DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

I don't think I'll be writing for awhile. Can't. Face it. Can't. Think. Form sentences. Stop crying. Will. Later. Promise.

I am starting this entry in my childhood home, having just woken up from sleeping not in the downstairs bedroom I claimed as an adolescent but in the upstairs room my sister Jen and I shared when we were little. I chose the room for practical reasons—it’s warmer than the room downstairs—but also because it’s the place where I was young and therefore most my father’s daughter. I slept in (and am still wearing) his sweatshirt. The excuse, again, was warmth, but it was Dad’s essence I was craving.

Now I’m sitting in the conference room on the fifth floor of the cancer ward at Johns Hopkins. I discovered this room yesterday after I was happily sitting on the floor of the pantry, updating my father’s cancer blog, and a nurse walked in and said I’d probably be more comfortable in the private conference room next door, the one with the desk and the privacy and the sterile office lighting, away from the thrash and thrum of people dying. Only they call it people “living with cancer,” which makes me want to shake them and say, “You call that living?”

Dad is not well, and he’s getting worse. He’s barely cogent, as he’s on massive doses of dilaudid. He’s thinner than he was at his wedding—much thinner—and he cannot eat. Two days ago he was still sort of himself, and now that person has disappeared into some other person’s sunken cheeks. This other person, who shares my father’s name, birthday and fingerprints, does have tiny moments of lucidity, when he allows Dad to emerge to crack a joke before passing out again, mid-sentence. The doctors pulled us aside today to say the situation was dire. I took this as an opening to ask them how he would die.

His liver could fail, they said, and this would be a peaceful death. He could have a sudden heart attack or an embolism in his lungs, which would also be an easy death. Or the infection that is raging in his belly right now might do him in. He also, they reminded us, could have a miraculous turnaround.

After I calmly listened the various ways my father could expire, and the doctors walked away, I broke down to the point where the social worker who found me slumped on the floor next to the trashcan in the pantry said I’d probably be more comfortable in the private conference room next door. What is it with you people, I thought, and that stupid conference room? “I like this pantry,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Well, but the next person who walks in here for some ice chips and finds you sobbing on the floor instead might not be fine.”

Right. Of course. There was that.

I calmed down, cracked a few jokes with my body-snatched father, then went down to the Java Juice in the lobby, the one across from the pharmacy with the long line of cancer patients waiting for the medications they hope will prolong their lives. “What would you like?” said the cashier.

The answer was simple: Mom wanted a turkey sandwich, Aunt Marilyn wanted tuna, and I was leaning toward tuna as well. Only I started thinking about how my father couldn’t eat anything, and how this was killing him, and how I wasn’t really hungry, and how all the food we consume to keep our bodies going won’t actually keep our bodies going for much longer than a cosmic blip, and I couldn’t get the words out. “Two…” I said. “Two tuna…” And breakdown number two had begun.

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” said the cashier. “Take a deep breath. We’ve seen this many times before, and we’ll see it many times again. I lost a loved one to cancer, too. I’ve been there. I know.” She handed me a deli napkin.

“Two tuna sandwiches and a turkey with cheddar,” I said, after having let several other customers skip ahead of me in line.

Our transaction finally completed, I shoved a dollar bill in the tip box on the counter labeled “Thanks a latte!”

“That’s for the psychiatric care,” I said, feeling not unlike Charlie Brown.

“I’m just the cashier,” said the woman.

I'm going underground for a little while to deal with my father's illness. I'm using the tiny moments of spare time I have to update the family's cancer blog.

Many of you have emailed to ask how you could help, and I’ve been thinking about how to reply. The only answer I've come up with, short of curing my father’s cancer, is this: support literature. Keep the idea of books—the idea of ideas—alive. These blogs are a form of written communication, sure, and this one happens to be saving my life at the moment, but they lack, a priori, both critical distance and the opportunity for transcendence.

We make sense of our lives through stories; we learn about ourselves in relationship to others through stories; we find deep wells of empathy we never thought possible through stories. I fear a world without books, and you should, too, for it is a world without a shared, dusty shelf of humanity.

I went into my local bookstore the other day and was shocked by the lack of customers. With the holidays approaching and a recession in full swing, a book should make the perfect gift, and so the answer to your question, “What can I do?”, is this: go out, right now, or go online, right now, and buy some books. Yes, I’d love you to buy my book, of course, as that helps me directly, but you can also buy my friends' books, as we are all suffering from the death of the publishing industry.

