Chapter Three

Low C

Not many marriages start out with friendship first—no kissing, no passionate exchanges of saliva, no awkward moments fiddling with the keys at the front door—then turn that friendship into love; a deep love built on a foundation of mutual concern and admiration rather than solely on chemistry—but ours did. The first time I met Mary she took my breath away, I was so busy trying to impress her I don’t even think we’d really met. If we did I’m sure she didn’t even notice who I was. I was young—just twenty-two and had a scruffy half-grown beard. I drove a black 1979 Pontiac Trans Am with the words Death Dealer written down each side. I was working as an undercover informant for the local police department and busted druggies in the evenings, ran my body shop by day, and squeezed in an occasional class at the local university with the dream of being an attorney.
Mary, on the other hand, was an angel. I knew from that first moment I watched her interact with others, that if there was a heaven and if I had a chance of getting there, Mary would be the one who could help me be a better person. What is Newton’s third law of motion? Opposites attract. She attracted me, but I repelled her. I didn’t have a chance. She was a beautiful slim brunette, with thick shoulder length hair that fell in soft curls as it brushed her slender face. I had been the nerd—you know—the kid in high school that wore the black boots with metal rings and straps. She had been a cheerleader and went to every high school dance with a different guy. I had rarely dated through my high school years and she rarely had a night without a date.
It was the fall of 1980. Hairstyles were full—the Farah Faucet look—and shoulder pads made the fashionable dress look like quarterback’s football jersey. I was still wearing the same kind of 501 shrink-to-fit style jeans I had worn nearly all my life, and yes, I still wore work boots. We both lived in the same apartment complex; me in unit twenty-seven and Mary just two doors down in twenty-nine. We met the first time at a young adult group that gathered on a weekly basis in the apartment complex where we lived. Being a little anti-social by nature, I was reluctant to go at first, but that first meeting sunk the hook, line and sinker deep into the corner of my heart. It was a chance to nonchalantly get to know a beautiful shining light that would change my life forever, and that’s what kept me going back for more.

July 8, 2010
The radiologists called today. The lump is cancerous with a capitol C. Mary tried to text me, but I was in class and I didn’t look at the text. I drove home and walked into the kitchen after class and said good morning to Kayshia, she was sullen. I ramped it up a little and asked her why she was so sad. She said, “didn’t you get mom’s text?” I knew immediately that she had gotten the results. Kinley was in Mary’s sewing room with her mom. Both were in tears and Mary was trying to console her youngest daughter. There was my beautiful bride, telling her daughter it would be alright, when she herself was scared of what the future would hold. It’s not right. I’ve never felt like I might outlive Mary until today. It’s a scary thought that I might lose her, long before her time should come. I’ve looked at the survival rates for breast cancer and they are pretty good. A lot depends on the type and staging of the cancer. We won’t have the rest of the pathology reports for a few more days. They will give us a better idea of where we stand. We have seen the tears flow from all the children today and I have shed a few too. I have been taking a class at BYU, Strengthening Marriage and Family, and have been thinking about how I can do a better job in my relationship with Mary. I wrote a poem for Mary several days ago, and had put it in her work bag so she could find it at work. I wanted her to know that I love her today, so I went into the bathroom and dug it out. There she was in a towel, fresh out of the shower, with both of us crying as she read my poem. I don’t know what I’d do without my Mary.

