Tag Archives: cancer

Mar19

Keeping The Luster Alive

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Recollections of a radiant soul…

Yesterday I, and an army of my friends and musical colleagues, learned that our friend and fellow musician, Luster William “Bill” Brewer, had died.  Following the initial impact of this news, there was a flurry of text messages, e-mails and posts on social media.  My own Facebook page exploded with tributes, expressions of sadness, shock and later on, many pictures of our friend from healthier days gone by.

Bill had been diagnosed with throat cancer about a year and a half ago.  As a singer myself, I cannot fathom the horror of such a thing.  Throughout his treatment, he continued to teach at Pellissippi State Community College, where he had found a home as the head of their music department for the last 15 years.  Just last week, after his cancer had returned and he had undergone another treatment, he had gone on a tour of Portugal with his choir, having been medically cleared to travel, but not well when the trip started.  He had to return home before the tour was finished, going into the hospital where he eventually died.

It was typical Bill to have gone on with his students even though he was ill.  He loved making music and he especially loved the people he made music with, students and peers alike.  He was a longtime fixture in Knoxville Choral Society and Chamber Chorale, having served as KCS President and director of Chorale for a number of years.

It was in this capacity that I got to know him.  In 2009, after an 11-year absence, I re-auditioned for Knoxville Choral Society with great fear and trembling.  I had hardly sung at all in those years and I was afraid my voice might be so far gone that there was no hope of recovery.  Enter Bill Brewer, who heard my audition and not only recommended my re-admission to the chorus but chose me as a soloist for the Christmas portion of Handel’s “Messiah” which we performed that fall.

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He was thrilled to conduct “Messiah” with KCS for the first time and wanted his score and baton in the picture I asked for with him.  (The remainder of the program was Bach, which “Doc” Eric Thorson prepared, conducted and chose his soloists for.)

Following my weight loss surgery in June 2012, I experienced a lot more pain during recovery and for a longer time than I had expected, so I missed some early outings with chamber chorale as they performed portions of “Chronicles of Blue and Gray” in advance of its world premiere that November.  I e-mailed Bill explaining my situation and told him that if he needed to replace me in chorale, I would totally understand.  He was gracious and kind, telling me that when I was able to return my spot would be waiting for me.

And what a return it was!  The first rehearsal for the whole chorus arrived, and I got to the church where we practice feeling insecure about my appearance, wondering if the pounds I had lost since surgery would be noticeable.  I looked and felt peaked and pale and…vulnerable.  When I walked into the vestibule there were a dozen or so of my fellow chorus members milling around, paying dues and purchasing music.  And there was Bill, who squealed at my arrival and began a round of applause, making it a triumphal entry for me.  He came over to hug me, and then very tenderly cupped my face in his hands, saying, “Oh, LOOK at you!  Look at your little face!  How do you feel?”

That was always Bill, caring about the other person.  He was a Southern gentleman in the finest tradition, dedicated to Jesus, to his wife Sharon and to the music and musicians he loved so greatly.  He was also a total goofball, with a mischievous sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye and a laugh that could crack glass.

We have all heard the question, “What’s in a name?”.  Bill’s given name was Luster William, Luster after his father.  In Bill’s case, he indeed possessed a luster, a glow and radiance of heart and soul from which everyone who ever met him benefited.  I want to keep the Luster alive, remembering Bill, his laugh, the music we made together and his tender touch cradling my face in his hands.

Apr14

Blue Hydrangeas and Youth Dew

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Memories of Mom Cutshaw on her birthday…

My mother-in-law, Mary Lynn Clark Cutshaw, was born on April 14, 1923, and like Pop Cutshaw, would be turning 91 on her birthday.  It seems impossible that she would be that age if she were still with us, and it seems impossible that she and Pop have been gone as long as they have.  They died less than 11 months apart, with Pop leading the way in July of 2000.  I know there must have been a reason for the timing of their respective deaths, but it was a hard thing just the same.

I don’t want to think so much about Mom C’s dying as her living.  She was one of the toughest, strongest, most determined women I ever had the good fortune to know.  She intimidated me for the longest time.  I felt like an interloper; I was stealing her baby boy, after all.  I was marrying the little brown-haired-brown-eyed child she loved so very much.

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When Jeff and I got married, she said that she only wanted one thing as far as our ceremony was concerned, and that was for Jeff and me to sing a song.  I knew I would be too preoccupied to sing well on the actual wedding day, so we arranged to pre-record a duet the night of the rehearsal. I adapted the words of The Lord’s Prayer to fit the Bach-Gounod “Ave Maria” music, and Jeff and I recorded it between the rehearsal and dinner.  It was a wonderful gift to be able to honor her request and she was pleased with the result.

Once we were back from our honeymoon, she came up to our little rental house one day and helped me get things set up, including literally taking a knife and helping to scrape who-knows-how-many years of muck out of the oven!  She measured windows and made some of our curtains.  Less than a year later, when we were moving to Florida, she and Pop packed themselves up and made the move with us, spending the weekend (along with Jeff’s sister Bridget and her husband Michael, who lived in New Orleans and came over to meet up, share family time and help unpack) getting us bare-bones settled in.  I remember Mom C looking at all the canned food I had stockpiled to move down with us and telling me she was glad my Mama had taught me how to shop!  She had been worried that we would be moving down with no groceries of any kind to get us started.

Mom Cutshaw was a wonderful cook who made legendary pies yet somehow often scorched the green beans or burned the rolls.  It seemed like there was nothing she couldn’t do.  She knew how to sew and keep finances in order.  She was an Opti-Mrs. (the lady counterpart to The Optimist Club) and took care of children during Sunday school.  And she did more for Pop after he began suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, for a longer period of time, than was humanly possible, keeping him at home up until just the last couple of months before he died.

