Archive for the ‘Life Matters’ Category
« Older Entries |Drusilla Campbell, 1940-2014
Written by Art Campbell on October 27th, 2014
Drusilla’s Death
(Written by Art on 27 October 2014)
At 3 a.m. on 24 October 2014 Dru peacefully stopped breathing. According to her wishes, she expired at Crickety (her home), without pain, dying in my arms, with her son Rocky beside her. My last words to her were, “I love you, but you must feel free to let go of your riddled body. Wherever you go, I’ll find you.” Also as she wished, I bathed and dressed her body before consigning it for cremation. When her body was carried from Crickety she had one arm curled around her first doll and the other embraced a childhood toy koala. God be with you, my Timeless Bride and Queen of Joy.
Filed under Cancer, Family & Friends, Life Matters | Tags: Drusilla Campbell, Obituary, October 24
Bad News
Written by Drusilla on October 15th, 2014
(Dictated By Dru to Art on Oct. 11)
What do you do when the news is bad? You’re having a day that began in a fairly normal way: Juice, pills, cottage cheese. Then you get into a car and are driven to see your oncologist. Somehow you felt the bad news was coming. It was the prickle of hairs on the back of your neck, a tightness of breathing that you can’t explain. The news is only slightly less difficult to hear when it’s from your favorite doctor.
Filed under Cancer, Life Matters, Uncategorized | Tags: Bad News, cancer, Drusilla Campbell, Hospice, Terminal
Kinship
Written by Drusilla on October 12th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art Oct. 2, 2014)
The other day Art handed me a story about a homeless man called Wilbur who had died of cancer, sitting in a thrown-away chair. He got no memorial, no headstone, just a pauper’s grave. He hadn’t died like that because of being a drunk or a crook or mean-spirited; he’d been a sober, honest, friendly guy. His closest friend said, “He died that way because he’d never married or had children– and kin was how a man like Wilbur made it through the final years of his life.”
The image of Wilbur dying alone with no one at his side is one that will stay with me for a long time.
Filed under Cancer, Family & Friends, Life Matters | Tags: Drusilla Campbell, Friends, Kinship
Reading, Writing, Observing
Written by Drusilla on September 29th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
When I was five my mother, three-year-old brother, and I sailed from New York to Melbourne on the Merchant Marine Freighter, S.S. Rattler. This was the first U.S. ship to go through the Panama Canal and across the South Pacific after the Second World War. My Australian grandfather, who was at the time an executive working for British United Shoe Machinery, had secured passage for the three of us while my dad finished out his Navy stint in Australia. We’d be gone six months.
The Rattler sailed out of New York Harbor on a foggy night. The Statue of Liberty loomed off to one side but became partially obscured by another ship, plowing toward the sea. Passengers were lined up on its deck, waving. We watched as it maneuvered behind us, its outlines growing dimmer in the swirling fog.
Filed under Books, Family & Friends, Life Matters, Writing | Tags: cancer, Drusilla Campbell, Observing, reading, S.S. Rattler, The Green Lantern, writing
Time
Written by Drusilla on September 15th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
I remember a song from the Eighth Grade Music Book: “Over the river and through the woods/ To grandmother’s house we go/ The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh….”
Yesterday– Sunday– wasn’t quite like that. No snow or horse or sleigh, and what passed for woods were acres of desiccated chaparral north of San Diego. We were in the midst of a hellish heat wave, over a week of century-plus record temperatures, and no relief in sight. In town the Chargers were beginning to lay waste to the Seahawks and the temp on the field was around one-hundred-eighteen degrees.
Filed under Family & Friends, Life Matters | Tags: cancer, Chargers, Drusilla Campbell, San Diego
My Second Fear
Written by Drusilla on September 7th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
Everyone suffers cancer differently. I have no idea if my experience is typical, but it doesn’t really matter. I promised in this blog to tell the truth, and today my truth is about two fears that torment me.
Filed under Life Matters | Tags: cancer, Fear
The Most Important People
Written by Drusilla on August 30th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
The most important people in a hospital get the least attention. The custodial staff mops up our vomit, our shit, and our piss and learns to hold their gag reflex at the worst smells imaginable. This is a cancer blog; now’s the time to be honest. I don’t know how much they’re paid— probably a lot less than they’re worth. Honestly, would you give up the services of the woman who cleans the toilets for the opportunity to do it yourself?
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Filed under Life Matters | Tags: cancer, custodial staff, Hospital, Nurses, People
The Chemo Lab
Written by Drusilla on August 22nd, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
In one way the chemo clinic at Scripps Green Cancer Center is like Ruth’s Chris steakhouse downtown on San Diego’s marina: There’s not a bad table in the house. Everyone’s gets a view of either the Torrey Pines Golf Course, groves of Torrey Pines, or the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes one glimpses a hang-glider, like a red or yellow petal cast in the breeze. Of course, there are some differences: recliners and gurney-style beds, not tables; no steaks with slathered mash potatoes; the help wears cute scrubs, not crisp tuxedo shirts. But each nurse and aide at Green would beat out the wait-staff at Chris for my tips any day.
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Filed under Life Matters | Tags: cancer, chemo, hope, Scripps Green
Pirates’ Luck
Written by Drusilla on August 20th, 2014
(Dictated by Dru to Art)
Last Sunday Art could feel I was suffering from cabin fever and suggested we go for a drive. But what the San Diego Bureau of Tourism doesn’t want me to tell you is, “If you live in this town for forty years you will run out of interesting places to drive to.” If we go south we’ll be in Mexico where I don’t feel comfortable because I’m not fluent in Spanish. If we go east we see mountains, then miles of boring desert. If we go north we have to get beyond Los Angeles, which means traffic, traffic, traffic. And if we go west, it’s wet. In a way, living in San Diego is like living on an island: It takes some effort to get away from it.
Filed under Family & Friends, Life Matters | Tags: cancer, Games, San Diego