It was Christmas time 1980 before I really had a chance to talk to Mary in any depth. The young adult group had scheduled a Christmas caroling activity and somehow I had managed to maneuver my way by her side as we walked from door to door singing in the bitter cold December night air. I grew up in a musical family but caroling wasn’t what I had come for. However, it was that night that I knew my first instincts about her were accurate, especially as her kindness and warmth seemingly melted the frigid night air. By that night I’d also shaved my scruffy beard, cut my hair, and sold my radical car, all with the intent of getting a little closer to the girl who walked by my side. I knew she dated lots of guys because I’d seen her come and go on a many different occasions.
It took several more days before I could muster up the courage to ask her out. Rejection would be devastating after the months of preparation. I finally decided that asking in person, face to face, lessoned my chances of refusal so I casually walked the lengthy distance to her apartment door and knocked. It was her roommate that answered, a buxom semi-cheery girl that sat jealously at home, night after night, as Mary lived the college social life she could only dream of. She invited me in and closed the door. We chatted uncomfortably about the upcoming young adult activity while we waited for Mary to finish in the other room. Finally, what seemed like forever concluded as Mary rounded the corner with her usual angelic expression beaming from her face. My heart sank as the expression changed to surprise. She attempted a cordial greeting, but instead the doorbell rang and shudder of despair and embarrassment painfully trickled down my back. “She was expecting someone else,” I realized, as the roommate blasted an almost vengeful glance between Mary and me before she opened the door.

July 9, 2010
We had an appointment with Dr. Rich today. He is the oncologist for UVRMC. Our appointment was scheduled for 3:15. Nurse Nancy finally met with us at about 4:30 and conducted the basic interview. Before she left the room she asked Mary to strip to the waist, and of course, I did the humming striptease ensemble that I usually tease her with when I get to watch her undress, all in the hope of breaking the thick tension we both felt sitting in a place neither one of us ever thought we’d be. As I watched her today I realized she’s more beautiful to me today than she was that first day she took my breath away. She is however still black and blue from the biopsy.
Mary had lots of questions, and because she is a fellow nurse, Nurse Nancy gave her more information than would typically be given to most patients. It was at least another hour before Dr. Rich was able to see us. We were his last patient of the day and somehow they had worked us in. The preferential treatment was suspicious.
When he finally entered the room I was a bit surprised with his young age—probably in his mid thirties with premature graying hair. He towered over Mary as he offered his welcoming paw to shake her hand. He greeted me second. He immediately began to connect with Mary in a jolly sort of way as he talked about his wife’s semi recent childbirth experience at a rival hospital. Mary of course is a Nurse on the mother baby unit, just upstairs from Dr. Rich’s office. I recognized his joviality as a bonding method and grew a little impatient wanting to get on with the business, but it wasn’t about me. It was about Mary. The stories of birth, labor, and ill contempt of the quality of care at the “other hospital” went on at least fifteen minutes before we got to the reason we were there.
It quickly became apparent that Nurse Nancy had been holding back as Dr. Rich laid out the situation. Mary’s cancer is a Grade Three Ductile Carcinoma which has migrated outside the mammary duct. Grade three signifies the deviation the cells have transformed from the original cell structure. It is also the most aggressive kind of cancer. Because it is located so closely to the lymph nodes it has the propensity to travel quickly to other places in the body. He quickly passed over the fact that if the cancer had spread to very many other places in her body there would be little he could do. If it was confined to the breast, the outlook for recovery would be very good. He pulled up a computer program that ran algorithms based on data from thousands of other breast cancer cases.
Dr. Rich reviewed the outlook for a ten-year survival rate under the best case scenario, up to ninety percent. He ran a not so good scenario, less than fifty percent survival for a ten-year outlook. As we neared the end of our conversation the query was poised “do you any more questions?
Mary breathed a heavy sigh and said. “Can we just make it all go away? I don’t want to do this.”
With a bit of reassurance in his voice he said, “It is what it is, and now we just need to deal with it.
It took hours to sink in. We went to dinner, and yogurt after. I found myself sighing as my body felt shy of air. I heard Mary sigh on several occasions as our brains silently processed the data so abruptly thrust upon us. Neither needed to explain how we felt, it was quite clear. Nothing will ever be the same.