If you need a little nudging, I’ve provided a handy list below, alphabetized by author, with direct Amazon links to some recent books I've enjoyed. Yes, okay, so the authors are all friends or acquaintances, and one of the books is my own, but I’ve read all of these that are already published, and some that aren't yet, and they’re all worthy of a spot under a tree or next to a menorah. In some cases, I’ve listed books you can only pre-order, as they are not yet available, but you can always give Aunt Gladys an IOU for a book that will brighten her day, come April or May, when it arrives in her mailbox. And sure, it would be better if you bought these books at an indie bookstore, but we’re all busy, I know, so do what you can, and here goes:

It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive by Eric Alterman

In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper by Stephen J. Dubner

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

Cheerful Money by Tad Friend (no link yet, but trust me, this one's great.)

Through the Children’s Gate by Adam Gopnik

Eat, Memory by Amanda Hesser

The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

Please Excuse my Daughter by Julie Klam

Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Him Her Him Again the End of Him by Patty Marx

Getting To 50/50 by Sharon Meers

The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

The Invisible Century by Richard Panek

Stars of David by Abigail Pogrebin

Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick

Epilogue by Anne Roiphe

Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe

I’m So Happy for You by Lucinda Rosenfeld

A Day at the Beach by Helen Schulman

The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

Beverly Hills Adjacent by Jennifer Steinhauer & Jessica Hendra

All the Finest Girls by Alexandra Styron

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

My Mentor by Alec Wilkinson

Oh The Glory of it All by Sean Wilsey

The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

I apologize if you’re reading this, and you’re my friend or acquaintance, and I’ve left your book off this list (and do email me if this is the case, so I can add it on), but I’m trying to get this blog entry done quickly, and my dad’s lying in a hospital room, so cut me some slack. And feel free to pass along this list to friends, relatives, and your Aunt Gladys, who has no idea what to get you for Hannukah but was considering, last I heard, socks.

This morning, as I was walking the dog (I know, many of my blog entries begin thus, but so do my thoughts), I got a hug via text message from my friend Kammi, whom I’ve known since we were in preschool together back in Adelphi, Maryland. Instead of texting her back, I called her cell phone, glad that she, too, was up early. “I think your couch is too big for our elevator,” I said. Kammi has an excellent couch she has to get rid of, big enough for our whole family and then some, and I’d asked for first dibs. Then I started to laugh, and Kammi, as is her wont, joined me, and she asked about Leo, and I, still laughing (for what other response was there?) said I’d been up all night pumping him full of albuterol. “Can you believe this shit? Note to self: next time try not to have a two year old while your father’s dying.”

“Note to self,” said Kammi. “Maybe he’s the best thing you actually have right now.”

This why I love Kammi, and if you knew her, you’d feel the same way. Kammi lost her father to a brain tumor many moons back, when her nearly college-age daughter was still in diapers, and she’s always said that the exigencies of wiping her daughter’s ass while dealing with death kept the stink of both activities in proper perspective.

“You’re right,” I said. “Maybe he is.” With this in mind, and with the sun finally gracing New York City’s sidewalks, I decided to try an experiment. Every morning, on the mornings it’s my turn to take Leo to daycare, it’s a monumental struggle: to get his teeth brushed; his shoes tied; his coat on; his body strapped into the stroller for the half mile or so walk to school, all so I can get to my office to start writing at a decent hour.

“We’re going at your pace today, kiddo,” I said. His school starts at 8:00 A.M., and he’s supposed to be there between 8:00 and 8:45, when circle time begins, which means I’m always running down the street pushing the stroller at 8:15 as my son’s struggling to free himself and screaming, “Out! Out! Want to walk! Want to walk!”

Today we left around 8:00 A.M., without the stroller. “I’m not carrying you, okay?” I said. “If you want to walk, we’ll walk.”

“Yes!” said Leo. “Want to walk.” And he grabbed my hand and held it tight. Somewhere in Central Park—we (he) decided to take the long way, through the park—he looked up at me and said, “Go to beach? See Nama and Pop Pop?”

“Sure,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “That would be fun.”

