Neoliberalism is truly no country for old men.

I had much to tell you on this Boxing Day. But unfortunately, Christmas played havoc with my body, and it has left me too low to write anything new. But I still need to pay my rent. So, I am dropping today a small sample from my book about the life I lived during the last ten years of my dad's life and then after his death battling cancer during the Covid years. So if you can, it would be much appreciated if you could become a paying subscriber. But if you can't. It's all good because your loyalty to my dad's legacy is payment enough.

The whole purpose of my substack is to use my life, my father’s, my family and my ancestors as a working-class history of Things Past. Not necessarily Proustian but an ever-evolving document. A testament to the worth, uniqueness and profoundness of the lives of ordinary people who are continuously erased from history. It's why the entitled own our present reality because we have been taught by them our existence is unimportant except as consumers of their mass-produced goods of ephemeral value.

Dear Dad:

Those first 18 months of the pandemic were an emotional ride through the Badlands because there was no way to escape my isolation. It was as lonely as being far out on an angry sea in a skiff and knowing no one is waiting on shore for my safe return. Even in the best of times, serious illness separates the sick from those who are healthy. It reminds those who are healthy too much of death and their deaths to come.

Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash

Most people don’t want to confront their own temporal existence and spend many moments with those encountering a major or long-lasting health crisis. It scares people- which is why so many of us skim the surface of our lives- terrified of what lurks in the depths below.

I say this not with a sense of superiority to those who embrace the superficial as a coping method to get through their days. But as one who faced too many emotional and physical obstacles to not be forced to reflect on existence. The “What’s it all about Alfie.” If you like ruminations of a man about to swing on a scaffold. Humanity can’t cope with the abyss of death because it makes much of our life more than a meaningless pursuit of petty trinkets.

I learned that when I had a heart attack at 42. Friends simply couldn’t and didn’t want to relate to my brush with death because they wanted to think they were immune from sickness. It upset the rhythm of their lives as they sunk contentedly into middle age- which in our society promises to last- at least until the age of seventy.

People avoid the sick. It is instinctual, a primitive desire for the herd to survive by separating itself from those too weak to carry on. Whatever the reason it is a bitterly cruel experience for those made vulnerable by poor health. Few want to be in the company for an extended period, with those undergoing mental or physical anguish. Mum lost many of her friends when she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. “Isn’t that just normal aches and pains,” said her closest friend in Canada.

Peter lost all his friends, except for a few within his peer group of artists, after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. They were embarrassed and afraid of his behaviour. Hell, if he hadn't been my brother, I would have abandoned him too, and sometimes I emotionally abandoned him.

In the 1990s, I hated- it when- because you and mum needed a break, brought him to my apartment. I was resentful, and I am sure that sometimes- even through the antipsychotic drugs, Peter realised that, and I am ashamed to this day of my weakness and selfishness during the first years of his struggles with mental illness.

My friends were no different during my cancer. After a few telephone calls following my operation to ensure proof of life, I was left alone. I was given around two weeks after my surgery where my physical complaints were acceptable topics of conversation. After that, rectal pain, surgical pain, and dysentery, like bowel movements or loneliness, were considered topics, not for discussion. “You’ll get better, and you will forget you ever had cancer,” one friend said with the surety of living his life without the hindrance of self-awareness.

Don’t get me wrong people were cheering for my survival. But they wanted a made-for-TV version of it that concluded with either my full recovery or death in a ninety-minute story arc. What drove me to heal was my desire to live and tell our story- as well as- find a new story for me to live in that granted some pleasure and purpose to my existence. I just wanted to step away from the emotional and mental desolation that comes with a cancer diagnosis. This was not an unusual desire because the people I brushed past during my radiation treatment and surgery also fought to exist. You could see it in their eyes or in their stubborn walk of forbearance to a cancer treatment that they wanted to make new stories in their own lives. For how long I will have this urge to live is anyone’s guess. As you knew, it becomes harder to want to live if you feel you’re a burden to others.

That’s what happened after the war to mum’s, granddad, I guess? You found him hanging from a beam in the basement of the apartment building where Mum lived. Your love affair had only begun you were there for an evening mea in the autumn of 1945.

You cut the old man down from his rope with a pocketknife, a cigarette dangling from your lip whose smoke made your eyes water. You lay his slight corpse on a tarp while around his body, rabbits kept in hutches to be slaughtered later for nutritious meals ate or fucked. “Germany then was no place for old men. He was a burden, and he knew it.”

Today is also no place for old men, especially men diagnosed and treated for rectal cancer. It’s only sheer bloody-mindedness, but that is now sputtering like a flame low on fuel- keeping me still standing on the right side of the ground.

There is a voice in the back of my mind that cautions me to tread- gently when it comes to my chances for long-term or even midterm survival. Who knows, maybe I will be proved wrong and die as an old man in my bed?

I am smiling right now because I know what you would say to me, “Just make sure the bed you die in is comfortable because even though many in our family lived to a good old age, few died comfortably.”

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I have posted 245 essays, as well as excerpts from the unpublished works of Harry Leslie Smith - along with chapter samples from my book about him. My newsletter has grown from a handful of subscribers to 1200 in that period. Around 10% of you are paid members. I appreciate all of you but ask if you can switch to a paid subscription because your help is NEEDED to keep me housed and Harry Leslie Smith's legacy relevant. But if you can't all is good too because we are sharing the same boat.  Take care, John. Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays.