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- [00:00]
Dan Kennedy
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year olds. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered. Spanish, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com Moth Today. This podcast is brought to you by Stamps.com A lot of small businesses get stuck doing things the old way out of habit, including vital operations like mailing and shipping that can be so time consuming. With stamps.com, print postage for any letter or package right from your computer, then just hand it to your mail carrier. Right now, listeners of the Moth podcast can get a no risk TR plus a $110 bonus offer that includes up to $55 free postage. Go to stamps.com click on the microphone and type in Moth. The Moth is supported by Boxed Wholesale. Boxed is an online warehouse club with no membership fee. Featuring tiny prices, big sizes and fast shipping. Shop anywhere anytime from the convenience of your mobile device. Save time and money while shopping. A curated selection of household, grocery and personal care favorites delivered straight to your home. Get 15% off your first order@box.com moth.
- [02:06]
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy, so at the end of every episode I always say thanks for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week and we just realized we've never really followed up with you on that. So after eight years I wanted to take a minute and check in with you to see how your week went. We tweeted the question out to our followers. We got a bunch of replies Mona tweeted at us. This week my son gave his 86 year old grandma a lesson in computer music and there's a picture here of a kid with his laptop and he is with his 86 year old grandmother and they're probably gonna play Electric Daisy Carnival next year. That's awesome. DJs make like $23 million a year. It's grandmother making some bank. Rob tweeted at us. My son got his first and hopefully last disciplinary note for using language too colorful for a six year old to direct at a classmate. I think the translation there, we're not really talking about colorful language per se. Like he's not like going to school speaking with a Victorian flourish. That is unacceptable. I think, I think we're talking about profanity, which frankly, I also have a little problem with occasionally and I've been trying to get better at. This week on the podcast we have stories from Kevin McGeehan. An excellent night that we had down in Austin, Texas. He tells a very funny, touching story. We have Bruce Fieler and Steve Osborne as well. For all of that, I'm going to turn it over to the Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns.
- [03:55]
Kathryn Burns
From prx, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kathryn Burns and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is all about true stories told live. And all of this week's stories explore how we cope with illness when it strikes us or the people we love. Of course, sickness is often a tutorial, showing us who we really are, even as it pushes us to the limits of our own endurance. But don't worry, this isn't an hour of sad stories. They're also full of humor and resilience and hope. Our first story is by Kevin McGann. He told it at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. Here's Kevin live at the mall.
- [04:40]
Kevin McGeehan
Hi. When I was 35 years old, I went home to live with my mother, Patty. Patty was a tiny little red haired lady, just a sweet gal, funny, intelligent, and she was a lovable eccentric who looked through the world, looked at the world through a crooked pair of rose colored glasses. She was a single mother, divorced, and she'd been both those things since I was 10. And for a majority of my life it had just been the two of us. Now the reason I was living at home again was because Patty had recently been diagnosed as terminal. Given six months to a year left to live. And she asked me to come home and help her through it. I said yes immediately and went home. But we made an agreement, a pledge to each other when I first got home, and that was we were in this together, that she would do her best to treat me like an adult. And I would do my best not to act like a child. The other thing that we decided we were going to do was that we were going to look at it like a job. A job with responsibilities attached to it. And my title was primary caregiver. And with that job title I received $75 cash that I received every Friday. Jealous. For the first couple of months I had two main responsibilities, each of them very different. The first responsibility was Patty was a steadfast worker and wanted to work up until the last day that she possibly could. So my first job responsibility was to drive her to work in the morning at nine and then pick her up at three o'clock in the afternoon, which left me six hours to do with as I pleased. One thing I would do is I'd go to the gym for a couple hours where I got in absolutely ridiculous shape. Or two, I would engage in my new hobby, one that I picked up while I was at home. One that I'm going to tell you now, completely and totally, unapologetically scrapbooking. I love it, I'm very, very good at it and I find it therapeutic and rewarding. At the time, Patty and I used to joke that I could easily be described as a 35 year old heterosexual male with the hobbies of a 75 year old woman in the body of a 25 year old gay man. My second job responsibility was a little bit different and it was this. Patty had a rare form of cancer called a leiomyosarcoma, which was a free floating tumor that was making its way through her body, systematically shutting down her