My Brain and God

Trying to take it apart; to defuse it. I want to see what wires I can cut without making it go off.

I heard someone say, “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

This is true of the color blue and it’s just as true of me and you. I think the thing we refer to as God is the same thing we refer to as love and that’s just the same as life. All of this is synonymous. We cannot take love out of it. What is happening, as I write with this keyboard and this computer, is God speaking but completely through the thing I think of as me. All expression is inspired. I have got it all wrong when I think that there is a brain in my head that instructs my hands and eyes to put down in writing what it thinks. The truth is that there is a much bigger brain which tells my brain to tell my hands to do what they do. The continuity of it all is liberating. My hands cannot live without me, but I can live without my hands. I am sure I would not like to lose my hands because they seem to make my life easier. But imagine how devastated my hands would be if they lost me. They’d cease. They’d no longer have any kind of life in them. I could plant them in a garden and they’d eventually fade forever from the planet. Even the bones of my hands would eventually turn to dust. Suppose I could live a thousand years beyond my hands. And suppose, within those years, I never grew more hands. Would I be less alive?

This is how God sees me and my beloved brain. “Oh you precious boy; you think you are doing this independent of me. That’s cute.” He might say.

But the thing beyond and greater than myself will be here when I am cut off from this world as an individual.

An indeterminate hypothesis is often referred to as religion and religions want to have the last word. They are there to fill in the gaps left by logic and science. However, if it is what we use to fill in the gaps, there is a very good chance we are wrong. This can be seen clearly by looking back over the centuries and the religions imposed upon each generation.

I’d personally like to remove the fillers and let science fill in the gaps; let the religions fail and then reintroduce religions whenever science fixes a place for them.

In my experience, we’ve only used God as an answer when we had no other answer. We came up with a theory about how the planet got people on it and then came science with a much better answer. By trying to establish God as an engineer, we’ve taken away His credentials. He never put “Engineer” on His own résumé.

If we had left God alone with His poetry, He would have been recognized for it by now, but by insisting that He is a Universe Builder instead, no one is willing to hear His poetry now. They think He said that He made the universe the way Al Gore said he developed the internet.

If I tell you that I made Mt Everest, you would likely not hear me if I say, “You are beautiful and I do love you.”

You’d still be thinking about my claim. You’d want me to go away.

The same thing might happen if one of my friends tell you that they know me. “He is good. He made Mt Everest and he is just a loving person. I know he made Mt Everest because he said so.”

Then you happen to meet me and you’ve already got this idea about me. But maybe I never said that to my friend. Perhaps my friend thought it would impress you if he said all that about Mt Everest and then you’d want to meet me more. But it doesn’t work that way.

I did not create Mt Everest.

You are beautiful and I do love you.

Bunch of Pricks

Bunch of Pricks

The old house? Oh, it is so much a part of me now. It is my heart and soul of homes. I’ll never feel like that again in my life and I know it. But perhaps the experience was for a season only. I never realized that while it was happening. I recall feeling so incredibly happy that I had finally found the one place on earth that felt right to me. The sticking doors and squeaking floors were the voices of the departed. I’ve sat where my grandma sat and I’ve contemplated her many hours of peace within that old house. She was also protected there. It was her refuge as surely as it was mine.

I never owned the old house. Even though I owned the experience and I owned the heartbeat, but I might have to move out some day.  

It has taken me a few weeks to get my head around this, but I may have no choice. I began to see the difficulty I might face not long ago. It felt old; it was the same curse that plagued the last generation. The sacredness of the home-place affects everyone deeply, yet the emotions are private for each person affected. I have to remember that the house, the shops, mom’s house and the land means something to several other people on this planet. I’m not the only one who can see the ghosts. I’m not the only one who can go there and feel the warmth of its embrace. It’s easy to become selfish once you’ve been there a while.