“Yes! Let’s do it!” We’d brought Leo on Sunday to see my father in the hospital, and though I’m sure he had no idea what was going on in any real sense, he’s also perceptive enough to understand that his Pop Pop, whom he associates with Bethany Beach, Delaware, was out of his element. “See the ocean?”

“Yes, we’ll see the ocean,” I said.

“Pancakes?”

“Yes, Pop Pop will make you his delicious pancakes.”

“Good,” said Leo. “Syrup?”

“Of course, with syrup.”

We were now standing at the top of the hill that leads down to the duck pond. It was 8:45 A.M. “Want to run? See duckies?” said my son.

“I’d love to run and see the duckies,” I said. “Ready? On your mark, get set…go!”

And we ran down the hill, hand in hand, giggling the whole way, and when we were finished with the ducks and inside his school, and I had to place the mask of his inhaler over his mouth and nose, he didn’t even fight me. He just breathed in the medicine, kissed me goodbye, and wandered off to find his snack.

They say tragedy plus time equals comedy, and I hope they’re right, because I’ve been trying to find the humor in this situation, but things are breaking down so thoroughly that the humor, if it comes, will have to come from the sheer volume of small tragedies—think twenty men slipping on twenty banana peels all at once—rather than from the binary juxtaposition of man and peel.

Today, I had to pick up my two-year-old at daycare, because he’s been coughing for three weeks straight, and they’ve had it. He’s also the last kid in the class to be potty trained, and we were told to start him on underwear this past weekend, but then Dad went in the hospital on Friday with an abdomen trapped in fluids, which meant Leo’s fluids would remain, at least for the foreseeable future, trapped in diapers. “Why did you wait so long to bring him in?” said the pediatrician. “His lungs are in pretty bad shape.”

“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve been a little preoccupied.” I started trying to account for the three week lapse in parental oversight, but I left it at, “My father’s in the hospital,” which seemed sufficient enough.

I left the pediatrician’s office with a prescription for an inhaler and a steroid for Leo’s lungs, but when I went to sign for them at the pharmacy, I was told our insurance had been terminated. “No,” I said, “my husband was terminated. We have Cobra.” In fact, we’d just sent Cobra a massive four-figure check we couldn’t afford, but did they have a record of this check over at United Health Care? Of course not. So I shelled out the $311.00 out of pocket and cursed the day I ever left France, where I never—not once, in the four years I lived there—paid a single centime for medical care.

We were now far from home, and it was time for Leo’s dinner, but a taxi was out of the question, so I hopped on the M104 bus with my toddler, his stroller, my computer case, and a shopping bag filled with steroids and bronchial dilators. We disembarked in front of Citibank, where I stopped in to deposit a check from a photo client and to take out some cash. The bills miraculously came out of the machine, but let’s just say they shouldn’t have. “We’re overdrawn!” I said to my husband, whom I reached on his cell phone in the middle of a meeting with potential investors for his start-up. “How did that happen?”

“Yeah, well, now’s when things start breaking down,” he said. He’s been out of a salaried job for a month, and my book advance is long gone, and Redbook, which was supposed to have paid me this month, lost my contract, so I won’t get that check until the end of January. “I’m sorry, but just to clarify,” I wrote to the editor last week, “why can’t you cut my check until the end of January?”

“Well, six weeks are standard from the receipt of the contract, but I added on an extra two weeks because of the holidays.”

I wanted to say, “Well why don’t you subtract two weeks, since you lost my contract?” but since I can’t really afford sarcasm right now, I sucked it up and wrote a response like, “Oh, okay. Great. Thanks.”

“Things are breaking down,” said my sister Laura, the one doctor in our family, when I reached her on the phone in my father’s hospital room. She then went into a lengthy description of my father’s gall bladder, the tumors in his liver, the tumor in his pancreas, and the various issues of flow—or, in my father’s case, lack thereof—between them. If I understood her correctly, the gall bladder cannot be removed, because of the tumors, but it needs to be removed, because of the build-up of abdominal cavity fluids, and all this means Dad won’t be able to get chemo this Wednesday, which means the tumors will grow bigger and wreak more havoc. Meaning, Dad's dike has finally sprung more leaks than we have fingers to plug them. “’We’re in the terminal stages,’” my sister said, quoting my father's physician. “We have to accept it.”

Meanwhile Leo sat in the other room, watching Bob Marley sing "Three Little Birds" and coughing uncontrollably.