organs. To do this, it had to expend energy, therefore it had to expel a waste product which was in the form of a liquid that would collect on her lungs throughout the day. Another one of my job responsibilities was every day at 7:30 in the morning, I would take a stent that was connected to the inside of her body and I would hook it up to a vacuum and I would drain all that fluid off of her lungs. The process took about 90 seconds and we would get about a liter of fluid off. Each time. We had a signal that when she felt empty, she would raise her hand in the air and then I would have to immediately close the valve. We were warned by the doctors that were either of us to miss this timing. All of the liquid would be gone and then air would be violently sucked out of her lungs and in her weakened state, she would have a heart attack and die in front of me. So for a few seconds every day, Patty's life was in my hands. Optimism was a full time job. And I will be very candid with you, When I first got home, all I wanted to do was run as far away from this as I possibly could. It was too much for me to bear at some points. And then the thing that really made sense to me was when I realized that Patty could not run away from this either. That we were stuck, we couldn't do anything about it, and we just had to deal with it. But then one night, everything changed. We were watching the third season of the West Wing and there was a quote that came on that caught her ear and left an indelible mark. And it became the cornerstone of how we looked at this entire thing. And the paraphrased quote is this. We all fall and it matters, but when the fall is all you have left, it matters a great deal. This led us to have a lot of very honest discussions. One that something that we had never really broached before, which was, what do you do when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt you're going to die? No ifs, ands or buts about it. This is just your fate. Do you let that knowledge crush you and dictate your actions for your remaining days? Or do you accept your fate? Do you embrace it? Do you do things that you want to do, holding your head high? I asked her, how do you want to go out? And she answered, I don't want to go out with a whimper. I do not want people feeling sorry for me. So that led me to one night suggest, what if we threw a party for you, like a grand bon voyage, where I would emcee it and put on a performance, a tribute. And she loved the idea and it was great for her because she loved the idea of being able to say goodbye to everyone in her life that meant something to her. And plus, as she said to me afterwards, and I quote, I will never get to see you get married or become a father. So this will just have to be the next best thing. But there was one thing holding her back before she would fully commit to this party. If Patty was here to describe herself, she would say that she was fiscally frugal, but because she's not here to defend herself, she was a cheapskate who refused to spend money. So the next day I went and did some pricing and I reported back to her that for us to have it at the venue that she wanted, it was going to cost us a minimum of $8,000. And she said, oh no, oh no, this was a really good idea. But no, I went away and I thought about it and I came back to her with this argument. I said, mom, you have the money. I'm about to inherit this money, and this is how I would choose to spend it. Later that night, as I was sitting in my bedroom working on a very masculine scrapbook, Patty stood in my doorway and she said, kevin, my entire life I've been saving for the future. The future's now, isn't it? I said, yeah, it is. And she said, okay, let's have this party. At this point, planning began, invitations went out, and this was such an exciting time for us because it gave us so much. It gave us something to talk about, it gave us something to plan for, and most importantly, it gave us something to look forward to because we desperately needed it. One night, while a little wine tipsy at dinner, we started playing a cute game together, which was we started confessing secrets to each other because none of them mattered anymore. Because all the things that I had done in the past were simply just stops on the road that eventually led me to come home and help her. So if I ever had a free pass with my mother, this was it. So I told her all about, in my tipsy way, about how I stole beer from a grocery store that I used to work at when I was 16. How one time a couple of years prior, I had jumped over a chain link fence and my shoelace got caught on the chain link and I fell on my face and it exploded. And the doctor said, if you had just done it a half inch more, you'd have been blind. Or. My favorite one was the comically dangerous drug transaction that I did on the streets of Vienna, Austria. But the only reason I got out of it safely was because one of the guys thought I looked like Chuck Norris. Patty and I were laughing, having a great time, and then she told me something that absolutely broke my heart. When she was 24 years old, Patty married my father. Never being one of the popular kids, Patty was nervous to have a wedding shower thrown in her honor. But her roommate at the time was also her maid of honor and said, don't you worry about it, it's all going to be fine. We cut to the day of the wedding shower. Patty, my grandmother and the roommate sat in a sparsely decorated room for over an hour and no one showed up. To a 24 year old woman, this was a devastating and defining moment for her. Because that night she confessed a fear that she had always had, which is no one comes to my party.
- [14:05]
Dan Kennedy
Yeah.