During this time, she gradually lost some weight, which was to be expected given the physical and emotional demands of being a 24/7 caregiver.  I don’t guess anybody really thought much about it, hoping that once things settled down, she could rest up and regain some of her physical strength.  As it turned out, just months after Pop’s death, we learned that she was experiencing a recurrence of the cancer that had shown up in her colon in 1997, this time in her liver.  Treatment was unsuccessful and she was placed on palliative care at home.  I remember asking her if she was scared, and she said she wasn’t afraid of dying, but she didn’t want to suffer.

She faced her battle bravely, just as she had faced everything else in her life.  She died in the wee hours of the morning on June 18, 2001.  The house was full of all her kids, 2 of the 3 kids-in-law and 2 of the 3 grandchildren.  I feel sure that she knew we were there, and I hope that it comforted her.

She has come to me many times in dreams.  The most vivid and telling one happened more than once.  The estate was in the process of being settled and their house was on the market for a while before it finally sold.  In my dream she kept quoting me a very specific number saying, “____ thousand and the house is sold.”  The number was low for a house and it didn’t make sense.  As it turned out, though, once the house sold and the proceeds were divided among the 3 children, the figure that came to each sibling was the number she had quoted to me in the dreams.  She knew and she shared it with me.  It still gives me chills to think about it.

She wore Estee’ Lauder’s Youth Dew, and to this day when I catch a whiff of it, I remember her… and smile.  She also grew lots of beautiful flowers.  Her blue hydrangeas were the prettiest I’ve ever seen.  I have a few dried ones in the china cabinet that came to us after she died.  Every time I see them I remember her…her strength, her beauty and youthful spirit, her courage in the face of adversity and her love expressed in meals cooked and clothing sewed, dream visits and oven-scraping with a new daughter-in-law.

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Mar20

Reclining Chairs And White Flowers

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Pop Cutshaw’s birthday and my memories…

My father-in-law, Floyd Houston Cutshaw, was born on March 20, 1923.  He’d be turning 91.  That seems unfathomable to me.

I have to say that the Pop Cutshaw I knew was probably a very different person than the father his kids grew up knowing.

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By the time I came onto the scene he was about to retire, and I think that growing a little older and developing some health problems had mellowed him some.  To me, he was always easy to be around, with a dry sense of humor and a favorite chair.

Jeff’s growing-up memories include Pop making old-school, stove-top popcorn in a pan that was, in Jeff’s recollection, beat-up and black from all the stuff that got cooked and/or burned in it, and no longer flat on the bottom but “bowed up in the middle”.  Pop Cutshaw brought home a swirly brown ball from someplace and drilled holes in it to make Jeff’s first little bowling ball, a treasure we have to this day.  Jeff spent countless hours propping up a pillow in their kitchen or den behind his set of little plastic bowling pins as he practiced big boy bowling.

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My history with Pop was a lot shorter because I came into the family as the last child-in-law.  I always liked him and I felt that he liked me too.  A routine developed over the years when we would go over to their house for dinner or whatever reason for a visit.  We always went in the sliding glass doors into the den, and Pop was generally sitting in his recliner in the corner watching sports on TV.  Mom Cutshaw might be in her chair as well, opposite his, or she might be in the kitchen.  I always leaned down to kiss Pop on the corner of his forehead (usually leaving a lipstick smear behind) and he always said “Thank you!” when I did it.

I mentioned that he developed health issues as he got older. One of those was prostate cancer.  It scared all of us to death, because he already had a heart condition, and there was concern that side effects from treatment could make his existing problems worse.  Fortunately, no surgery was needed, just radiation (which was still no walk in the park).  When he began treatment, I sent him an arrangement of white roses, the flowers I always choose to express respect.  Our phone rang that night and it was Mom Cutshaw saying, “Your father-in-law has something he’d like to tell you,”.  He told me he’d never gotten flowers from a woman before and he was touched by the gesture, and he thanked me.  He did very well during radiation, especially for his age and considering his heart problem.

He endured bladder cancer prior to the prostate cancer, a heart attack, several angioplasties, double hernia surgery and an enormous aortic aneurysm that he didn’t want to get fixed until he finished building the carport for the motor home!  That was just how he was.  In his younger days, he could build or fix just about anything thrown his way.  He and Mom Cutshaw eloped to Ringgold, Georgia after he came back from The War, a period of his life that he never talked about much.  The war, not the marriage.

How strange and sad that after surviving so much, in the end it was Alzheimer’s Disease that took him from us.  How ironic that, after years of lipstick-smeared forehead kisses, I should be wearing the original Kissy Shirt the night he died and I kissed him for the last time.  And how poignant was the conversation we had in a dream following his death.

I dreamed that, like every other time we had gone to their house, Pop was there in his recliner, stretched out with his feet up.  The whole family was there for dinner and everyone else was in the kitchen.  I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead just like always, leaving my mark behind. And he thanked me.  I sat down in Mom C’s chair. He and I were by ourselves in the den, and I knew that he was dead, but he had been allowed to return for a visit with me.  He thanked me once again for the white roses I’d sent him years before, and said he would like me to plant a garden of white flowers for him, whatever kind I wanted, but all white.

And then he was gone, I was awake, and tears of joy and gratitude were flowing before my eyes even opened.  Dreams like this are so vivid, real and beautiful when they come, and I would endure every bad dream gladly for the chance to experience these occasional visits from my departed loved ones.  I miss them all so much, but now and then I am granted the gift of a visit like this one with Pop.  I have never gotten around to planting that white garden.  Maybe this year that will happen.  But every time I see white flowers of any kind, I remember Pop and that precious moment we shared in my dream.

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Happy birthday in Heaven, Pop.  I’m sending you a big forehead smooch.  ❤