Chad, my son-in-law, the life of the party, the Dude, got rectal cancer. They spotted it in the fall and he just had his surgery two weeks ago. His first lab results were clean, but there is still a lot of waiting and testing ahead. He is permanently sewn up in the back and adjusting to wearing a bag on his hip. Just like that, everyone’s life changed in this family.
I haven’t seen much of Susan in the last two weeks. We moved into their house in Sacramento for three days during and after the surgery to cook, clean, and help drive two teenage boys to and from school, and the gym, and their friends’ houses, and band, and drama, and melodrama.
Susan did most of the driving. I cooked big vats of vegetable soup and ramen. After three days with a crockpot, the refrigerator was stocked with stock. Chad came home two days after surgery. He was in pain in several locations, but up, cracking jokes and walking. He and I walked to the end of his driveway and halfway down the block.
Of course, he had to show me his bag, how he attaches it, how he removes it, how he cleans and changes it, and how he protects his red, raw stoma. If he and I are going to continue to fish, hike, and camp overnight, I’ve got to know these things. His teenage boys are comfortable with it. Chad is sending out optimistic cues, and weeping from time to time behind the curtain. He’s a good dad.
Kristi is taking it pretty hard. She is doing a lot of the suffering for him. It hurts her so bad to see her athletic, rambunctious, hyperactive husband laid out flat with cancer. It hurts us all, but her eyes are the reddest.
We set up his bathroom, bedroom and a luxurious captain’s throne in the living room in front of the big screen where he will be doing much of his convalescing. His business partner is running the realty office; Chad will make calls and sell houses from home. He’s not supposed to drive or be a passenger for a while because of the seatbelt lining up portentously against his exposed stoma.
After filling several tubs with soup stock, and watching a lot of Netflix, I became rather useless around the house and was released to return home where many chores awaited me.
So now I am home alone.  I’m wifeless going on 11 days. Susan is staying in Sacramento as driver and Super Nana Mom, and there she will remain to hold all the strings together until everyone has adjusted to their new lifestyle. I’m being responsible here and tackling chores each day.
I’m not traveling or taking adventures for the time being. I’m not much in the mood. My Benicia run-around buddy – I’ll call him Bud because that’s not his real name —  goes under the knife to rid himself of prostate cancer tomorrow. If fact he is on his way here right now so we can have a pre-op toast.
Cancer sucks. It’s all around us.
Here are two boring things I did while alone that were oddly connected and seemed interesting at the time.
For the first two days I went on a cooking binge. I bought three plastic quart tubs, a box of zip baggies, and five pounds of assorted vegetables. I boiled the vegetables with herbs and spices, drained the broth, pressed out the last drops with a strainer, tossed the spent veggies in the compost pile, and chucked the broth in the freezer.
Then I made a huge tray of mac and cheese, chopped it into four quarters, bagged and froze that.
Last I boiled a chicken, shredded and bagged the meat, strained the broth, and put all that in the freezer. Now I can eat for a week uninterrupted. That’s also when I noticed I’d bought freaky baggies at the dollar store. They were short-sheet bags, only deep enough to hold a half a cheese sandwich. They were fine for freezing servings of shredded chicken meat, but not much else. I was about to toss them.
That’s when my eyes rested on my big jar of assorted spare change by the front door that I’ve been meaning to take to the change machine now for several years. The little baggies and the spare change together gave me an idea.
First I removed the quarters. I use those in pinball machines. Then I put a handful of nickels, dimes, and pennies into each of ten baggies. Each bag held perhaps two dollars. I took the baggies out and placed them in the center console of my pickup truck.
Now when I am driving around and I see some poor suffering soul down on their luck standing on the street corner with a sign asking for spare change, well, then, by God, I’ll have some spare change for real, and I’ll hand them out a jingling bag through the window. Until the spare change runs out, around these parts, I’ll be the happy bag man.
The bag as a gesture of giving I dedicate to Chad, my son-in-law. I am connecting these stories together with a bag, which is in truth only a coincidence, just as it seems to be only a coincidence that two of my best buddies are sick with cancer at the same time.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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