A Mother's Thoughts

As I look at this picture of Sam and I, I see what isn't there. His stoical expression because he was ready to go and didn't want to have his photo taken...one or two pictures, okay and we had stepped over the line asking for more. He was my handsome, compassionate, yet taciturn son. He knew his own mind and seldom strayed from what he believed. Naive in some ways, worldly wise in others...he was simply our Sam and we love him.

For so long I haven't been able to write about him for possibly many reasons. First and foremost, because it makes it so real, seeing words on a page. In Black and White. Carved in stone, engraved on a marker. Strange, I should feel that, when I have always derived such comfort from words.

Missing Sam is part of me, like taking a breath. There is a hole, jagged edges, painful and aching that does not fade or dissipate with time. I am certain everyone thinks I should be over this by now, but I am not...and that is just what is.

So I mourn for Sam: his potential, his presence, his personality. Sam saw the world in black and white, but he was beginning to discover the shades of grey that make everything more vibrant. His was a romantic soul. There was a hero for every vanquished villain, good always triumphed, and there was always "the right thing to do."

So I imagine how he felt when he tried to wrap his brain around the news. The encompassing word, cancer, enormonity of the word "rare," and the even scarier words, "No treatment, No Cure," as well as the finality of the unspoken word, "dying." I have to imagine, because Sam didn't discuss it, wouldn't discuss it...and you couldn't make Sam do what he adamantly would not do.

His stubborness was almost legendary. We always considered it an asset and told him so. He didn't try to be even more unyielding, instead he would redouble his efforts to persuade you that his way was right. He would argue, consider what you said, think about it (okay, brood is a better word and often would revise his assessment and change.) It was this ability which became even more evident as he grew up that garnered our respect. So we respected his wishes, the subject was closed. We played it out Sam's way.

Maybe that is why I can't seem to say goodbye. It is so final.

I am stubborn too, and I prefer the wave and the words I uttered as I dropped him off at school:

Later Sam...Love you!

My Initial Written Thoughts

I originally wrote this for Sam's Caring Bridge site on July 08, 2008, a little over a week after his death. I felt that I needed to say something, and the concept for Memory of Sam was more or less complete in my mind, so I had originally hesitated in writing anything, assuming that I'd have plenty of time and space to pour myself out in this venue. However, I quickly realized that too much time would go by before anyone had a chance to hear me, and I couldn't bear the thought of removing myself from the process. As I read back over the material now, I realize it will go down in my mind as the first outward expression of guilt that I will likely continue to express for many years, as I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive myself for not being present in his final days. I sat down at my desk the moment I returned to College Station from taking care of family affairs in Tyler, and penned the following:

My father is a man convinced that he does not have the skills necessary to express himself. For whatever reason, call it social brainwashing, he thinks that he possesses the strict mindset of a male engineer - unemotional, calculating, and logical. A quintessential Spock. And so he is often loathe to write about, and even more so to openly discuss, his feelings. The entry previous to mine is an example of my father traveling outside of his comfort zone, and I can think of few other individuals he would be so willing to do this for besides his youngest son.

The sad fact is that despite the fact that I know my dad's belief in his personal stoicism is absolute bunk, and despite my pride at having such a loving family that can reveal their thoughts and feelings to one another, I often identify with that cold, resolute, stone-like mentality - probably moreso than dad ever has. When the heart surgeon first came out of the operating room at Scott & White hospital and told us that Sam was going to die and the only thing capable of stopping this occurence was a straight miracle, I freely admit that I fought back my tears to the point of very nearly choking on them. And back they went. When I received the phone call from my mother that fateful Saturday morning, I put down my moving box, picked up my phone, and just stood stock still in my empty kitchen, all alone, listening to the news.
I knew it was coming. Mom had called me a couple of times earlier, once even at 4:30 in the morning to tell me that Sam was not looking well, and that he'd like me to find the time amidst my moving to come visit. Just as soon as I pack these boxes, I'm going, I thought to myself. I have to make both of these obligations work.

But I couldn't. There just wasn't enough time, in the end. That's the amazing part. I heard a doctor tell me we'd be lucky to get two weeks with Sam, and then we wound up having three and a half months. And it's not enough. If you have ever attempted to time yourself performing a task, you know how disenchanting it can be to fail at your own goals. As horrid as I feel comparing this to a sort of puzzle, that's how it was beginning to feel. If I take this amount of time to do this, and then I can take this amount of time to see Sam, and then rush back....but then the sands in my hourglass ran out, and I just had to stand there. Tests to the front of the classroom. No do-overs.

I didn't cry then. I didn't even feel the stirrings of tears in my system. I felt like something passed right down through my body and left through my feet. Whatever it was, I needed it - this was certainly no appendix that just abandoned me. It was something vital. Vital to my ability to feel, maybe.

Sam and I have always been each other's best friend and worst enemy. On our worst days, we knew how to hurt each other, we knew how to wickedly play off of our feelings and addictions (I may never be able to forgive my brother for re-introducing me to the world of comic books, for instance, and his uncanny memory for my every mistake has often made us bitter). On our best days, we stood up for each other; we helped. Sam got me a summer job, once. I constantly reviewed and studied over his schoolwork.