I wanted that experience to translate and extend to everyone still living with Della’s blood in their veins, but it is very hard to do while living with the ghosts. We’d get up together each morning and have coffee together. Yes, we would walk the property together. Sometimes, daddy would work with me in the old house, late into the night. I could feel him there. I thought he was smiling while I was cleaning, clearing and rebuilding. I would get lost in a project and the project would seem to be swallowing me whole when suddenly, I would feel daddy nudging me in a new direction and, just as suddenly, the project would begin to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Friends and other family members did a lot to help me there. Bill and I did a lot of the initial cleanup together. Someone would loan me a tool I needed just in time. Neighbors would come over, almost mysteriously, at just the moment when I would need help lifting something. It wasn’t like I’d call them over; they’d just appear at exactly the instant when I was about to take on something too heavy.

In spite of all the opposition I faced in the beginning, I always knew I was on the right path because the doors would simply open as I needed them to. The renovation seemed to go according to plan; yet it really didn’t feel as if it was my plan at all. The ghosts were there all the time. I faced a few pricks along the way, but they didn’t stop progress.

In recent months, things began to change. The garden would barely produce; my gas heaters would not heat the old house and when the weather turned hot, the window units would not cool it. I was fighting termites and drafts. It was still a very glorious home, but I was not comfortable.

I began dreaming up ways to remedy the problem. I thought I’d renovate mom’s house or build another house. Of course I knew I would have to work out a lot of details to make that work, but I had gotten used to working out details. However, the more I tried to keep moving forward, the more the ghosts complained. This could not be the right path. I was faced with way too much opposition. A big yellow sheet of paper with red letter appeared on my back door; “Stop Work” it simply said. Those pricks.

I didn’t see this as my only sign, but rather one of so many signs. All of the doors were closing. The old house patted me on the head and said, “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” I wondered.

This is not what I expected, but that could be said of my last two years. When I ended up in mom’s basement in my 49^th year, I looked around and thought, this is not what I expected. When I found a way to clean up the old place and when I found a way to buy it, I thought, this is not what I expected. When I got the old house habitable again, I thought, this is not what I expected. Now that phase is over and I have no idea what happens next; not what I expected.

All of this has been made possible by a series of miracles. I am so grateful. I am a better man. It’s only when I began to think that I had done it all by myself that the miracles ceased. This caused me to scramble for a while. Everything I touched was breaking. I finally got quiet and it began to hit me; it’s not up to me; it never was up to me. The miracles were not my doing.

All I can tell you is that I finally got peace again by accepting my humanness again. None of these things happened because I am good; they happened because they were supposed to happen. I was just one gear in the clock; all of the other functions were simply not me. You might think the opposite to be true, but this has been exactly what I needed to restore my faith. I now realize that whatever happens going forward will be just as miraculous as everything I just experienced; it may not be what I want, but as crazy as it sounds, I still believe there is a path ahead of me, not a jungle where I carve one.

A prick was something like a prod used to move horses, mules or livestock around many years ago. They were a very sharp, spear-like poker and that’s where we get the word “prick”. If an animal didn’t want to feel that pointy prick, it would follow the master’s plan and everything would be okay somehow.

In The Book of Acts, Paul was having a really hard time. Nothing seemed to be going his way. Jesus, with his dry sense of humor, said to Paul, “It’s hard to kick against the pricks isn’t it?”

Get A Little Mud On The Tires

“…I’ve got the perfect place in mind.  It’s in the middle of nowhere. Only way to get there. You got to get a little mud on the tires…” Brad Paisley Mud On The Tires

I just walked next door to Captain Eddie’s and got a little nostalgic as I looked around. I remember when there was a Fleet gas station where my car lot is now. I’ve been working in this area for decades. I was with Brad and Danny Williams in the early 90’s. There is a CVS where our lot was then. In 1997, My brother Jeff and I started a lot where Landmark is now. In 2005, I started selling real estate with Steve Adams at Re/Max Westside. Our office was just a block down the road. In 2009, Doug and I started Landmark Auto.  All of this has taken place right here near latitude 33.9 and longitude 84.7; better known as Charles Hardy Parkway and Atlanta Hwy.