Chapter Two

High C

Call me a little old fashioned, but Mary has been my only sexual partner; and I have been the only one for her. There’s a great deal of safety in the practice. I’m kind of a germ freak. I can eat a sandwich with mud and grease on my hands, but I can’t eat or drink from someone else’s used food. It’s the thought of getting sick with someone’s hibijibi’s that gets me the most. The only disadvantage of being paired for life—and beyond—is the fact that young Christian newlyweds might take a little longer to figure out the nuances of a sexual relationship than someone trained by a pro. Wow, that thought makes me shudder.
It is perhaps our old fashioned nature that has kept our intimate relationship completely invisible from our children. Obviously they know we’ve had sex. Some of them have children of their own. We’ve covered the birds and the bees talk, but we’ve never been open about the deeper love we share. We are rarely physical in their presence, and when we are, they give us the, yuck, that’s gross, attitude. They know we love each other by the way we treat one another, but they need to know our love is way beyond mutual love and respect. We’re still intimate.
Well kids, my family and marriage professor says it’s healthy for you to know your parents still love each other—and that we still actively participate in the intimate tender nature of our marriage—and you know those times you tried to come into our bedroom and the door was locked. Yep, even though we said come in, we knew you couldn’t because the door was locked. Oh boy! Mary’s going to kill me for that. There was the one time Daniel pulled the key off the door frame and opened the locked door. Yessiree, there was some scrambling going on in our room.
It probably took the first fifteen years of our marriage to finally get really good at the intimacy part of our marriage. The first five years were a mess because of the pregnancy, nursing baby Jake; pregnancy, nursing baby Daniel; pregnancy nursing babies Chrissy and Austin. Four children, four years and younger is proof we understood the multiply and replenish the earth part. The next five years were so crazy with kids, dirty diapers, dirty house, dirty cloths, that when the end of the day came Mary had little energy left for me. And the next few years are a story for another time. The fact is; if Mary was willing, it wasn’t hard to take care of my needs. The problem was the hit and miss ability to fulfill her needs. I suppose it would have been nice if someone we loved and trusted could have given us some good advice. These days there are decent books you can read, without feeling dirty, that can explain those intimate details that we didn’t understand. To make a long story shorter, and not to embarrass Mary any more than I already have, we’ve learned to make up for those lost years. The intimate part of our relationship has grown from infancy to maturity and has become an important part of our love. I’ve become proficient at helping Mary hit high C, and the last several years have been wonderfully fulfilling, tender, and scheduled on a weekly basis.

June 13, 2010
It was our date night last night; the night we lock the bedroom door. We talked about the lump again. Because of its irregular shape it does cause me some concern. Mary said she would schedule a mammogram and a colonoscopy this week and she’s still not too excited about it.

It was Mary’s idea to put us on a weekly schedule. I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of it years earlier. It was my first prostate infection at about forty-three that slowed my sex drive. I was on and off sulfa drugs so long that everything changed. While I was slowing down Mary was speeding up. It wasn’t like we needed Viagra or anything; it was just the nature of prolonged drug and prostate interaction that slowed down my libido. It was hard on Mary because she felt like she was always the instigator of our intimacy. She felt like I didn’t care anymore. We’ve both put on an extra pound or two, added a few wrinkles; we’re not the same young twenty something year-olds we were on our honeymoon night, so naturally there was a little distance in the intimacy that was resolved with a simple little tune up by Mary. Date night is now my favorite night of the week.

June 30, 2010
Mary finally went into see our family practitioner today. Barbara immediately scheduled a mammogram for her and said they might do a biopsy if they felt it was necessary.

July 6, 2010
Mary was sore. They did a needle biopsy in several places. The mammogram was of no use because the lump was so far toward her arm pit. The ultrasound was the most useful and the radiologist was not too concerned. He had contemplated just keeping a close eye on it over the next six months but changed his mind. We will not get the results for about eight or nine work days. Next week sometime.

Through our nearly thirty years together I had always pictured me as the weak genetic link in our marriage. I have the BRCA2 gene; the one known to cause breast cancer in women and an increased occurrence of prostate cancer in men. I’ve already had my share of prostate trouble, so naturally between that, and the long road of hard miles I’ve put on my old body, I didn’t figure Mary would be the one to get sick. I’ve never been much of a romantic—Mary would be the first to agree—but the other day I wrote her a poem.

