"71" // Episode Four

You're listening to I Have No Process. I am your host, Nicholas England. This is the fourth episode of 71.

Shortly after receiving the biopsy,

Mom had an appointment with oncology to discuss prognosis and treatment. Max and I called in from the west coast to take notes and ask questions. Whatever the doctors had to say would no doubt be a shock to Mom's system. She wanted us to keep track of the details, as they elucidated the character of her impending death. It was clear that neither surgery nor radiation would work. The cancer was too widespread. The tumors too large. Janet's condition was non-curative.

There was no question of saving her life. All that could be done was to alleviate her symptoms. To do this, the oncologists wanted to begin chemotherapy immediately. They insisted this was not to prolong her life or to make a Hail Mary at a full recovery. This was purely for her quality of life. Something Mom made clear was her top priority. There is some logic to this.

If chemotherapy is effective and its side effects tolerable, it can improve a person's well-being, mood, mobility, any number of things. It's unpredictable though, often harrowingly so. How well chemotherapy works is variable to each successive infusion. It's a daunting and continuous gamble. I had no issue discussing chemotherapy as an option. My issue was the monopoly that chemotherapy was given in that initial meeting.

Across those 90 minutes, in the time we addressed treatment directly, 45 minutes were spent going over Chemo Plan A, 5 minutes were spent going over Chemo Plan B, and 10 seconds were spent acknowledging the existence of palliative care. Chemotherapy wasn't just an option. In the narrative presented by the oncologists, it was the only option.

They even went so far as to hedge against their own non-curative decision, hinting that one could never say never when it comes to a miracle recovery, even in a case as severe as Janet's, where chemo could probably reduce her masses by 30% at best. Since chemotherapy was the only chance she'd have of surviving, it had to take precedence. It was almost as though her death could be her fault if she didn't undertake chemotherapy.

And it was almost as though the doctors were covering their asses from liability in case we, the family, wanted them to do whatever it took to keep her alive. This was not said in so many words, of course. But these delicate things live in the margins of such conventions. After the meeting, Mom needed some time to think. We all did. Each of us in the family began to contemplate what we would do in her position. I first asked Dad what his thoughts were.

"Well," he explained, "I guess I'd throw a big party with all of my friends "and then give chemo my best shot. "As soon as the chemo stopped working, I'd go out to the desert and kill myself." Sounded like what I would do. Kind of sounded like what Max would do. Mom might feel the same way about the party and about waiting on chemo till after. But we understood the fundamental difference between the England men and her. When our time came, we'd have the nerve and grit to suicide.

When Mom's time came, she'd need someone else to kill her. Understanding how ideas spread like infections, Dad issued me a stern warning. "Don't propose any of this to your mother." Whatever she was going to decide, it had to be her choice without any undue influence from us. I agreed. But as we all talked, communally and individually, the notion kept coming up. In the end, it was as if a living funeral had been Mom's idea all along. "Get low!" she shouted, once it was official.

(A reference to the Robert Duvall film about the hermit who throws his own going-away party.) Mom was thrilled. She informed her doctors that she had to fly to San Diego to bid her friends farewell. Only then could she come home and do the chemo like a good little girl. Janet had been carefully considering her mortality for decades. For a long time, her greatest fear was succumbing to a heart attack. That's how her mother died in her early 70s. The suddenness of it traumatized us all.

Mom didn't want the same thing to happen to her. She had countless workups done on her heart over the years. She wanted to divine what genetic weakness was lurking there. But nothing distressing ever showed itself. In time, she realized what a gift a heart attack would be compared to a wasting disease or dementia. Janet couldn't stand to be in pain. She didn't like to suffer. She had a will and trust set up years ago, along with her advanced medical directive. No breathing tubes.

No feeding tubes. A DNR. I was her primary medical agent, so we discussed her wishes often and at length. Any time she left on vacation... "You know where my little red folder is in my closet in case I die!" Of all the places she could have moved when she left San Diego, Vermont made the cut for their Death with Dignity laws, if nothing else. Those were a red line for Mom. She wouldn't live anywhere without them.

She despised that dying people are treated less humanely than any other creature on Earth. If a bird gets sick, if a dog breaks its back, society allows for them to be put down, to let their suffering end without unnecessary torment. Society comprehends and accepts the circle of life then. But a human being? The state will drag you across the wasteland of your degenerating body until it can extract your last maximal breath, as though that was what God had always intended for you.