When I was a lot younger, working at American Tire in Smyrna, I bought a 1959 Ford truck from Tommy Rakestraw. It was a beast of a truck. The oil that didn’t burn would leak out in a month. It smoked and chugged, but I liked it. That was thirty years ago. I was 18. Robert Farmer and I would take turns driving from Powder Springs to the tire store. He didn’t like riding in the old Ford. It had a complete round of play in the steering wheel. Fortunately, it pulled hard to the right so all I had to do to keep it in the road was to keep a constant pull left on the wheel. It was dangerous, but if you had good coordination, you could get it up to 55 or so safely.

I decided to try to find a steering sector for it. I called around the junkyards until I finally found Auto Parts Recycled in Dallas. Ernie Simmons answered the phone and said that he didn’t have one, but his manager, Ken Zeal might have one at home. Turns out, Mr. Zeal was restoring a truck like mine at home and he had some spare parts. I met Ken and picked up the steering sector and we hit it off right away. “What do you do?” He asked.

“Right now I work at American Tire in Smyrna, but I like to keep my options open.” I said.

I originally started in Smyrna, nearly a year earlier. At that time I was working at Tire Town with Ricky and Allen Myres. On one delivery to American Tire, I met Slade Jones and Tony Eubanks and applied for a job there. They hired me on the spot. American Tire was a big move up from Tire Town. And Slade and Tony let me keep a car for sale out on the grass right there on busy, South Cobb Drive.

Ken asked me if I would like a job pulling parts. I don’t know why that appealed to me so much more than tires, but I knew I would gain experience at Auto Parts Recycled. Just how much I gained has blown my mind over the many years since that decision. Just about thirty years ago, I drove out here to Dallas and sat down with Ken Zeal at Auto Parts Recycled. They hired me and I began pulling parts. I bought more tools and quickly moved up to management and moved into the dismantle shop. Where the shop once sat is a muddy tract of land, roughly 400 feet from where I am right now.

I used to get so muddy out at Auto Parts Recycled that I would have to throw clothes away. They were red with mud. The boots I wore were black. When I left that job, I was about to toss them when Daddy said, “Don’t throw them boots away. I want to hang them out there in the shop and when you get older, and have a nice office, I want you to put those muddy boots on display so you can remember where you started.”

I managed to save them up until a year ago when Bill was cleaning out the old shops. He had no idea. I tried to retrieve them from a full 30 yard dumpster, but I was dealing with cancer then and I just let them go. At that moment, they were not a priority and I didn’t feel great. The dumpster got carried off and the boots went with it.

You won't believe this next part.

Amazingly, Interestingly and ironically, while I was writing this note, a guy came and drove one of my cars. It is a 2006 Honda Ridgeline. It was spotless. Poetically, he took it on a test drive and drove into the property where the old junkyard used to be. Where the old dismantle shop used to be. In all my years selling cars, I’ve never seen one get any muddier on a test drive. The boots are gone, but I can go next door and get all the old mud I want. Chris, my potential client, got mud all over my Ridgeline. All over the tires. Authentic, Auto Parts Recycled Mud.

I’ve got that nice office now. Daddy, thank you for the reminder. I won’t forget where I started. How can I? There is mud all over the parking lot.

My Favorite Song

My earliest memories of church are now a bunch of random, black and white films that play in my mind from time to time. The little brick building sat on a hill in Powder Springs, Georgia. We seldom missed a Sunday morning service. I vaguely recall the times when my dad actually went with us.

We only had one car back then; and daddy was the only one with a license. The car was a dark green, 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne Sedan. This was a few years before my youngest brother, Jeff, was born. I remember climbing in the back seat of the old car and standing on the seat while Bill, my older brother and Myra, my sister, sat. Our driveway was red dirt. We didn’t have gravel, we had dirt. I would track in the clay and grind it into the back seat. I finally wore the seat completely out and daddy knew some guys at Puckett Upholstery. They gave him a small roll of orange vinyl. He took the vinyl home and… I’ll bet we had the only dark green Chevrolet Biscayne in the world with an orange back seat.

On Sunday morning, mom would make me dress up and then she’d drag me into the tiny little bathroom where daddy was still combing through the thick VO5 in his hair. She’d squeeze out a little and work it into my hair. She’d borrow dad’s Unbreakable black comb and I’d have the most perfect part you’ve ever seen. That was the brand name of the comb. I always wanted to challenge them on that, but I never did.