- [14:08]
Kevin McGeehan
So I knew at this point that this was no longer just a want, that this was a need, and this was something that I had to deliver for her. Like I said, she was a single mother and she had done so many selfless acts for me that I had no other choice than to repay this last one. So I doubled my efforts and I tried to contend with all the different factors that must be contended with as you are doing an event of this level. But there were so many things that I could not control. Five days before the party, her health takes a sharp turn and she has to be rushed to the hospital where I am told that she does not have much more time. Then relatives with opinions start coming in town. And not everybody thought the idea for the party was awesome. There was one, her brother came and he said that you need to stop this party and cancel it because what you two are doing, and I quote, is morbid and completely inappropriate. But then Patty did something that I have never seen her do before, and that was she stood her ground against her brother and any other naysayer that she was going to have this party, that it was not going to be canceled. And she made me promise that it was going to go on with or without her. This was going to be her crowning moment and no one was going to step in her way. And you could either get on board or get out of the way. It was amazing to watch, but I know her really well, so let's be honest, she'd also spent 8,000 non refundable dollars on this, so there's no way she was going to cancel it. We cut to the day of the party. June 24, 2006, 7:00pm and I will never ever forget this moment. We are in the beautiful Sawgrass Marriott Resort in lovely Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, standing in front of the closed doors of Banquet Hall. A Patty is behind me in a wheelchair. And I cannot believe that we've made it to this point. And I'm exhausted. I've not slept in days. And I turn to her and I touch her hand and she gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. And I say to her, here we go. And I turn around and I put my hands on the doors. And fueled only by adrenaline and two watered down vodka cranberries, I push the doors open and I walk in the room and I announce, ladies and gentlemen, Patty McGeehan. And the place goes wild. The piano player bursts into a rousing rendition of the West Wing theme. And everyone who said they were going to be there had shown up. And all of them are on their feet, clapping wildly. And Patti McGeehan enters the room to her first and her last standing ovation. And it is magnificent to witness the party goes spectacular. It was a wonderful night, full of laughter, full of just pragmatic honesty. And aside from one small snafu that always happens in events of this size where one guy thought it would be the best idea in the world to give an impromptu speech where he called Patty a MILF and then defined the acronym, aside from that, the evening was as good, if not better, than we had hoped. At the end of the night, the culmination was a receiving line where Patty would get to say goodbye to everyone, but more importantly, everyone would get to say goodbye to her. And watching that receiving line from the outside, I can say with assurance that while there was sadness in the farewells, there was not one person in that room who felt sorry for her. At the end of the night, she called me over to her and she gestured for me to lean down and she kissed me on the cheek and she said, thank you, Kevin. This was so much better than my wedding shower. To which I responded, you're very welcome. But that one really wasn't hard to beat. Eight days later, as I was holding her hand, she drew her final breath. Her last words to me were, you're a good man, Charlie Brown. There are many things I got to thank Patty for, specifically this party, which was as much of a gift for me as it was for her. I walked out of that house different than how I walked in, and I truly believe it was for my betterment. Because I got to see Patty face her fears and I got to see her conquer them. And she showed me beyond a shadow of a doubt that no matter how much the chips may be stacked against you, that there is a way to hold your head high. Because when the fall was all she had left, she did it on her terms because it mattered a great deal. And to answer your next question, yes, I made a beautiful scrapbook of the whole thing. Thank you very much.
- [19:43]
Kathryn Burns
That was Kevin McGeehan. Kevin teaches improvisation at the Second City Hollywood and has a podcast called Funny Cause It's True, that you can listen to for free on itunes. To see pictures of Kevin and his mom Patty at the party and to see the scrapbook he made to commemorate the event, go to themoth.org Coming up next, when his life is on the line, a man obsesses about one thing most of if he dies, who will be dad to his twin daughters?
- [20:28]
The moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by prx.
- [20:36]
Dan Kennedy
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- [21:10]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Kathryn Burns from the Moth. We're doing an hour about the things we learn from illness, and our next story comes from Bruce Fieler. He told this story in an evening in New York we called home for the holidays. Stories of family gatherings and ungatherings. Here's Bruce live at the Moth.
- [21:38]
Bruce Feiler
It was the last weekend of June, and the next day was our fifth wedding anniversary. Linda and I had planned a trip, not really so much to celebrate that we had been married five years, but more to celebrate that our identical twin daughters had just turned three. Because after three years, which we were on the defense, finally we could be on the offense again. We could live once more. But first I had to go get this full body bone scan. I had this routine blood test a few days earlier that suggested something was wrong with my bones, and the bone scans showed that I had some large sort of nondescript tumor in my left femur. So two days later I had to get an X ray, the next day an mri. And that afternoon I got a call from my doctor. The tumor in your leg is not consistent with a benign tumor, she said. And it took my mind a second to convert that double negative into a much more horrifying single negative. I have cancer. For years I had traveled and hiked and walked around the world, and suddenly I was facing the very real possibility that I might never walk again. I went home and lay on my bed and tried to make sense of all the emotions that