by Taylor Black
You never let it bother you that much.
What was I supposed to do? There was nothing I could do, Pops. My brain was different.
So were you, Taylor. So were you.
* * *
To say that Taylor, a teenage daughter, had issues with her mother was akin to saying the Pope is Catholic, but still Taylor, ever the sentimentalist, never forgot a birthday or a Mother’s Day. Grudgingly, she even appreciated her.
Taylor’s Diary
May 13, 2001
Today is Mother’s Day. I got mom some flowers and a card even though she deserves much more than that. I had a dream about Justin the other night. I saw his face and then it vanished. Then, I was asking him questions about death and everything. It all seemed very real. I still haven’t come to terms w/it yet. I don’t think that will happen for quite some time. No news from Henry (Dr. Friedman at Duke—he wanted everyone to call him “Henry.”) but no news is good news as they say, right? Let’s hope so. Mom and I both think he would’ve gotten back to us by now. Courtney just went back to Gainesville today. She’s coming back on Fri. Kristine is supposed to have Anya any day now. I hope the munchkin (niece Mikayla) won’t be jealous. It’s only 11 days until graduation. I can’t believe it’s gone by so fast. It doesn’t seem like I’m old enough to be going to college.
Having cancer and going to college? Yes, in the spring of 2001 there was optimism for Taylor’s condition. It seemed as if the radiation had worked and Taylor was put on a lighter chemo that didn’t cause her as much nausea. Maybe, we thought, she could live a normal life after all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Giuseppe Zangara and the Homeless People
I often used Courtney and Taylor in the travel articles I wrote for magazines and newspapers. There was a two-fold reason for using the kids: 1) they were cute and people liked to read about cute little children saying the darndest things (Art Linkletter made a career out of eliciting such remarks), and 2) if I included them in the article in either a photo or in the copy, then I could deduct the money I spent on them as a business expense, which is why every summer when we went to Pennsylvania I wrangled a travel article for a Florida magazine or newspaper providing the periodicals stories about Longview Gardens, Pearl Buck’s Home, the Kutztown Amish Fair or Sesame Place north of Philadelphia. I shamelessly used my progeny in a photo spread of the presidential homes of Virginia, having them pose at both Monroe’s home and Jefferson’s Monticello.
But one time Taylor and Courtney were with me when I had to drive to Miami to talk to the editor of South Florida Magazine for a couple of assignments to supplement my teacher’s salary, and I decided to give my daughters a little history lesson and knock out a short history piece for the magazine to cover my expenses for the day.
In February 1933, Giuseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate president-elect Franklin Roosevelt at Bayfront Park in Miami (they inaugurated the president in March until 1937 when an amendment to the Constitution changed the inauguration date for the president to January of the year following the election). Imagine the world without FDR: whose profile would be on the dime? Reagan? Some Republicans wanted to replace FDR on the dime with the Gipper, but the idea didn’t fly. I say give Dutch the twenty-dollar bill and get rid of the Andy Jackson, who sent the Indians on the Trail of Tears. But that’s another story.
In 1933 Florida’s gun laws were as lax as they are today—heck, Florida is even geographically shaped like a pistol—and Zangara was a bipolar—or possibly schizophrenic—Italian-American immigrant who blamed kings and presidents for his ulcerous stomach. He might have taken a train to Washington and shot Herbert Hoover, the lame duck president, and people might not have cared that much, but Zangara read in the Miami Herald that the president-elect was in Miami on vacation and, what the heck, one dead president was as good as another for his sickly stomach, and it was balmy in South Florida, so why freeze his keister off in the cold of Washington D.C.? He might have been schizophrenic or bipolar, but he wasn’t crazy. So he walked into a gun shop and bought a revolver and made his way to Bayfront Park one night to assassinate FDR. Unfortunately, he arrived a bit late and there was quite a crowd. Complicating matters, Zangara was vertically-challenged, being only a tad over five feet tall. So, to see over the crowd and get a good vantage point for a pistol shot, he had to grab a folding chair and stand on it. But still he couldn’t see the president-elect clearly as FDR was sitting atop the back of a Buick convertible. Zangara, his stomach gnawing at him, fired the gun anyway and missed FDR by a number of feet, fatally wounding Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago. In response, the crowd ripped off some of Zangara’s clothes and the cops came and took him away, a semi-naked, vertically challenged would be presidential assassin. Two months later, Zangara would go to the electric chair for the murder of the Chicago mayor; some things were faster back then. When strapped to Old Sparky—the Florida electric chair—Zangara was asked if he had any last words and he replied with brevity, “Push the button.”