As soon as we all piled in the green car, daddy would light one up. He smoked Pall Mall Golds back then. He had a Zippo lighter with a very distinct sound. When he flipped it open, you could hear the trademark clink and when he closed it, you could hear the trademark clunk. Zippo lighters still make that sound and if I hear one, I think of him. 1958 Biscayne Chevys were big cars; big enough to hold all of the secondhand smoke from the two cigarettes that daddy would smoke on the four mile trip. We were used to it. By the time we got to church, we all smelled like Pall Mall Golds and we all had a little nicotine buzz. That would come in handy.

Our lessons were about Jesus and His love for us, God and His grace and The Holy Ghost and His particular interest in our denomination. We were taught that these persons were one person, but The Holy Ghost was the one you could really get ahold of.

It was hard to distinguish the difference, but rings and necklaces were ornamental jewelry. Watches and brooches didn’t count. You couldn’t even wear a wedding ring in those days. We couldn’t go to bowling alleys or theaters. There was the big ten and then we had twenty-nine really important teachings right after that. In those days, a lot of denominations were competing for exclusivity. There was The-First-This-Or-That and then there was a whole bunch of One-And-Onlys. We were one of those. I felt really lucky to have picked the one church that Jesus was actually coming back for. I had no idea.

The sermons were powerful. The preachers would really work up a sweat and I thought they were really mad sometimes. Maybe they were. They’d pound the podium and stomp their feet. It would get your attention. We were all looking for a deeper experience and this seemed to be a step in the right direction. The old timers had obviously gotten ahold of The Holy Ghost. I’ll have what he’s having.

As I grew up, I began to challenge some of the old doctrine. I had met some people who had never even heard of our church and thought they were a genuine part of The Body of Christ. I got in a few arguments about it and lost them all. I finally withdrew my membership when I was 28 years old. A friend was going through a difficult divorce and the pastor wanted to discuss her rights to fellowship with our church. This happened during a business meeting on a Wednesday night in 1992. I didn’t want to judge another person. That was nearly twenty years ago and I still feel the same way.

How often we get it wrong. Sometimes, we get it all wrong. To me, it seems that this is how we eventually get it right. The first time I ever wore a necklace, I felt self inflicted conviction. I thought it was a sin. It took a while for me to accept people who didn’t believe the way I did.

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Psalm 37:25.

I was young when we were climbing in the back seat of that ’58 Chevy. Now I am old. I’ll tell you what stands out in that black and white memory: It’s my dad’s pressed shirt and shiny hair. It’s mama singing hymns all the way back home. It’s the orange vinyl seat. It’s a big meal and a big crowd at grandma’s house. It’s the red clay driveway and the tiny, cinderblock house. It’s the woods and the creek. It’s my brothers and my sister. We have not been forsaken.

I have a favorite tune from those days; it’s the clink and the clunk that daddy made with his Zippo lighter.

The Train Wreck

I went to see my Aunt Martha in December last year. I didn’t know it would be our last Christmas with her. I asked her about Christmas and her childhood memories.

“Daddy was real good to all the neighbors at Christmas,” she said, “He would go out and buy groceries for families if they didn’t have any money. He would even buy Christmas gifts for the kids and we didn’t even have no Christmas gifts. He was real good to us and mama unless he was drinkin’ and he was bad to drink around Christmas.”

I never got to meet my grandfather, Charlie Coker, but I have recorded countless stories about him. Some of the stories are sad. I think Christmas was especially difficult for my grandfather. It brought back an unpleasant memory.

My dad was only seven years old, and walking down the tracks near his home in Rockmart on a warm and overcast December day in 1935, he heard a train in the distance and caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a man lying across the tracks. His father had passed out in the path of an oncoming train.

Charlie, my grandfather, was five feet and ten inches tall, just like his father. He weighed one hundred forty pounds and it was all muscle. He wore a straw hat when he was out in the fields, and he wore a nice hat with a brim when he went to town. With the money he made at Georgia Power and the cash he made on the side, Charlie was one of the first young men in Rockmart to have a brand new car. In his teens, he was known for his good looks and for wearing stylish clothes. Before he had a car, they say he always had the fanciest buggy in town.