were swirling through my head. And I quickly thought, I'm fine. I've lived a full life. I'm at peace. I also thought Linda would be fine for all the pain she would experience, she'd find a way to live a life of passion and joy. But I kept coming back to my girls and what this would mean for them. Later, someone told me, oh, don't worry, they won't remember what happened to you at this time in your life. And I said, yes, but if I die, that means they won't remember me. And just then, Eden and Tybee came running in this swirl of pink and purple. Our favorite nicknames for them were actually Pinkalicious and Purplicious. They're really the nickname that we most liked is came from the day they were born, April 15, when the doctor looked at his watch and said, hmm, tax day. Early filer and late filer. But on this day, they did this dance. And they swirled faster and faster until they tumbled to the ground. I crumbled. I kept imagining all the walks I might not take with them. The art projects I might not mess up, the boyfriends I might not scowl at, the aisles I might not walk down. Would they remember who I was? Would they miss my love, my approval, my voice? You don't really sleep when you just learn you have cancer. You just lie in wake and fear. But a few days later, I sat upright in bed one morning before dawn, and I suddenly had this idea of how I might give them my voice. I would reach out to men from all parts of my life and ask them to be present in the lives of my daughters. I believe my girls will have plenty of opportunities, I wrote. They'll have loving families. They'll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad? And I said to myself, I would call this group of men the Council of Dads. Now, my first instinct was not to tell. My wife Linda is a very upbeat person. She's got a big personality, she's got a big smile, she's got big hair. Though I'm not allowed to say she's got big hair. But I really couldn't control myself. And so the next day I told her, and I gotta say, she loved this idea. But she quickly started rejecting my nominees. She said, well, you know, I love him, but I would never ask him for advice. So it turned out that starting a council of Dads was a very efficient way to find out what my wife really thought of my friends. So anyway, we decided we needed some roles, and so we quickly came up with a number. First we would have no family, only friends. Then we would have only men. We were trying to fill the dad space. And then we kind of went through my personality and tried to pick a different dad for every side. So the first of these was Jeff Shumlin. Now, Jeff led this trip to Europe I took when I graduated from high school in 1983. And we did a lot of crazy things on that trip. We picked up a car in Florence and turned it around in its parking spot and put it back. We actually broke into the Paris Opera House and ran through the tunnels in Holland one night we actually went cow tipping. But this is really what we wanted Jeff to teach our girls. We wanted them to teach them. We wanted him to teach them how to travel. So not long after my diagnosis, we packed everybody in the car, we drove up to Vermont. Jeff and I sat in this apple orchard, and I read him my letter. Will you help me there, dad? And I got to the end and he was crying and I was crying and I was kind of waiting. And he looked at me and he said, yes. I was like, yes. I kind of had forgotten. There was a question at the heart of it. And frankly, it never exactly occurred to me that anybody would turn me down under the circumstances. So then I did him. And it turned out to be a very moving thing I did with all the dads over the months. I said, what's the one piece of advice you would give to my girls? And he said, be a traveler, not a tourist. When you travel, get off the bus, seek out what's different. Approach the cow. So I said, It's 10 years from now, okay, and my girls are about to take their first trip and I'm not here. So what would you tell them? He said, I would tell your girls to approach a trip. As a young child approaches a mud puddle, you can bend over and look at your reflection and maybe kind of run your finger in and make a small ripple. Or you can jump in and thrash around and see what it feels like or smells like. I would tell your girls, I want to see you back here. At the end of this experience, covered in mud. Two weeks after my diagnosis, a biopsy confirmed I had a 7 inch osteosarcoma in my left femur. 600Americans a year get an osteosarcoma. 85% are under 21. Only 100 adults a year get this disease. 15 years ago, they would have cut off my leg unhoped, and only 15% of the people survived. But they discovered about 10 years ago that one cocktail of chemo could be effective in some cases. So quickly I began this regimen. I got five months of chemotherapy. Then I had a 15 hour surgery in which my surgeon, Dr. John Healy, took out my left femur and replaced it with titanium. Took my fibula from my calf and relocated it to my thigh, where it now lives, and took out a third of my quadricep. This surgery is so rare, only two human beings before me had ever survived it. And my reward for surviving it was to go back for four more months of chemo. It was, as we called it in my house, a lost year. And we were so worried during that time about how this would affect our girls. But I think we came to feel perhaps it made them an ounce more caring, a dose more compassionate. They would run to the playground and embrace the girl with the amputated leg. Or they loved to point out the rabbit with the crutches at the back of the children's book. One night, Eden came to my side of the bed and she had one of those nighttime frights. And as I lifted my leg out of bed to take her back to her room, she reached for my crutches. And if I could cling to one memory from this lost year, it would be walking down a darkened hallway at 4 in the morning with five little fingers grasping the spongy handle underneath my hand. One of the things that was so powerful about starting the Council of Dads was that it forced me to do something we never do and that sit down with my closest friends and tell them what they meant to me. And I also learned a lot about men in this process. So many of these guys are so much more communicative and emotional than their dads were. I mean, the things that we would talk about, our feelings, our fear, even our weight. And to me, the one person, by the way, who most loves to talk about his weight really embodies this mix. I mean, his name is David Black. And David, in a lot of ways, is a classic