You know, they say that life is but a bowl of cherries. Yeah, but with that bowl of cherries, you know what else comes with it? The pits. And that's what we're going to talk about today, is the pits.
This is The Daily Grateful. I'm Michael Kroos. In 1978, I think, I was at Hope Presbyterian Church in Clearwater, Florida. Bob Walkup was the pastor.
Incredibly cool guy. Kind of longish hair, you know. Just really good guy, played guitar. Everybody loved him.
All of his sermons were just upbeat and full of positivity. And it was just really fun to go to church, to go to Hope Presbyterian Church. As a matter of fact, I sang in the choir there. And as a matter of fact, my son Tyler sings in the choir now.
But anyway, one Sunday he came out, and he didn't seem his joyous self. He did not seem to be up and feeling, you know, positive. And he said, today we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about the pits. And I'm looking, he goes, we're going to talk about all the bad stuff that comes into our lives once in a while.
And we're going to talk about people who are ill and dying. We're going to talk about war. We're going to talk about all kinds of things that are wrong, that are going bad in our lives. And, you know, we try to stay positive.
But sometimes, darn it, you just got to acknowledge that there is this thing called the pits. And I am looking at him. And I'm listening to him. He said, sometimes you can't take a breath.
Sometimes you cannot grab onto your own shoulders and tell yourself it's going to be okay. Because you know darn good and well that it's not going to be okay. Or this thing is not going to be okay. Whatever this thing is.
And we all have this thing once in a while. I'm kind of going through that right now. I really am. I got to tell you.
My sister died in 1999 of cancer. It was a long battle. It was a three-year intense battle. And on the day that she died, about three hours before she died, I'm in her bedroom.
And she's not talking. And you could tell that she was very uncomfortable. And my big, brawly brother, my older brother, who is always the strongest of the two of us, always the Mr. Macho guy of the two of us, he walks in there.
And he sits down next to my sister, Judy. And he reaches over and he finds some Vaseline-intensive care lotion. And he puts it on his finger and he's rubbing it on her lips. And he looks at me and he goes, this is going to make her more comfortable.
I wish I could tell you the feeling that I had when he did that. Because right there, we were towards the very end of this horrible, horrible damn journey that we were all going through, that my sister was transitioning into. And it sucked. It was really sucked.
But then I looked at my brother, who out of all of the pits, my brother, who never did stuff like this, dug down. And he did something very simple to make my sister more comfortable for the last couple hours of her life. And when he was done, he rubbed her face. I had never experienced anything like that with him.
Ever. Never saw him show emotion like that. Ever. Well, I guess I should talk about my brother now and what's going on with him.
My brother has been in the VA hospital for about two and a half months. Maybe longer. I'm not sure. Time just kind of screeches by.
He has had an infection called C. diff. Now, the other thing I need to tell you about my brother is he's a Vietnam veteran. And when he was in Vietnam, he was on the riverboats.
And some of you know what I'm talking about. And his job was to go up and down these rivers in Vietnam. And they were spraying the foliage on the side with a chemical called 245T, lovingly known now as Agent Orange. It was always 100 degrees there when he was there working.
And him and his crew wore shorts. No shirts. Shorts. And tennis shoes.
And they were spraying the stuff. It got all over him. For 13 months, this got all over him. Went into his body.
Now, take on top of that that he was a very heavy smoker. As a matter of fact, I'm the only person in my family who's never smoked. But he was a very heavy smoker. Because, I mean, there was a lot of stress.
You're in Vietnam. You're in a boat. People are shooting at you. You're watching your friends die.
It's just all kinds of shit. I'm telling you. So, yeah, he smoked. Big deal.
But he did that. He was addicted to that. And here, about, I don't know, eight years ago, he came up with throat cancer. He's been healthy.
I'm telling you. He was living his best life. He's got three sons. He's out buying motorcycles.
He's retired. He's, you know, retired Navy. He's buying motorcycles. And him and his wife are, you know, buying this beautiful home that they lived in.
And she's remodeling it. And he's helping. And it's, you know, he's living his life. And then all of a sudden, throat cancer comes to him.
And he went down to the VA, into the hospital. And he went through all the chemotherapy, all the radiation. He said the radiation was the worst thing he'd ever been through in his whole life. He got through all of that.
But as an end result of all of this, this was like, I don't know, seven years ago. They said he's never going to be able to eat or drink again. So we're going to tube feed him. So there was my very strong brother hooked up to where he had to be tube fed every day.
And his wonderful wife, Juanita, would do that. And they, you know, they just got through that. Seven years on the tube, he got in. And then all of a sudden, things started falling apart.
Low blood pressure, trouble breathing, falling down. A lot of problems. I'm not going to go into him, but a lot of problems. And he wound up in the VA hospital.
I'm going to try not to be emotional about this. But there he was in this hospital. And still is, or still was, until yesterday. Yesterday, they got the C.
diff infection out of him. It had been in him on and off for like weeks and weeks and weeks. And they say, if we can get this out of him, if we can have him through his six or seven days free of the C. diff infection, we're going to move him to a rehab center with the hope, with the absolute hope of being, you know, getting him ready to come back home again.
But the hope wasn't very high. They weren't, they didn't have big expectations from what I gathered. You know, I would go down to see him and he's just laying in the bed and there's nothing he can do. There's not a damn thing he can do.
He's just doing whatever comes to him, whatever they tell him. So yesterday, they moved him to a rehab center, nursing home, rehab center. The plan is, he's got 30 days. And if he doesn't respond to the, you know, if he doesn't respond to the rehab in 30 days, then they're moving him to the other part of the place, which is a long care, you know, long-term care center where he will live out his life.
And I just can't tell you how much that sucks. I cannot tell you. I just had a breakdown today talking to his son. I'm in a parking lot.
I've got my son. I took him to a doctor's appointment. I'm sitting in the parking lot talking to my nephew. And I just literally, he's telling me all of this.
And I'm telling him, I said, you know, I'm not happy with anything I'm hearing. He said, what are you not happy with? And I said, everything. You know, he hates the nursing home.
He absolutely hates this place. He was on the phone begging his son to come pick him up, bring a change of clothes and let him go home. He can't go home. He can't go home.
So now I find myself and our whole family once again finds ourselves in the pits. I'm remembering Bob Walker's sermon about this. And some of the things he said is that you have to focus on what you can control. You can't control the illness.
You can control the actions and the reactions. That's something that we're all trying to do. That's something that my nephew, Tim, who is the son who is in charge of all of this, of the three sons my brother has. Tim is the one who is, and I'm so damn proud of him.
Okay. Embrace the support system that you have. Yeah. My brother is embracing the support system.
But what about the rest of us? Seek professional help. Bob said, seek. Bob Walker said, seek professional help and find meaning and purpose.
Even in the dark times. He was so right. Hope is not a guarantee. That's what he said.
He said, hope is not a guarantee, but it's always present. And the pits will eventually just disappear, and soon we'll have this bowl of cherries back. I'm waiting. But right now, it's the pits.
But I'm grateful for my nephew, Tim, who is just doing a marvelous job. I'm grateful for Juanita, my sister-in-law. I'm so grateful for my brother. So grateful for my brother.
So grateful for this wonderful life that he has lived, and he has more life to live, and I'm not ready to give up. I sure as shit hope he's not ready to give up. I do. Pardon my language.
I'm just winging it today. Tomorrow is yet another day, and things will be better. I hope. But if they're not, we're going to find meaning and purpose.
We're going to embrace our support systems. We're going to focus on what we can control. And everything's going to be okay. It might not be perfect, but it'll be better.
We'll see you tomorrow.