“Charlie was the best carpenter there ever was.” Said his nephew, Sammie King. “Anytime anybody needed anything built, they went and got Charlie. He could build you a barn, a house, a fence or anything. He was a first class brick mason and he’d work with rocks and concrete. He used to work with Georgia Power, back when they was building them substations and he’d pour the concrete pads for them. He was generous too. Uncle Charlie would give you the shirt off his back. He’d give everything he had to other people.”

 As soon as my dad realized Charlie was still alive, he ran to where he had seen a couple of men cutting down a tree a hundred yards back. “My daddy’s on the tracks and there’s a train coming.” His heart was pounding and he couldn’t get his breath but the men understood  and ran to meet him. They helped my dad pull my grandfather off the tracks just before the train came.

Nine years earlier, almost to the day, before my daddy was born, Charlie was thirty six years old and at that same place, on the same tracks. On Friday, December 23, 1926, Charlie stepped off the Southern Train and into the depot in Rockmart. It was 7:00 PM and he was coming in from Covington, Georgia where he was working for Georgia Power. He was home for Christmas. There was a lot of commotion in the depot and people were saying something about a train wreck. From where Charlie got off the train it was only a few hundred yards to the sight of the accident.

At about that same time, some neighbors told my grandmother, Della, that there had been a train wreck in Rockmart. Was Charlie on that train? It was pouring down rain and she was expecting him at any moment. Martha, the youngest of two girls, was 18 months old. Ed was three and a half. Tom was five, Charles was eight, Mable was eleven and JP was thirteen.

“Where’s daddy?” asked Charles.

“I’m sure his train is just running late.” Said Della.

“Can I go see the wreck?” asked JP

“No,” said Della, “Y’all just need to ask the good Lord to be with them”

They waited for Charlie by the fire in the living room.

The Royal Palm had stopped on the side track to wait for the Ponce De Leon to pass. The Ponce Deleon took the wrong track running forty miles an hour. When the trains collided, the tender box detached and went rolling down the embankment. Cries for help were mostly coming from the dining car and Charlie worked well into the night helping to free people from the tangled steel. Seventeen people perished that night.

Della paced the floor all night. Surely she would get word soon. Charlie finally got home just before sunrise. He didn’t say a word.

The next day, they heard that a little girl who had been taken to the hospital in Cedartown didn’t make it. Charlie was devastated by the tragedy and he was forever a changed man. Charlie didn’t like to talk about that night. That morning He just went out to check on the animals. The rain had stopped and it was a cloudy Christmas Eve.

A sad country song was written about the scene. It was called The Wreck of The Royal Palm. One verse may help you to understand what Charlie may have been dealing with for all those years.

It was an awful sight
Beneath the pouring rain
The dead and dying lying there
Beneath that mighty train
No tongue can ever tell
No pen will ever write
No one will ever know but those who saw
The horrors of that night

The Wreck of The Royal Palm. Written by American songwriter, the Reverend Andrew (Blind Andy) Jenkins

~

Charlie began to stir when his son and the two men pulled him from the track. Still dazed, he looked and the train and smiled as it passed. Daddy looked at the train and then looked at his daddy. “What on earth was he thinking?” He wondered. Daddy waited there with him for an hour. Charlie finally got up and began staggering home. He looked at some rusting debris at the bottom of the embankment.

Following the train wreck, my grandfather would spend the next twenty Christmas Eves taking food to neighbors and gifts for some of the children. He seldom spoke of that awful night. My dad inherited some of my grandfather’s quaint old sayings and pleasant ways. Although I never met Charlie, I am sure I heard him speaking through my dad when we would ask him what he wanted for Christmas.

“I just want everybody to be happy and well.” He would always say.

85 years have passed since that night. The old song is hard to find. Almost all of the witnesses are gone. Aunt Martha passed away in February of this year.

My Path

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.   Hebrews 13:2

I admire people who are fighting for their lives. In some respects, I was not necessarily among their ranks at any time. There was always a very good chance that my situation would improve. For some, that hope cannot be found. As far as physical battles go, however, I have never fought harder than these past few days.