man's man. He answers the phone, yo, mother. He gives boring. That's by the way, edited for the Moth. He gives boring speeches about obscure bottles of wine. And he bought a sports car on his 50th birthday. But actually, like a lot of men, he's impatient. He actually bought it on his 49th. But he's also a new man. He leaves work early to coach Little League. He hugs. He bakes. Somebody asked me if David cried when I asked him to be in my Council of Dads. I was like, david cries when you invite him to take a walk. So David is a literary agent, which means he's a broker of dreams in a world where most dreams don't come true. And so this is what we wanted to teach our girls, how to dream. So I said, okay, David, what advice would you give to a dreamer? He said, believe in yourself. I was like, okay, fine. But when I came to see you, I didn't believe in myself. I was at a wall. He said, but I don't see the wall. And I will tell you the same. You may encounter a wall from time to time, but I'm going to show you how to get over it, around it, or through it. But whatever you do, don't succumb to it. Don't give in to the wall. So it's 20 years from now, I said, and again, I'm not here. And my girls come to you with a dream. They want to climb a mountain or open a coffee shop or write a book. What would you tell them? He said, I would tell them we have to make the awesome mundane. We need to find a roadmap to the top of that mountain, or an outline for that book, or a plan for that restaurant. And if that dream should fail, he said, we have to find a dream that can work. Because anybody can dream an impossible dream. But only a few find a dream that's possible. Those are the ones that are happy. On the one year anniversary of my diagnosis, I went to see my doctor, Dr. Healy. And by the way, Healy, great name for a doctor. He's this lovely man. He wears these small candy striped bow ties. He is the president of the International Society of Limb Salvage, which is the least euphemistic name I have ever heard. And he also pauses longer than anybody I've ever met. So I said to him, I said, doctor, if my girls ever come to you one day, and they say, what should we learn from our daddy's story? What would you tell them? And this man pauses. He paused longer than anybody I had ever heard. And he said, I would tell your girls what I know, and that is that everybody dies. But not everybody lives. I want you to live. A year later, when our girls turned five, we convened the Council of Dads together for the first time. And as they walked through our door in Brooklyn, Linda leaned over to me and she said, they're here. And you are, too. Two years had passed since my first diagnosis. The quarterly scans I got showed they continued to be clean. And then, as now, I was cancer free. Also, after a year and a half on crutches and a year using a cane, and now, 500 hours of physical therapy later, I just walked onto the stage with only a slight limp. But people kept asking me, well, are you going to now disband the Council of Dads? And I was like, no. In fact, if anything, I can't imagine living without it. And one of the reasons is because our girls have come to love it. In fact, that morning as they walked through the door, these are men, by the way, so they're competitive. So they walk through this door. And each one had a bigger and bigger present. I was like, no wonder our girls love the council. They have scored. But there's another reason that worked, and that's because all these people related. I mean, it was interesting as we all started talking to one another in that afternoon. I mean, at one point I looked around and I thought, you know what? I should have called this the Council of Bald Spots. But Linda walked in and she said, you know, I always wondered what you guys were going to talk about when you got together. And now I know it's midlife crises and sports cars. I mean, you are such men. That night, we all sat around the table and talked about what the experience had meant to them. One dad said that it helped him remember and rediscover the voice of his lost father. Someone else said it had made him a better father himself. And what I kept thinking was that maybe this works for a different reason. Something in our culture today conspires against friendship, particularly as parents. We have our work, we have our family, but friends keep getting pushed aside. But what this had done was it had built a bridge and allowed us to invite our friends into the thing that means the most to us and that is our family. Finally, that night, my friend Ben spoke up. He's very much the contrarian. He's the one, when I asked him to be in the Council of Dads, who said, I reject the premise, you're going to survive. I hereby tender my resignation. And this, by the way, is a guy who doesn't like to admit he's wrong all that much. But on this night, he said, you know what? I was wrong. And now I realize, whether you're healthy or sick, whether you're a man or a woman, we all need a council in our lives. And that ended up being the secret of the Council of Dads. Linda and I did it for our girls, but really, it changed all of us.
- [35:31]
Kathryn Burns
That was Bruce Spyler. He's an author whose most recent book is called the Secrets of Happy Families. He's also the writer and presenter of the PBS series Sacred Journeys with Bruce Fieler. We're thrilled to report that Bruce is still cancer free. To see a picture of him with his daughters and the Council of dads go to themoth.org Coming up, two tough guy cops try not to go soft when one is sick in the hospital. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [36:14]
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [36:22]
Dan Kennedy
Prx.Org the moth is supported by blinds.com blinds.com is an American success story started above founder J. Steinfeld's garage in the 90s and now the world's largest online window covering store with over 250 of the friendliest and most helpful window blind experts you've ever met. Now that spring has arrived, it's time to talk to one of those experts for window decorating advice. Get everything you need@blinds.com free color samples, free shipping, and free expert advice at prices that crush the ones you'll find in stores. That's blinds.com this is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.
- [37:02]
Kathryn Burns
I'm Kathryn Burns. Our final story is from retired NYPD detective Steve Osborne, who is a Moth regular. He told his story at an evening we called Feeding the Hand that Bites stories about parenthood. Here's Steve Osborne live at the mall.