Of all the faces, and all the places, this world has let me see,
there’s only one place, and especially one face, that I would rather see.

From the laugh, the smile, the touch and style, to the finest strand of hair,
it would be your grace, your beautiful face, that makes me want to stare.

If I could choose, from every women, and do it all again,
I’d stick with the girl, who made my toes curl, and became my very best friend.

Through work and play, a roll in the hay, when we lock the bedroom door,
life became much more, couldn’t ask for more, than to be with my girl Mary.

Chapter One

Out of Tune

If I could described Mary with the notes of a piano keyboard it would sound something like Mozart, Bach, Handel, and Beethoven; classy, well rounded, compassionate, sociable, beautiful, educated and outgoing—and for me it would be d-flat, e-flat, d-flat, e-flat . . . with an occasional out of tune Strauss piece filling the in-between places with my stories. Mary and I have learned to adapt somehow. I’m the fixer. I’ll adjust the piano bench, watch and fix the sticky keys, tune and replace the occasional broken string, and mostly listen while beautiful music is being rendered. Mary would say I was a workaholic; stuck in high gear—until I hurt my back and retired—and now it’s the college studies majoring in English, with my thirty-year-old dream of a law degree that steals my time. Mary is the tuner. Somehow she understands how to juggle work, piano lessons for Kayshia, family, friends, grandbabies, love, school, horse riding lessons for Kinley, housework, gardening, quilting, scrapbooks, children, grocery shopping, dog walking, birthday cakes, forgiveness, compassion, and most of all me—all meticulously organized in a random sort of order to focus on the family she loves. I’m not sure if her traits are instinct or self instructed and I marvel how she does it all so well.
She was working on her last research paper to complete her bachelor’s degree. That’s what put us both in the office together that day. She can research cell cloning and check out the want ads all at the same time. Me, I prefer to study in silence, no phones, children, dogs, or doorbells and no questions.
“Here, look at this one,” Mary said for the fifth time, “It’s nice.”
“I’m trying to study,” I finally blurted out.
“Sorry, just look at this last one.”
I stood up and peered over her shoulder. It was nice for its age. “Let’s see if we will use the one we have first, and then let’s start looking at a nicer model.”
“We’ll use it, I promise,” she insisted before she finally let me study in peace.
It was her fixation on the motor home that really had me curious. We are still too young to be gallivanting around the country in a motor home, but she was determined. She’d take the girls and go without me, if she had to, and she was confident that she could—even if it meant she’d have to reach way outside her comfort zone to drive the monster. I believed her. She’d gone without many times before.

“Don’t sell it,” she told Leann as we stepped from the thirty-two-foot Seabreeze and headed for the car, “we’ll be back tomorrow.”
I was shaking my head to the contrary. The last thing we needed is a second one, and besides we hadn’t even finished fixing the first one and taken it on a trip yet. I guess it was my own fault. No one forced me into the car, to “just take a look.” My presence was the affirmation of the hint of agreement. While my head was saying ‘no,’ my actions were saying ‘maybe.’
Mary had been scouring the classifieds for weeks checking out features, prices, and sizes. She wanted as many seat belts as possible, lots of beds, and something newer than the 91 Ford we’d taken as partial payment for an old debt.
“I’m telling you, it’s a great price and we won’t find anything that has been so well cared for,” Mary insisted as we climbed in the car and pulled from the curb. The Seabreeze belonged to a woman I knew from my business days and it had been parked, for sale just a few blocks from our neighborhood. Mary continued, “It will be gone by tomorrow.”
Our fourteen and thirteen-year-old daughters, Kayshia and Kinley, were in the back seat. It was Kinley that kept repeating, “So, are we going to get it?”
“We already have one, the last thing we need is another,” I replied.
It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it. We were bringing home more money retired than I did when I was working. I’m the miser of all misers and had worked hard, saved, invested, and had paid off every debt we owed; including all of our commercial property. I actually felt guilty with our new income. But it wasn’t until we were lying in bed that night when I finally agreed.
“So call her tomorrow and offer thirteen,” I said as I turned off the television.
Mary reached over and rubbed my chest. “I’ll bet she won’t take a dime less than fourteen.”
She was probably right but it never hurts to ask. I could tell how much this meant to her, and I felt less guilty spending money on things we could all enjoy than so many other things that are out there.
I suppose it was the d-flat that I first noticed slightly out of whack that inspired me to take the family and marriage class during my 2010 summer semester. Maybe that was part of the reason I agreed to buy the motor home too. But I just didn’t know how I could spend any time going places. School isn’t easy for me. In English I can get a perfect score on a paper and in physical science I’m lucky if I score seventy-percent. If I’m not in class, I spend almost every waking hour on my studies. I needed a near 4.0 average for the rest of my schooling if I had any hope of getting into the BYU law program. “Mary will just have to learn how to drive the thing,” I justified.