It all began in 1994 and as far as I can tell, it may have began sooner. I was complaining of some unusual pain. I would develop chills followed by a low grade fever that would last for a day or so. Wanda Sparks was an RN and a good friend of mine. Wanda’s father-in-law had recently passed away with prostate cancer. I mentioned the symptoms to her and with the combination of her profession and her personal experience, she insisted that I see one of her doctor friends, a specialist in urology. That year, I was diagnosed with a fairly common condition present in older men. But I was only 30. Still, I was going to be dealing with BPH for years to come.

Very few men have prostate enlargement under the age of forty, but 90% of men over the age of 80 are dealing with it today.

Over the next few years, the treatments led my doctors to test for even less likely causes for the recurring problems. It was obviously chronic by definition and I had the symptoms of prostatitis. I got my first PSA at 40 and my doctor explained that the elevated number was likely caused by the recurring infection. But with all the treatments, the numbers would not remain at a safe level. We managed to bring them down for short periods of time, but the side effects from months of antibiotics were beginning to trump the side effects of the actual problem.

I was determined to get more opinions. I went to several specialists until I found Dr. Kenneth Rutledge in 2006. He understood my frustration better than any doctor had before. He has a let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-this attitude. He wrote a book on my situation and we discussed the effects of the various treatments. He seemed to be as dissatisfied with all of the results as I was.

In July of 2010, Dr. Rutledge shocked me by recommending a biopsy. “What will that do?” I asked.

“It will rule out cancer.” He said.

“Cancer?”

“Mark,” he said, “Don’t worry. I don’t think you have cancer. It’s very unlikely and you are otherwise young and healthy, but your situation has not been following any normal pattern and we need to get as much information as possible.”

I thought about it. I prayed about it. I reasoned that it would indeed be unlikely. There hasn’t been a sign of prostate cancer in my family. But I watched my doctors as they read my charts. Dr. Rutledge would just sit there with me in silence while he would read over the results again and again. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.” He said.

I had the biopsy and went in for the follow-up to discuss the results. Jennifer was determined to be there. I told her to go to work and I would call her in a little while. I was almost sure that we’d continue trying one antibiotic after another until I was 80 and, just like my peers, dealing with a condition older men deal with. They’d never have to know I had been dealing with it since I was 30. Jennifer wouldn’t hear it. As with every visit over the 2 ½ year history of our relationship, she was there.

The nurse sort of gave it away. I could see it in her caring eyes. When she opened the door and said, “Mr. Coker.” She looked at Jennifer as if they knew each other well and said, “You come too.”

That was when the reality began moving through me like a sedative. Instead of freaking out like I always thought I would, there was some sort of calm. It was unreasonable to feel so calm. I can’t tell you where that came from, but being a man of faith, I think God must have programmed us to deal with life in times like this.

We sat down in Dr. Rutledge’s office and he didn’t keep us waiting. He came in and smiled as always, but this time, I could tell he was making a little effort to do so. The first thing I noticed was a shiny new book in his hand. He sort of put it out of sight as he walked in and I didn’t catch the title.

“Mark,” He said, “You know I would love to give you and Jennifer some good news but today, the news isn’t all good. It’s the best bad news I can give you, but the biopsy did reveal the tiniest trace of cancer. Out of ten areas, we found nine of them to be benign. Where we did find a trace, it is thankfully still Gleason 6.”

The Gleason Score was named after pathologist Donald Gleason. Of course I can’t completely understand the scoring system, but Dr. Rutledge put it this way:

“Typically, we don’t see the cancer spreading until the Gleason reaches 7. It is not impossible, but less likely. And since your situation has always been a little unusual, I want to rule out that possibility as well. I will say this: the symptoms you’ve always had have nothing to do with this small trace of cancer. The other problems are in no way related. Thankfully, those symptoms led us to this biopsy and we’ve found this problem early and almost by accident.”

It wasn’t by accident. The most unusual thing happened after the biopsy: my PSA began dropping well into the normal range and my symptoms began to subside. I was feeling great and I didn’t even need antibiotics anymore.