- [37:23]
Steve Osborne
How you doing? In February of 1996, I was a sergeant in New York City Police Department. Now, at the time, I was studying for the upcoming lieutenant's test. Now, you probably don't know, but promotion exams in a police department are very, very difficult to even have a chance at passing. You got to study every day for at least six months. You got to get the books, the tapes. You got to go to the classes, the cram sessions, the study groups just to have a chance at passing. Now, I did all of this for the sergeant's test. Worked out good. I got promoted. But this time it wasn't going so good. My head wasn't into it. My heart wasn't into it. And the reason was because of my father. He had cancer and he was dying. Now, every day he would call me up and he would say, hey, how's the studying going? And every day I would lie to him. I would say, it's going good. Don't worry about it. I'm okay. You know. How you doing? You all right? And the reason I would lie to him was I had waited seven years for the sergeant's test, and I waited another seven years for this test. And if I didn't hit this one, I'd have to wait seven years more and it would be too late. So it was now or never. And he knew it. And he was feeling guilty because he knew this was a very important Time in my career, he was feeling guilty that he was being a distraction to me. Now, a lot of guys in this world, they fantasize that they're tough guys. They're not. My father was a genuine right down to the core tough guy. And when he would call me up, he would say, hey, you listen to me and you listen good. That's the way he talked. Don't you let this little thing that I'm going through here fuck you up. Cancer. You got a big day coming up, and you better keep your head screwed on straight. Now, on this particular day, I was sitting at my desk up in the Bronx. I'm trying to get a little bit of studying in, and I was waiting for a phone call. My mother and my sisters were taking him to the hospital for the last time. It was over. It was done with. There was nothing anybody could do for him anymore, and he was going into hospice. So I'm sitting there trying to study, and as usual, nothing's sinking in. The phone rings. It's my sister. She goes, we're here. We're settled in. If you want to talk to him, you better hurry up. So I close up the books, I shove him in the desk, I jump in the car, and off I go. Now, the hospital was in Jersey, so I had a little bit of a ride ahead of me, and I was just thinking about him and me and life. Now, in life, my father was a royal pain in the ass. You know, everything, it was his way or the highway. He was a tough guy to deal with. But him and I always had a special relationship. I was his only son. He was a cop. I was a cop. He was a sergeant. I was a sergeant. He was a lieutenant, and he wanted me to be a lieutenant. He wanted me to have the same opportunities that he did, and. And that's why he was feeling guilty. Now, I always thought he was a cool guy, and I loved hanging out with him. Even when I was a little kid, you know, I would ride my bike. I'd be like 6 years old, and I'd ride my bike over to the station house where he worked. And it was kind of far, and I'd show up there with some dopey excuse I just happened to be passing by. And instead of him getting mad at me for riding my bike so far, he'd be like, come on in, Come on in. And he'd be, like, beaming with pride. He introduced me to all the guys. Hey, how you doing? How you doing? And I don't know what people would think like you come into the station house, you know, and your car got stolen, you know, you got robbed, your house got burglarized, and you go up to the desk to tell the sergeant your sad story, and you look behind them and there's some six year old kids sitting back there with him, you know, And I got my baseball glove on, I'm chewing bubble gum and I'm sitting back there thinking, like, this is cool. This is the life for me. This is what I want to be when I grow up. Now, even when I got old, I loved hanging out with them. When I was old enough to drink, we ended up hanging out in the same neighborhood joint. Every neighborhood's got a bar and ours was Pete's. Now, in Pete's, my father was a little bit of a legend. Our neighborhood wasn't a bad neighborhood, but it was a tough neighborhood. And it didn't take much for the fist to fly. One Sunday morning I go in, forget to have a couple beers, watch the football games, and I notice that the glass on the cigarette machine was broken. So I go down the end of the bar, down to our regular family spot, and I say to Butchie the bartender, I said, hey, Butch, what happened to the cigarette machine? So he just shakes his head. He goes, ah, your father again. Turns out the night before, the old man's sitting in there hanging out. Some young guy comes into the bar, nobody knows him, he's like twice the old man's size and half his age. And he sits down next to him and pulls out a cigarette and he asks, what father? He goes, you got a light? So father goes, nah, you know, I don't smoke. So the guy goes to him, what are you, a fag? Well, that's all it takes. The old man got up, nailed him, laid him out, picks him up, drags him down the end of the bar, makes a right hand turn, drags him down the other end of the bar, puts his head through the cigarette machine and then throws him through the front door out into the street. He always cracks me up, he does. I go home later and I see him, he's sitting in his easy chair, he's watching tv. And you know, he's looking a little old and he's got this sad look on his face. So I said to him, you had a heck of a night in Beats last night. He doesn't even look at me. He's just staring straight at the head, at the tv. And he says to me, he goes, these young punks, he goes, they don't take me seriously anymore. They think I'm soft. They think I'm a cupcake. So I try to reassure him, like, relax, nobody thinks you're a cupcake. And not for nothing, you know, you already had three heart attacks. The next one may be the big one. And if you have it in beats, Mommy's going to be pissed. Being married to him really probably wasn't that easy either. But he looks at me and he goes, hey. He goes, you see this? He goes, I still got one good fight left in me. Don't you worry about it. So I'm at the hospital, I hurry up, up to his room and I walk in and there he is. The toughest guy I ever met was sitting in a chair in a corner in his hospital gown, all slumped over with an IV in his arm and a little oxygen tube hooked to his nose. And they were pumping him up with some heavy duty morphine and he was out of it. He didn't even notice I came in the room. So I went right over to him and I didn't even take my jacket off. I knelt down next to him and I grabbed him by the arm, I shook his arm and I says, hey, hey, it's me. And he lifts his head up and I see his eyes are starting to focus. And he gives me that crooked tooth little smile of his. And it was like I was that 6 year old kid showing up at the station house again, you know, he was really glad to see me now in life. Him and I were never the touchy feely type, you know, there was no hugging and kissing. I love you, I love you. We didn't need any of that crap, you know, he loved me, I loved him, and that was all there was to it, you know, there was no