Ken’s Journal Entry June 6, 2010
Mary asked me to feel the lump in her breast last night; it has an irregular shape, a small mass on the right side, near her armpit. It is not particularly odd for her to have lumps. She’s had them before and they’re usually in conjunction with her menstrual cycle. But this one doesn’t feel the same. We both agreed she should get an appointment to have it checked. She decided because she turned fifty last year she’d schedule a colonoscopy too. We laughed a little. I’ve already had mine, and I woke up in the middle of the procedure. Nothing quite like a tube up the . . . .

Mary has always been a good sport when it comes to doing things with the kids that I really don’t enjoy doing; going to movies, shopping, crowds, and so . . . she just does them without me. She enjoys those things, so it isn’t a sacrifice for her. She’s made a few trips Disney Land with the kids while I’ve stayed home. Besides, I get motion sick and can’t enjoy the rides anyway. Why pay for a pass and plane ticket if I can’t enjoy it? Me . . . me . . . me.
The family and marriage class has made me think. Of course I’m just way too macho to admit it. And if I get a new idea from the class, I can’t really apply it because it wasn’t my idea . . . right? The instructor, Dr. Hill is only four or five years my senior and I am no doubt the only student grandpa in the class. I’ve had almost as much personal experience raising children as he’s had, and he’s been married just a bout the same amount of years as I have been married. On occasion he even asks me to share my opinion with the class.
Let’s see, that’s probably the way Mary would sum it all up if she were asked, but she’s too kind to just blurt it all out. She’s usually more subtle and then I don’t seem to hear a thing. So, I guess I’m not quite as dumb as I look. So, how do I fix it? How does any guy like me fix it? There I go again e-flat, d-flat, e-flat. . . .

Mary Merrell was diagnosed with breast cancer July, 8, 2010

Dear Loved Ones,

Many of you are already aware that my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last week.  For those of you who are not aware we are sorry that we cannot call everyone.  We have put together a blog to keep you up to date on how she is doing.   This will help us avoid repeating things so many times. 

My dad is a story teller so he thought it would be a good idea to tell the story so you didn’t always just hear the hard things.  He called it The Tunes of Love.  It not only tells the cancer stuff in his daily journal entries, but it tells the story about how much we love Mary.

Please feel free to share the link with others that want to know what is going on or who might just want to hear a great love story.

Kayshia Dawn.

After 30 years!

Ken and Mary meet December in the year 1980.

They were married August in the year 1981.

And now after 30 years have grown stronger as a family and couple.

Welcome!

So, I have really enjoyed reading everyone's blogs. I love to get little glimpses into the lives of friends and loved ones, little stories and pictures that make me smile. But I never could imagine myself as anything other than a bystander. That is until Chrissy surprised me by creating this blog! She insists that I should get with the program. . .so here is my first attempt at inviting you into our little corner of the world. Stay tuned for pictures, I haven't figured that part out yet.