Mom always said she didn't want to see the apocalypse, fighting her neighbors for a loaf of bread or a jug of water. "Just smother me with a pillow when that happens," she'd say. She was serious. She made me promise that I would. And I did. I promised that if the apocalypse came, or some equally sordid turn of events, I would smother her. I was just glad that, with Vermont's moral and broad-minded laws, I wouldn't have to.

Game 23.

Padres 5. Diamondbacks 3. April 22nd, 2023. Mom hunches in a heavy curve, sparing herself the scourge, degenerated discs and airplane seats. My hand dances in caresses around her spine, as Andrew Bird coos through my headphones. "Come what may, leave your eggs where it's warm." We are returning to San Diego for a calendar of feasts and funerals. Eulogies that may touch her ears, loved ones who can hold the space. A grail of catharsis amidst a darkening age. An effort greater than dying.

The journey could not wait, her ached contortions waxing by the day, the whole of her life burning. She turns to me, somewhere over Nebraska, certain in her dread. "It had to be this week," she rasps. The cold thrill of one last move before checkmate. Game 24. Padres 7. Diamondbacks 5. April 23rd, 2023. Janet embraces Fred beneath his big sun hat, rose-drenched cheeks, the compass shine of the sky, reflecting in his canvas sweat, her squinting eyes.

She will never see this face again, warm flood of recognition in its smile. An irruption, Fred's granddaughter squeals and tugs at his knees, pleading that he stop this, that he play with her, on the trampoline, instead. Janet's mind implodes. She cannot walk, cannot think. Her body buckles as her friends carry her across the driveway, away from Fred's bed of golden poppies, the crow mother washing herself above the studio, the haze of rain-green hills in the distance, the world that breathes.

Game 25. Padres 0. Cubs 6. April 25th, 2023. Soto takes a strike, then presumes to walk to first. Soto takes a strike again, then presumes to walk to first again. Soto swings at a high-fast ball, then Tatis gets caught stealing second. It is hardly worth mentioning. Machado pops out. The comfort of my wife's warm softness naps in the bedroom down the hall. My ritual of stupidity. Game 26. Padres 0. Cubs 3.

April 26th, 2023. When word of Janet's condition circulated the country, somebody made the following remark as a way of summarizing how their household got the news. "I've told them what's cooking." Rather than have you read that again, I will print it again. "I've told them what's cooking." I repeated this to myself for days, as I washed dishes, packed suitcases, stared out the window, off toward the cascades. I've told them what's cooking.

Say it enough times, at least you roar with laughter as you go insane. I've told them what's cooking. Don't just read it, say it now. I've told them what's cooking. Might actually mean something one of these times. Try it again. I've told them what's cooking. Chicken liver. I've told them. Janet's liver. Told them what's cooking. Tell her what's cooking. Her liver. Tell my mother what's cooking. Her pancreas and her brain and her liver. Now put some English on it. Her belly's in the deep fryer.

Really sing it out. She'll be turning on a spit before supper time. That's good. Tell her again. But I've told her, haven't I? Yeah, alright. Then just tell me, you execrable sack. Tell me what's cooking, before we see this person at dinner tonight. Game 27. Padres 2. Cubs 5. April 27, 2023. I am trying to be in the moment. Sometimes, there is no poem to write. El juez está descansando. Game 28. Giants 11. Padres 16. April 29, 2023. I keep thinking about a man who wins the lottery.

A regular fellow, getting by. Only partially satisfied with himself and his circumstances. Who suddenly comes into a personal fortune so vast that he could easily never find a way to its end. A permanently life-changing amount of money. And with it, the empowering liberation to do whatever he wants and to become whomever he feels he needs to be. When the agency asks him how he wants the money, he chooses the 30-year option, of course. There's more money that way than with the lump sum.

But even getting the money distributed over a longer period of time, the man is able to invest it. In property, in stock portfolios, in savings accounts, in new clothes, in fantastic meals, and long voyages across the earth. He's freed from his menial job. He's freed from the constant stress of trying to fit in however the near world demands. He actually has the opportunity to manifest his truest nature. And he does.

With this money flowing in, year after year, he doesn't become greedy and snobbish and aristocratic. He uses the money to improve his life and the lives of all the people he loves. He gives to charity. He helps start new businesses and initiatives. He brings his loved ones together and deepens his connections with them more than he ever did before.

His life becomes all the richer, not because of the winnings themselves, but from all the ways they are used to improve the intentional act of everyday life. Year after year, decade after decade, the winnings flow in, compound interest does its thing, and the man wants for nothing. And year after year, decade after decade, the man is happier and happier to be alive and to be invested in the lives of those around him.