need to get mushy about it. And I didn't think it was going to start now. But he reaches out and he grabs me and he grabs me by the jacket and he pulls me closer to him. I couldn't believe how strong he was. Two seconds ago he was half dead. Now he's got me by the jacket. I don't know what he wants. I don't know if he wants to fight or what. And he pulls me closer to him. He goes, you listen to me and you listen good. He goes, don't you let this little thing that I'm going through here fuck you up. He goes, you got a big day coming up on Saturday and you better keep your head screwed on straight. I wanted to say to him, like, hey, not for nothing, but you Got a pretty big day coming up here yourself, you know, and. And with all the crazy shit that he did in his life, you know, he should be a little bit more concerned about himself rather than me and my stupid test that was coming up in a couple of days. But the fact was, he wasn't concerned about himself in his last moments of life. All he cared about was me and my test. So he pulls me closer to him and he says to me, he goes, you gotta promise me something. He goes, and I'll promise you something. He goes, you gotta promise me that you're gonna forget about me and you're gonna go in there on Saturday and you're gonna hit this thing. He goes, and I promise you something. He goes, I promise you I won't die until Sunday. He goes, but after Sunday, he goes, all bets are off. He goes, I can't take much more of this shit. So I tell him, okay, relax. I promise you I'll be okay. And he's still holding on to me and he goes, and I promise you. And with that, he let go of my jacket and he goes like this, he goes, good boy. And then his arm just dropped down to his side and his head went down and he closed his eyes and he went to sleep and he never woke up again. And that was the last conversation that him and I ever had. The nurse, my mother and my sisters came over and we picked him up and put him in a bed. And my mother, you know, she tucked him in nice and she fluffed his pillow. And I said to the nurse, I said, what now? So she goes, now you wait. Waitin seemed like an easy thing, you know, compared to all the stuff we had been through. You know, hospitals and doctors and chemo waiting seemed like it was gonna be easy. But it wasn't. In a very short time, his lungs started to fill up with fluid. And it was very difficult for him to breathe. He was struggling, he was fighting to suck in every single breath. And it was very difficult to watch. And minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into a day and a day. We were more than a day and a half into this, watching him lay in bed and suffer and fight to live and fight to breathe every breath. In the meantime, my aunt and uncle and my cousins came, you know, lend a little moral support. And we were down in the waiting room down the hall. Now, the people in the hospital must have thought we were kooks or very disrespectful because the laughter that was coming out of that waiting room, you could hear it all the way down the hall. But it wasn't disrespect. Everybody was telling their favorite Tommy Osbourne stories. And everybody had one in life. He was a nut. He was. He was a character. So I go back to the. I go back to the room, and now it's just me and my mother. And it's nighttime and we're looking out the window and it was snowing. And we're watching the snowflakes come down and falling through the street lights and piling up on the cars. And it was very quiet and very peaceful. The room was dark except for one little fluorescent bulb above his bed. And it was really quiet except for the sound of him trying to breathe. And I said to my mother, I said, ma, do you think he's. Is that what he's doing? He's hanging on till Sunday? And she looks at me, she goes, you know your father. I wouldn't put nothing past him. Earlier, the nurse had told me, I asked, I said, how long can he continue like this? And she said, days. She goes, I've seen it go on for a week. I couldn't bear to watch him suffer like this any longer. I mean, days. He had suffered enough in life, and I didn't want him to suffer anymore because of me. So I had this bright idea, but it seemed wrong, wrong, wrong to lie to a guy on his deathbed. But I said to my mother, I said, what do you think that if I tell him that it's Sunday and I hit the test and it's okay? And she looks at me and she goes, I was surprised. She goes, do it. And with that, she just hugged me, kissed me, and she goes, good luck. I'll leave you two alone. And she left. Now it's just me and him. And I was half expecting him to sit up and say, don't bullshit me. Where's your books? Why aren't you studying? But he didn't do that. He was in La La Land. He was. He was somewhere between here and a very far off place that he was eventually going to have to go. So I grabbed the chair and I pulled it up next to his bed. I grabbed his hand and I said, hey, it's me. I says, listen, it's Sunday. I took the test and I think I hit this thing, you know, the answers seemed like they were popping off the page at me. There was a couple I wasn't too sure about, but most of them seemed like they were popping off the page. And I walked out of there feeling pretty good. I Think I hit it. And then I said to him, now, you listen, and you listen to me. You don't have to hang on for me anymore. I'm all right. I appreciate what you did for me, and I appreciate everything that you did for me in life. I'm doing okay. And I know I wouldn't be the man I am without you and everything that you taught me. You know, the guys in the neighborhood all think I ended up a lot like you. I said, I know that doesn't make Mommy happy to hear, but it made me happy. So I told him, now, I want you to go wherever it is you gotta go, and you do whatever it is you gotta do. I'm okay now. And I told him, and I'll see you soon. So I figured, what the hell, I could get mushy once, right? So I leaned over, I gave him a hug, I kissed him on the forehead and told him I loved him. And that's it. I walked out. My mother was outside. She goes, how did it go? So I'm like, you know him. He never listened to anybody in life. You know, who knows if he listened this time? So she went back in her room, took her place, and I went back in the hall, pacing the halls. And sure enough, two hours later, in the middle of a big snowstorm at the age of 59, he finally stopped fighting and he died. Now, we all went in the room and we said our goodbyes and we jumped in the cars and we drove through the snow to my mother's house. And we were all drained. We were exhausted. It was tough. I went into his bedroom, and he had a nightstand next to his bed. And I opened up the drawer and I took out his wallet. And in his wallet was his lieutenant shield and his ID card. And I took that and I put it in my back pocket over here. Because in this pocket, I had my sergeant's shield and my ID card. Now, I had a test to go take. Don't ask me how. It was some kind of miracle. I was totally unprepared. But I passed this thing, and I got promoted to lieutenant. And in the end, I realized that in life he was a difficult guy, and he had a difficult time expressing affection and love. But he showed me how much he loved me. The only way he really knew how. He saved that last fight to help me out. Thank you.
