and the Hard Rock was the only game in town.
When John dropped me off at my flat later that night, he kissed me. Not on the cheek like he used to do, but on the lips. Twice. I remember thinking then that it was more than just a kiss goodnight. However, I was too inexperienced in all the nuances of love to truly understand what had happened. I stood there in silence as he said his goodbyes, hopped in the cab and disappeared into the dark London fog.
I didn’t see John again until a few years later. By this time, I had graduated from college and had moved to San Francisco. My job as a graphic designer found me working for AT&T, designing their foray into the worlds of Visa and MasterCard. AT&T’s corporate offices are in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. It just so happens that Basking Ridge is also exactly where John and Nancy were now living.
My mother insisted that I call them and tell them where I was. Having grown sick of the Basking Ridge Inn and its horrible food, I figured why not. I’d been in New Jersey for nearly a month and it didn’t feel like the project was going to end any time soon. I called John. Nancy answered. John was working in the city. But I was more than welcome to come and stay with them in the guest room. Since they had recently had a baby, I really didn’t want to intrude, but Nancy insisted. So I checked out of the Basking Ridge Inn and into John and Nancy’s house for a week of family time.
Only John wasn’t around much at all. I think I saw him for a few minutes here and there, but the majority of my time was spent with Nancy and Sarah and the dogs. I have to admit that I wasn’t around much either since I was working, but John would come home even later than I and never made it for dinner.
A few years later I found myself in New York for work. This time as the marketing manager for a software company. I was actually there to shoot a video of one of our customers. Since I was there, I took the opportunity to visit John at his office. He worked at the WTC on a floor somewhere in the 80’s. I surprised him (and somehow managed to get by security) and we went out to lunch and caught up on each other’s lives.
He had just celebrated 25 years at Cargill and was told to pick something from a catalog of gifts. He was deciding between a watch and some golf clubs and I chided him about how very old school that was and how I couldn’t believe a company thought a watch was proper compensation for 25 years of blood, sweat and tears. John marveled at the fact that I would never work anywhere for 25 years and never know the meaning of such gestures. He was now very fit. Running every day, as was I. He commented on my sleek physique and cautioned about dating too many men that I found on the Internet. Always the big brother.
The last time I saw John was when Dave and I were married. Of course John and Nancy and Sarah were there to celebrate and wish us love and congratulations. I think John was shocked that it had truly come to pass. I do know he was happy that I was perhaps finally settling down.
When I saw the WTC collapse that morning my first thought was John. I know there were thousands of others in those buildings, but only one of them had a name I knew. And I had to find out if he was okay. At the time I was a consultant to Sun Microsystems, so I had brought my laptop with me to Maui. I needed it for one meeting that I couldn’t miss and was going to attend from there. I logged on and found my mother, as always, online.
JenDaveClyde: Mom, did you see what happened to the trade centers?
Thehatlady: Yes. It’s just terrible.
JenDaveClyde: Do you know if John was there?
Thehatlady: I have called him. He’s in the hospital.
JenDaveClyde: Oh no! Was he hurt?
Thehatlady: He wasn’t there this morning. He was already in the hospital.
JenDaveClyde: Why? What’s wrong with him?
Thehatlady: Brain tumor.
JenDaveClyde: WHAT? NO!!!
Thehatlady: They operated yesterday.
In that moment, I burst into tears all over again. In 1989 I had brain surgery. When my mother called John to tell him that I had a tumor 1/5 the size of my brain and would be having an operation, she told me that he sobbed uncontrollably. Now it was my turn. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t understand why this would happen to John. I couldn’t understand it one bit. I was thankful that he wasn’t in the towers, thankful that he was in that hospital and angry that he was in that hospital all at the same time.
I learned over the following week that the surgery had been a success. It seemed that John was going to be okay. The cancer had not spread and he eventually was able to return to work and to return to his life.
Last fall, however, John started having a lot of the same coordination difficulties he had experienced before. This time, he knew right away what the trouble was. The cancer had returned. He had another brain tumor.
He was admitted to the hospital in Washington, DC on Sunday for some brain mapping. “Mom” reports that he doesn’t have any use of his entire left side. She says that the doctors think the mapping went very well and they should be able to operate soon. I have trouble believing that my brother John is going through all of this again. The holistic healer in me wants nothing more than to be in Washington right now helping him to get better. If I can’t help my own family to heal, what use is this gift?
I’m hoping that John truly has nine lives. That this will just be number 3. That he will be here to watch Sarah blossom into a woman and to grow old with Nancy. I can hardly remember a time when John wasn’t a part of my life. I have to believe that I won’t have to know that time now.