I am not sure why I would need to get this early warning in such a round-about way, but once I had been properly alerted, the warnings all but stopped. Now Dr. Rutledge was reading my charts and saying things like, “This is odd, your prostate is shrinking and your PSA is getting better.”

He recommended watchful waiting. I was good with it in a way. Jennifer didn’t like it at all. This idea is based on the theory that we should be able to detect the jump from Gleason 6 to Gleason 7 in time to react. Prostate cancer is a slow growing cancer and this idea is new, but not entirely crazy. Clark Howard has been watching and waiting since 2007. But even Clarke Howard says, “75% of people diagnosed with prostate cancer need treatment of some form within weeks or months.”

I watched for a year and continued to get better PSA scores. My symptoms were just about all gone and I was feeling better than ever when it was time for my second annual biopsy this year. Jennifer had been doing some research and she wanted me to try Dr. Wong. “He has experience with every option.” She said.

I wanted to hear about the latest technology. I wanted someone to explain all of the new treatments. Dr. Wong, for instance, was the first urologist in North America to perform the Nanoknife procedure for prostate cancer.

The second biopsy revealed three areas of concern and those areas were not together. Dr. Wong carefully explained that I was still likely to survive and the scores were still Gleason 6. When I asked him about the danger in waiting at this point he said, “It could move from a 6 to a 7 within a year and there is a small chance that it could even metastasize.”

I knew what that meant and waiting was not going to be an option anymore. I had to prepare for treatment. Older men often take the “seeds” route and that’s a very effective treatment. In those cases, the men are sometimes right back at work and living a normal life with no more worries. Dr. Wong said something I haven’t heard since I tried to buy beer when I was 18: “You are too young.”

The treatment options – all of them – have side effects of their own. One of the side effects from the seeds could be delayed 20 or 30 years. In some cases, they are very mild even then. Dr. Wong explained that he wanted to look at my overall health and predict how long I should otherwise live. He said that he could see me making it into my 90’s. “The problem with any kind of radiation,” He explained, “Is the fact that it may begin to give you some problems in 20, 30 or even 40 years. If you were 70, we probably wouldn’t want to do anything. If you were 60, we might try the seeds. But you are 47 and you have had problems with your prostate that aren’t connected with this problem. Unfortunately, those problems could get worse when we introduce the seeds and then, we could not operate.”

The other options are extremely promising but Dr. Wong thought I was too young for those treatments as well. Some of them are so new that the research only goes back two years. If I was 80, and surgery was necessary, I would try the Nanoknife; we know it works for a few years but there is no research older than that.

I went home with the new information and eventually made the decision to have the procedure in November. This fast-forwards the story to the second of November, 6 days ago. I worked all day on Tuesday and never felt better in my life. I knew that this would not be the case within 24 hours. After work, I went home and began to prepare for the next day or so at Piedmont. I went to bed early and Jennifer came and woke me up around 4:30 AM. We were at the hospital a little after 6:30 AM.

I was nervous. Although I had been mentally preparing myself for this day, I was still not quite ready. I met briefly with Dr. Wong and other doctors and I was rolled back to the operating room. They must have given me something to calm me at this point. I can only remember bits and pieces of the next few minutes. The next thing I remember is a recovery nurse standing over me telling me that it was over.

It must have been around 1:30 PM when Jennifer told everyone that they should head to my room. My mom said, “Jennifer just stood up and said, ‘I am not waiting anymore. I am sure he is there by now.’ And she was right. Even though nobody called us, they had just brought you up when we got there.”

I started waking up a little at a time. When they told me what time it was, I remember wondering what had taken so long. I started demanding answers. I was afraid there had been complications. “Jennifer, you would tell me. What did the Dr. say?”

Then I would pose the same question to my mom and my brother, Bill. They all told me that it had gone well, but I still worried for a while. Dr. Wong came in and I asked him how it went. “Perfect.” He said.

Myra was there. Jackie was there. My pastor had been there too.

I was in some pain but it was being monitored and managed by a great staff at Piedmont. The pain and the management thereof kept in the hospital until Saturday morning.