But that early morning with my daughters, I wanted to find the exact location of the attempted assassination of FDR, and Taylor and we went to Bayfront Park, looking for the site. I was going to give her a history lesson after all, for that’s what I was: a history teacher, when I wasn’t moonlighting as a Hemingway-wannabe.
I found a plaque which stated that a hundred yards or so from that spot was the location of the failed assassination attempt of FDR. I pointed to the plaque for Taylor, but she pointed elsewhere.
“Daddy,” Taylor said. “Who are the people?”
She was referring to a number of men who were sleeping on the ground in the park. It was a favorite spot of the homeless then, for the homeless often migrated south like the birds for the winter. Why sleep on a sidewalk grating in New York when you could sleep on the grass in Miami? Zangara would certainly have understood that.
“They are homeless men,” I said, holding her hand and Courtney’s as I navigated a path through the sleeping homeless.
“Why don’t they go home?” she asked.
“Because they don’t have a home, Taylor,” I replied.
“That’s sad,” Taylor observed. “Can’t we help them?” Her little face looked at me for an answer.
I could honestly say we couldn’t, but Taylor was disappointed I couldn’t do anything. After all, I was her father, her hero. Daddies were supposed to do everything. A tear of empathy rolled down her face.
We found the spot, but I was struck by the irony. It was at that park that Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate the man who started the New Deal, who put the homeless to work, and here in the park where FDR had nearly been murdered were homeless men lying all over the ground. I wondered what FDR would have thought. Taylor didn’t understand the irony, she was too young, and she could only talk about the homeless men.
Maybe that was when Taylor decided to become a social worker and a knee-jerk liberal, or when the “progressive” seed was planted. Later, she wouldn’t even remember the FDR connection to the park, but she never forgot the homeless men.
* * *
The day before Taylor was scheduled to graduate from high school, sister-in-law Kristine delivered her second daughter; Anya Taylor Pickard was named for her Aunt Taylor. “They named her after me, because I have cancer,” Taylor said, although family members assured her that wasn’t true which, of course, was a lie and she knew it. She was also chosen to be Godmother along with Beth. Beth was a backup she realized, “In case I die,” she explained to me.
Taylor’s Diary
May 23, 2001
This morning @ 9:24 Anya Taylor Pickard entered the world. She is absolutely the most precious thing ever. I can’t believe it. She’s such a mellow baby, too! Mikayla didn’t really know what to think of her. In other news, I graduate tomorrow. I can’t believe that’s it. I’m done! I wish Katie could have been here for it. Afterwards, I’m going to Project Graduation. Everyone’s coming tomorrow and we’re gonna have a late lunch.
Oh, J
eff flipped his truck over. Some guy cut him off and he flipped. He’s okay though. THANK GOD! Although he is on a few painkillers. It’s been a month now since Justin. It seems like you go through life w/a normal set of problems and you think “ok” this sucks, but I can deal w/it. And then one day BOOM! The shit really starts hitting the fan. And you realize it was not so bad before. Then, after a year of constant bombardment of catastrophic situations overwhelms you, you search for the end of the storm, but there’s not one in sight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Of Booth and Bill
A month after Taylor died, teacher colleague Martin Bielicki sent me a blown up photograph of Taylor on her eighth grade spring break class trip to Washington, standing outside Ford’s Theater, wearing a Gap Classic sweatshirt and smiling through a mouthful of braces. Four thousand bucks as I recall.