Sam was hard to know because he so profoundly guarded his privacy. In fact, I have been told that I probably knew Sam better than anyone. This may be true, though I find no solace in that thought. My brother was a moody individual, and there were not many people who were able to get past his temperament to find the person underneath. My own family, on many occasions, found Sam's antics unbearable. We just couldn't feel things the way he felt them: Intensely, and without restriction. Sam would get depressed rather than sad; infuriated rather than annoyed; overjoyed rather than happy.

Was this what we were to each other? A balancing act? Me, with a neverending even temperament, and him, with a torrent of emotion? He lifted me up, and I pulled him down? All I know is that when Sam left, expressing any level of profound feeling is torturous and impossible. I simply just can't bring it out. Maybe we were on a playground, and now I'm that tubby kid on the see-saw without a partner; my end sits on the ground and there's an empty seat in the air.
Maybe I just miss my friend.

Ultimately I know I will torture myself. That's just my nature. It's the exchange of values, as Ernest Hemingway would put it. "I thought I had paid for everything," he writes. "No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave something up and got something else. You paid some way for everything that was any good. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it."

There's always a balance somewhere. We are so happy that Sam's suffering is over, but still there is grief, and that pain will be there in varying amounts for the rest of our lives. That is the payment for Sam's release into a better place. That's the currency we must continue to dole out. Knowing this is how I deal with my own pain and emptiness. If it wasn't me that hurt, it could be my brother. I will pay out a thousand times over for the people I love, just as I know Sam would do. The hard part, for so many of us, will be recognizing that our limited time was enough, and remembering that we had it.

Text is the only way I have ever been able to say anything, and that will be how I continue to work. I plan on opening a website dedicated to writing about Sam by the end of the summer. I hope everyone will bear with me as I pour out both the good and the bad.

--Howard Lee Starnes

A Father's Lament

Written by my father, Floyd Starnes, and originally posted on Sam's Caring Bridge site on June 30, 2008:

Samuel Dean Starnes, Sam, Sammy, Sam-Mule, Sammy-Bear died at 8 am on June 28, 2008. He was only 23 years old and would have graduated from the University of Texas at Tyler in May had he not become ill. He would have graduated with honors.

I cannot stop crying and I am in pain. All of me aches for my son to come back. I am like a reverse Shane: instead of a boy running after a man calling out, I am a man running after a boy yelling “Come back Sammy! Please don’t leave me.”

Sam’s Journey:

Heaven and Hell! Two sides of the same coin.

Hell is having the surgeon at Scott and White Hospital announce that your son, Sam, has terminal heart and lung cancer and Sam will probably be dead within two weeks.

Heaven is having the surgeon at Scott and White Hospital announce that there is a group called Hospice that will arrange an ambulance so Sam can die at home and not in a hospital.

Hell is three and a half months of pain, nausea, drugs, blood, catheters, enemas, weight loss, bed sores, weakness and other problems related to cancer.

Heaven is three and a half months to spend with your son instead of just two weeks.

Hell is holding your son’s head as he vomits up blood and bile, bright red and bright green like Satan’s favorite Christmas ornament. (This is a horrific vision I will see till the day I die).

Heaven is holding your son.

Hell is seeing the fear in your son’s eyes and hearing him say “Dad, I don’t want to die.” And all you can do is hold him close, tell him you love him, and that you don’t want him to die either and that miracles can happen.

Heaven was being able to hold him close and tell him that I love him even though the miracle did not happen.

Hell is when your son is in pain and so drugged on morphine and fentanyl that he cannot string a coherent sentence together.

Heaven is when your son is relatively pain free and wants to reminisce in the wee hours of the morning about the good times he has had with his family.

Hell is when your son has a seizure and grits his teeth in pain as he shakes uncontrollably and loses bladder control.

Heaven is the pride you feel when you son demands his dignity and asks to be carried to the bathroom as he rebels at the bedpan.

Hell is when your son loses almost all his physical strength.

Heaven is when your son never loses his mental strength or his wry sense of humor. When he accidentally got some urine on his hand, he demanded a washcloth immediately to clean himself. His mother got one and cleaned his hands and the rest of him to boot. When they were talking a few minutes later, she reached down, held his hand, then pressed his hand to her lips. His only comment: “Aren’t you glad we washed that hand.”

Hell is when your strapping young son drops from 190 pounds to 115 pounds (his actual weight at the end was lower, but the hospice nurse, Miss Mary, quit weighing him after he could not stand upright by himself). He became a translucent, pale, and very frail skeleton of his former self.

Heaven was the per severity with which your son tried to eat even though he did not feel like eating and knew that most of the time he would vomit back what he had just eaten.

Hell is when your son is in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery and not expected to live and you spend a week at his bed side and cannot stop yourself from stroking his hair which he interprets as patting him on top of his head.

Heaven is when three and a half months later, your son rolls on his side, unable to talk due to weakness in his lungs and the constant oxygen he is on, at 3 am in the morning (just 5 hours before he will die) , looks his old Dad in the eyes and pats him on top of the head.

Hell is holding your son in your arms as he dies.

Heaven is being able to hold your son in your arms and tell him how much you love him as he dies.

Although my pain is great….my gratitude for your caring concern for my son and my family is even greater…Thank you…Thank you all.

Floyd Starnes