And then, just as planned, after thirty great and glorious years, the checks stop coming. The fortune has been paid. There is no more principle left to administer. The man will have to get by with everything the fortune has already brought to him. And yet, after the last check arrives in the mail, the man becomes unsettled. He loses his temper. He shakes his fists, and he shouts, "I want more!" It could be reasoned that Janet is leaving us too soon. Before her time, as people like to say.

Janet is a mere sixty-nine years old today. For being so old, Janet is all too young. So I've been thinking, what would happen if Janet were to live much, much longer? Imagine for a moment that Janet should live another twenty-five years. This is a lot more than Janet herself has ever asked or hoped for, but let's give it to her anyway. Instead of dying at sixty-nine, or seventy, Janet lives to ninety-four. What happens? Well, most crucially, Janet would get to be a grandmother.

This is the one phase of her life that is truly left wanting in our reality. All those art projects, school plays, birthday parties, graduations, first loves. Janet would get to watch one more England, at least, grow up under her care. Okay, what else? How about everyone who already exists and loves her so? Twenty-five more years of family dinners, movies at home, and excursions to national parks. Trips to Ireland and France, more Netflix specials about Cornwall and Portugal.

Twenty-five years of long phone calls in the afternoon, and painting heart emojis across the walls of Facebook, and big hugs in the doorway as people come and go. Everything Janet already loves to do, another quarter century of that. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Of course, if she were to live that long, not everyone she cherishes today would get to come with her. Her peers would still age and pass on. Accidents would happen. Relationships would taper.

And toward the end, Janet would experience the comprehensive slowing down in her own mind and body. The aches and pains increasing, perhaps a hip or knee replacement. The final three years or so, a lot of bed rest, maybe a benevolent nurse, not getting out as much. And ultimately, at ninety-four years old, holding hands and holding back the tears, then might Janet peacefully die. What would happen then? Max and I would call those of you who were still with us.

"Janet passed in the night," we would say. "She wasn't in pain. "She was happy. "Her last words were, 'I love you.'" And you who heard this would think, "Oh, Janet, what a great lady." And that would be that. So, now, here, what is to be done? Why have we gathered you here while Janet is still alive? And why do she and I keep saying that what we are doing today, we do for all time? Well, because we have more than twenty-five full years of love lying around. It's locked away in Janet's heart.

And it's locked away in ours. We are here not to mourn and mope and grieve for all those years that we've deluded ourselves into thinking we'll never touch, but to unlock them and unleash them and let them flow out in one massive damn burst the likes of which this community has never seen. Janet England is going to stop being a person soon. She is going to become pure love.

The love that flows through me and through my brother, through our father and our wives, and through any of you who have felt Janet's love so authentically that you know what I'm talking about before I even give it words. As I look around this room, there is a sad stone in my stomach. I'm losing my mom's company forever, and so are you. But there is no way that I can bring myself to be unhappy. In fact, I don't think I have ever been happier in my entire life.

I have never been more proud to be Janet England's son. I have never been more inspired by the privilege I've received of participating in her life. My mother taught me how to love. The love I have for each of you is a branch of Janet's unyielding font. As I bear solemn witness to her now, the love that wells in my own heart doubles. What's decidedly hers, what's independently mine, beautifully entwined. I feel her spirit already inside me.

I feel the embrace of her love throughout every corner of my being. She doesn't need to die to transcend. She doesn't need to pass away to achieve this communal bliss. It has already happened. It happened a long time ago. Today, we're just cutting the ribbon on the golden shrine that dwells in all of us, that will shine within the architecture of our lives forevermore.

And we're conducting this ceremony while our ancestor is still before us, so that she might hear our voices when we shout, "Thank you, Janet!" Game 29, Giants 4, Padres 6, April 30, 2023. Every season makes its own mandala. Long effort, total commitment, the ascendant and the stagnant, champions and the lost. All pass away in the perennial breeze of revolution. Do not seek the sculptures in Cooperstown for reason. Just watch that fly ball land out of Yastrzemski's reach.

Game 30, Reds 3, Padres 8, May 1, 2023. You made me worthy the moment our spirits mingled in your body. Unworthiness came later, long after your water broke and cast me into the cold nude light. As I hold your hand, this long flight home, I say, so long unworthy life. The labyrinthian circuit, my union with you. They have all been halcyon days. Now look down there, at the dazzling jellyfish stadium lights, as Kim steps up to the plate. Watch him demonstrate my meaning here.