Jennifer was there every time my eyes opened. She slept on a hard piece of furniture with a crude cushion. If I had pain every hour, every hour, she was there telling me to squeeze her hand. If I got up, she lifted me. She helped the nurses and did more than all of them put together. There were some of those humiliating moments and Jennifer just ignored them and smiled as if to say we’d joke about this later.

The nurses were all great. Dr. Wong would come in and sit by my bed and talk to me like an old friend.

I was still in the hospital when the pathology report came in on Friday. Dr. Wong didn’t call; he came straight to my room and said, “Good news Mark. Something will take your life one day, but according to your pristine pathology report, it won’t be prostate cancer.”

One of our favorite nurses, Joel, had already seen the report and even alluded to it. He was in my room for his routine pep talk and he said, “I’ve seen your path and you are going to live a long time.”

At that time, I didn’t know that path was short for pathology report. I thought he was talking about the path of my life. Joel and I had become friends in a hurry and I figured he was assuming that I was a good guy. He was still in there when Dr. Wong broke the news and he put his hand over his mouth and said, “I nearly gave it away.”

But I will take it either way. There are no mistakes. I’d like to think of Joel as a messenger. There is a path. I’ve been on this one a while. Wanda was there. Dr. Rutledge was there. My family has been there. Jennifer is there. My friends have been there. Aren’t we supposed to believe in angels? Couldn’t Joel be one?

The next day, Joel came to say goodbye. He said, “I don’t normally work on this floor. I’m back upstairs today. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

As another angel once said, “Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives.” Clarence Oddbody, It’s A Wonderful Life.

Home

Home

Well, it has been 60 years now. It was an old house then. If we really pressed the issue, we could probably buy the place. But we’ve let it go. I’ve watched it turn itself back to nature. Weeds overtake the front porch where we sat and talked with Mable, Grandma, Roy, Lloyd, Daddy, JP, Martha and so many other loved ones. It sits there on that hill all alone.

I suppose I have been waiting on the resting souls to move in the hearts of the living. But life is not as easy as that. God does not seem to be a respecter of my fantasies. Any time I try to move one of those mountains, I am put in my place by those who don’t have a lot of faith in me.

Lately, I’ve been dreaming. I wish that I had the old home place. I can imagine cleaning up the old yard and getting rid of overgrown bushes so I can plant new things. I think of – no – I dream of a time when the kids can all come over and play the way I played. They can expect – fully expect – the rest of the family to appear there.

I don’t know why we cannot have it. I know my daddy would have wanted it that way. You have to think about it all from his point of view. As my daddy lay dying, he worried about the old home place. Why? You would think that he had enough to worry about. He knew his life was winding down, but when I promised him we would try to see after the old home place, he was grateful. He put his hands together like he was saying a prayer to me and he said, “Thank you. Thank you.”

Every time I see Howard, the first thing he asks me is, “How is everybody back home?” and then he asks, “Is the old house still there?”

Why?

It is very important to Daddy and Howard. Whatever it held for them, it holds for me. The thought of a bulldozer pushing that house down is more than I can bear to imagine. But it has been suggested more than once. There are those who have never known the magic of a home. Had it not been for that place, I would be among them.

The old house is an entity to me. It holds the spirits of the ones who felt the security of its shelter. After 60 years of struggle, Grandma found a safe place in this world. She took the only money that she received from the army that took her son, and she bought a home.

The monument stands to Roy, Mable, Grandma, Daddy, Tom, Charles and even Howard.

When we were little children, we made tiny ripples up there. From there, the ripples became waves that carried us all over the world. Now I am getting old too. I have ridden on some waves until they crashed and I have looked back to where my adventure began. There is a hush where my life started. There is a stillness where rocking chairs once rocked. No floor fan hums, no TV plays, no coffee perks and no dishes clink. No phone rings and no jokes are told. There is no garden. There are no apples. The gravel doesn’t let me know that an old, heavy car is slowly pulling in.

In a few windows, curtains still hang and an occasional breeze animates them and I can see ghosts. We’ve tried to have the power turned off for over a year. Georgia Power tells us that the power isn’t in our name and we can’t turn it off. They tell us that it is in the name of Charles W. Coker and he is the only one who can authorize this. I think Charlie is trying to tell us something. We don’t have the authority to end the life of that home.