- [52:09]
Kathryn Burns
That was Steve Osborne. When we met Steve, he'd never been on stage before, but of course, he'd been telling stories for years to other cops in bars. He's since told more than a dozen stories at the Moth, touring the country with us. We're so proud to announce that he's written a memoir. It's called the True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop. Steve, we love you. To see pictures of Steve and his dad, go to themoth.org while there, you can share any of the stories you've heard in this hour with your friends and family. We're also on Facebook and Twitter Hemoth. You can also pitch us your story, call our pitch line and leave a two minute version of a story you'd like to tell. We just might use your pitch on the air or ask you to develop the story for our main stage. If we come to your area, the number to call is 877799, MOTH. Or you can pitch us a story@themost.org again. That's 877799 MOTH.
- [53:11]
H
I went to a rabbi, a kabbalist in Jerusalem, to get a Blessing. I was 38 years old. Old even by secular standards. I was raised religious, but I was no longer religious. I went to the rabbi to get a blessing to find the husband told me that I was cursed and I'd have to pay him $100 to remove the curse. And I laughed and I thought I would never go back to the rabbi again. But then I wondered who cursed me and I went back to the rabbi and paid him the money and he did a ceremony that removed the curse and he told me I'd meet someone on Hanukkah. I went back to the States and I thought I would meet someone on Hanukkah and I didn't. I was very sad. But the next year I met someone and I thought maybe he would be my boyfriend, but he dumped me. But I went to a party and tried to get him back and I met someone else and he called me and left him at this and he said, happy Hanukkah. Our first date was on Hanukkah and we got married a year later.
- [54:11]
Kathryn Burns
Remember, you can pitch us your own story@themost.org so that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join. Join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [54:32]
Your host this hour was the Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns. Kathryn also directed the stories in the show along with Maggie Ceno. The rest of the Moss directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jeuness, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Whitney Jones and Kirsty Bennett. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers Both events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Freddie Price, the as Is Brass Band, the Bad plus and the City of Prague Philharmonic performing the theme from the West Wing. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website Themoth.
- [55:44]
Dan Kennedy
So just to check back in with you on the Story Worthy Week situation, Sarah tweeted at us. My 11 week old daughter listened to Radiohead on vinyl for the first time and actually rocked out to it. Oh, that's an interesting choice for 11 week old. I feel like we're going to get an email from an 11 week old listener clarifying that she prefers the guitar heavy Radiohead period, not the electronic period at the end. But I am glad she's listening on vinyl because you know when your ears are 11 weeks old, you want the best sound experience you can get at that point. That's it for the Moth podcast. Hope you enjoyed all the stories this week.
- [56:24]
Bruce Feiler
The Moth is supported by Sundance Selects presenting Clouds of Sils. Maria Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz star in this riveting story about a celebrated actress forced to face her fears when cast against a young starlet. New York Magazine calls it a triumph.
- [56:40]
Kevin McGeehan
Rich and genuinely mysterious.
- [56:42]
Bruce Feiler
Juliet Binoche gives a master class in acting from the director of Summer Hours, now in select cities nationwide, May 1st.
- [56:51]
Dan Kennedy
And one more thing, the Moth mainstage is returning to LA on June 10th and that show is presented by KCRW. For tickets and information on all of our upcoming tour stops, just hit the.
- [57:05]
Site themoth.org Dan Kennedy is author of the books Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's a regular host and performer with the Moth when he's not on Twitter.
- [57:16]
Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest Podcast audio production by Whitney Jones. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Experience Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week.