Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 25, 2002

Day 24 (Day Off) Topeka, KS
By now we have become experienced bikers. We spit out twenty-five-mile stretches without a second thought. Our bare arms, slick with sweat and sunblock, become mass graveyards for the gnats and mosquitoes unfortunate enough to find themselves in our path. And we can determine, based solely on a car horn’s duration and cadence, whether its driver intends to greet us with all five fingers or just one.

Half of this journey’s purpose is to harden us as cyclists. The other half, we learned today, is to soften us as human beings.

Cancer means something different to each of us. To some it is a disease like any other, albeit more prevalent. To others (Fred), it is a cell’s way of defiantly canceling its own apoptotic mechanism and encouraging its neighbors to do the same. And to still others, it is the bodiless villain that stole their friends.

But on the road’s shoulder, panting, pedaling, sucking sun-warmed water out of our Hydration Packs, we rarely think of cancer. Perhaps at the odd gas station, when a trucker asks, “So are you guys just doing this for fun, or what?” we tell him, “It’s for cancer.” And then, giggling: “I mean, against cancer.” Then we ride on, delighted to be on the benevolent end of a non-controversial cause.

Today’s day off was not spent touring Topeka, or at the Laundromat, or at the local public library (which we usually invade without shame, shoving stacks of periodicals aside and toppling card catalogs to get to the precious Internet). Instead, we woke up early, loaded into the vans, and drove to the Midland Hospice to meet terminally ill cancer patients.

Despite bringing our zeal, exuberance, and a bag of adjustable hats (courtesy of Jamis Bicycles), we felt horribly unprepared. What comfort, we all wondered, could we possibly offer someone who has glimpsed their own life’s terminus?

I, for one, felt haunted the entire van ride. I could see myself entering the Hospice, smiling and eager to help. “Would you like a hat?” I’d ask an eighty-year-old man in a wheelchair. Then breathing through plastic tubes, he’d lift his head, plug his cold eyes into mine, and without a word he’d communicate, “I’ll be dead in six months. Do you really think I want…a hat?”

We’ve bicycled 127 miles in one day. But we’re not ready for this.

First thought upon exiting the van: This is a lovely home. Where’s the Hospice?

The Midland Hospice, a curator later explained, tries to eliminate the “hospital feel” wherever possible. No blazingly sterile, extra-wide hallways. No orderlies with pagers and toothpaste-blue masks. Just…home. A big, beautiful, joyous home. Mahogany-trimmed beds. Porches, porticos, and terraces. Play areas for visiting children. Skylights. And a miniature aviary around every corner.

First twinge of relief: The facility felt comfortable. Now for the residents.

In the lobby a bulletin board listed their activities for that week, including crafts, dancing, and something called “reminence,” an eerie misspelling lost somewhere between reminiscence and remnants.

Nearby: A small, recent memorial wreath with a cursive placard. I had almost forgotten. Someone dies every week here.

We shuffled down a corridor, turned a corner, and-the courage, the awe, the glory, the everything echoed down the hallway in front of us in a single syllable: “Whoo!”

For perhaps the fiftieth time on this trip, everything I thought I knew flipped inside out. We had to wait in the hallway; the terminal cancer patients were busy dancing.

They spun out in a circle, maybe ten or twelve of them, hands locked, then swept back to the center and shouted again, “Whoo!” This was not a morbid traipse through prescribed motions. This was not a swarm of bitter self-pity. This was simply people dancing.

We chatted with them later for nearly an hour. Catherine and I talked to a woman named Dorothy who, from what we gathered, made salad for all of Kansas. (Yes, her name is Dorothy and she’s from Kansas…we made the obvious joke too.) From across the room we could hear another resident, Harold, sharing lewd jokes with Mark. We eventually said good-bye and left Dorothy, smiling, wearing a hat from Jamis Bicycles.

Needless to say, more things happened today. We decorated patches for a quilt. We degreased our bikes. The church provided another spectacular dinner. And we fell asleep in front of a rented video that may or may not have been “Black Hawk Down.” But no event today will influence the rest of the trip-or the rest of our lives-as much as visiting cancer patients at the Midland Hospice.

When we cross the Golden Gate Bridge in a month, I only hope we celebrate as fervently as these people do every day. I feel ill-qualified to even reference their courage. For they have discovered what everyone should: Glee really isn’t all that exhausting.

So is it a life of reminiscence, or remnants? Reminiscence implies a rich past, no future, and a present spent recalling the rich past. Remnants, though less likely the original activity’s name, is a bit closer: a rich past, an indeterminate present, and a little something left over for the future. But the more I tried to envision the hospice residents as retirees content with their little something left over, the more I realized how stingy a depiction the word remnants provides. Here I am, biking across the country, staring down the Kansas countryside with the wind in my ears, and I cannot imagine a fuller life than theirs.

Not to belittle the situation with this particular cultural reference (for which I blame the poor quality of prime-time family programming in the late ‘80’s), but in an episode of “Alf,” the furry alien tells his Earthling friend that all members of his species expire after exactly 650 years.

“Aren’t you scared knowing when you’re going to die?” the Earthling asks.

In a moment of rare insight for the series, Alf replies, “I’d be scared not knowing when I was going to die.”

Maybe I also have six months to live. Maybe six minutes. Maybe sixty years. I don’t know.

I do know this:
I am young. I am strong. And if I ask them to, my legs can carry me to the Pacific Ocean.

I think we’re ready to ride.

-Adam Ruben