It had been a coincidental moment as Mr. Bielicki and his wife had decided to take a spring break holiday as tourists in the nation’s capital and ran into Taylor outside the theater where John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. Bielicki, a shutterbug, made a slide of the photo and the next year when Courtney was in his high school history class and he was presenting a slide show on the Civil War, he slid the Taylor photo into the mix, directing a question to Courtney who was totally surprised by the photo of Taylor outside of Ford’s Theater.
When I see that photo today, I’m reminded of all the historical sites to which I dragged my daughters. Pam might take them to the Treasure Coast Square Mall, but it was my job, or so I thought, to take them to the National “Mall” and to a plethora of historical sites as well: Independence Hall, check. Pearl Buck’s Home, check. Monticello, check. Mountain Vernon, check. Sagamore Hill, check. Gettysburg, check. Manassas, check. Brandywine, check. Ad nauseam, check.
* * *
When Taylor returned from the middle school trip she couldn’t wait to tell me about it.
“I was the unofficial tour guide,” she informed me. “I told everyone about Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater. Showed them Booth’s pistol. Even the teacher was amazed. I talked about Laura Keene and the play and how they stopped the play when the Lincolns arrived and about how famous Booth was and how he broke his leg when he dropped to the stage after shooting Mr. Lincoln. As in ‘break a leg’.”
“That’s great, Taylor.” I said
She beamed at my praise. It was at that point that I thought maybe dragging the girls to historical sites was beginning to pay off. Taylor went on. There was no stopping her. She was the star of the trip.
“And the White House was a blast again and so was the Holocaust museum. My teacher couldn’t believe I had been to all of those places, Dad.”
Boy, I was proud of myself as a father and a teacher, remembering how I had to schmooze my way into the Holocaust Museum by giving them my card with my “contributing writer” affiliation to South Florida Magazine. Pulling the press card was the only way to get in to the newly opened attraction—and fulfill a promise to Courtney. It was the same way I finagled a private tour of the White House for the girls and a photo of myself at the presidential podium in the press room, with the girls on either side of me, which I had made into a Christmas card, Taylor’s favorite.
The White House press room photo also reminded me of a somber visit to The Wall, the Vietnam Memorial and a few moments with the engraved name “William G. Chandler” (1W62, August 11, 1972). I told Taylor the story of Bill Chandler. In elementary school we called ourselves the Mavericks; I was Bart to Bill’s Bret after the popular western starring James Garner. Along with Bobby Freimuth, Bill Chandler was my best childhood friend, but when I went off to college, Bill joined the army, went through Officer Candidate School, married a gal and had two kids, and was sent to Vietnam where he was wounded in action as a platoon leader. He recuperated at Valley Forge Military Hospital as I recall, and I saw him there. I was still in college, but when I graduated I joined the U.S. Army Reserves as my best chance to avoid Vietnam and was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington for basic training and A.I.T. Bill was stationed at Fort Lewis at the time, running a training company, and we reconnected. A couple of times he rescued me from the enlisted men’s barracks to shoot pool and have a beer with him. He was a captain then and he didn’t have to go back to ’Nam because of his wound, but he said if he ever wanted to make “field grade” (major or higher) that he needed more combat experience, since he didn’t have a college degree. So he returned to Vietnam and he hadn’t been there a month when a Viet Cong mortar round ended his life.
So I decided to visit the wall with my daughters and we looked through the large telephone book of killed-in-action for his name’s location and I found his name and the location on the wall. There were the customary flowers and mementos at the base of the wall, notes inscribed to the ghosts of another time, a war growing more distant every year. Photos of the deceased. In uniform. As children. A teddy bear from a child I guess. Or maybe it was the soldier’s as a little boy and his mother left it for him. The sorrow was palatable
And then we found Bill, at my eye level, but over my daughter’s heads and I lifted them one at a time to see his name, to touch the engraved letters of a name that once had meant so much to me. Then I set the girls down and began to cry. As I was with my children I thought of Bill’s two daughters, fatherless, and how they were probably grown women now, perhaps with children of their own, and how Bill had missed so much in dying so young. He had not only missed his own life but his daughters’ lives as well. I felt guilt for not keeping in touch with his widow, but then I only met her once, I believe, and darned if I could even remember her first name or where she moved after Bill was killed. She might have even remarried and changed her name.
But I remembered Bill; he was etched in my memory as deeply as the engraved letters were in the Wall, and my daughters seemed stunned that I was crying. Taylor looked at me with her big brown eyes and a tear empathically escaped down the side of her face.
“You miss your friend, Daddy?” she asked.
“I do,” I said, giving her a hug.
She handed me a piece of tissue. I blew my nose and smiled at her.
She gave me a big hug and I was back from the dead and among the living once again.
Taylor’s Diary
May 28, 2001
Well, I graduated! I can’t believe I’m finished. This school year (or lack thereof) is one in which my life has changed forever. Nothing about this year has been calm or docile, rather it has been draining and perturbing and so many other multitudes of things. It is something that cannot be understood until you are in that situation. You encounter so many different feelings physically, emotionally and spiritually. Only others who have come before you and those who will follow will ever comprehend the epiphany that is cancer. This is just as cancer victims cannot grasp family and friends change of emotions. I do not know what I’m supposed to have learned from this, but I do know that it is the key to my soul’s unrest. I have been so irritable and angry. I can’t put my finger on the exact source. Instead, it seems to be many things. I suppose I’ll just have to work through this. My life right now is full of uncertainty. And while everyone is enjoying their last summer @ home or taking summer classes, I will be imprisoned in a hospital room at Durham N.C.
Ah, such is life! And in the words of my father, “@ least you’re alive.” Oh, how true that is.
Perhaps I should have been more upbeat in my advice, but I was grateful that Taylor was still with us and wanted her to feel grateful as well. She had survived two brain operations, radiation and rounds of chemotherapy and on the day she graduated she seemed healthy.
Cancer though, is a rollercoaster. Sometimes a patient is up, other times she is down. The patient is in the front car, but the family is also on the ride with her from the heights of hope to the depths of despair. That night at graduation, I could hear Frank Sinatra singing High Hopes in my head.
Chapter Thirty: On the Beach
One evening on television the b
lack and white film On The Beach was telecast with Gregory Peck wooing Ava Gardner “down under” in a post-apocalyptic world while, in the background, tipsy Aussies, oblivious to the increasing radiation levels, were singing Waltzing Matilda. As the world was ending on screen, my mind was taking me to another beach, Bathtub Beach on Hutchinson Island.
When my daughters were little I often took them to Bathtub Beach in Stuart, a beach which has been hammered by hurricanes and erosion, but was once the favorite family sandbox in the area. A natural reef formed a “bathtub” and little children could wade into the water while parents sat on the shore, unconcerned that their little ones would drown in water that didn’t go over their heads at low tide. It was where Taylor met the ocean and fell in love with the sea. A half-mile off Bathtub Beach her ashes mixed with the current, so in a way Bathtub Beach was a beginning and an end. South of Bathtub Beach is the exclusive gated community of Sailfish Point, but even that beach is public up to the dune line.
Taylor and I walked onto Bathtub Beach one evening a few days before her eighteenth birthday for what would be our last walk together to the inlet at the end of Sailfish Point. It would be on such a walk that Courtney would meet her future husband Robby, and it was on such a walk with Courtney, Robby and Robby’s parents that I thought of my last walk with Taylor on the beach as Courtney and Robby’s little dog Camden scampered ahead in the sand.
During her cancer, Taylor often walked the beach for the serenity of it all. It was early January in 2001 and Taylor said it was the most beautiful day of the year thus far. We walked to the inlet and as she recorded in her diary:
The sun was shining brilliantly on the ocean, which was a thousand shades of blue and green. It was definitely one of God’s most spectacular creations.
But even with the beauty we still had to discuss the upcoming stem cell “harvest” at Duke.