The days before fall sports begin are dwindling as fast as it seems this summer is. Seeing an opportunity to take advantage of one of my last free Saturdays for 10 months, my wife and I decided to take an impromptu road trip.
So we put the huskies on ice (the run of the house – downstairs, of course), jumped in the Jeep Cherokee I bought for Montra for her birthday from Lucas-Smith Chrysler here in Festus a few years ago and headed south.
Our objective was to “eat our way through the Bootheel” and spend the day relaxing and reminiscing over our 35 years together.
Out of all those years, the last year was the hardest. Montra was diagnosed with breast cancer last August. She started taking chemotherapy immediately. For the first two months everything seemed to be going as well as we’d hoped. She had lost all her hair, including her eyebrows, but was eating some and wasn’t experiencing much nausea.
Then it hit her full force, requiring two hospital stays in two months. I had mistaken her lethargy for something far more serious. She had been receiving the best care I could have imagined, but the toxicity of her treatment sent her into a tailspin. I’ve only called 911 once in my life. Montra’s weight had dipped below 100 pounds. One day she came down to the kitchen to try to eat and blacked out for a moment. Luckily, she was sitting down but she still hit her head on the table. The emergency response from the St. Charles Fire Department was instantaneous. I walk Ranger and Lakota past their station house every day. I thank them every time.
When she cleared the ER and settled into a hospital room, Montra was told her potassium was critically low. She started taking it through the port she had surgically placed above her collarbone, put there to make taking the chemo easier. I brought her home a week later but she was still very weak and faced more chemo.
At the same time my health had deteriorated to the point where I came close to being hospitalized myself. That put the fear of God into me. Who was going to take care of Montra? Who was going to take care of the million things at home that require daily attention? Who was going to work? I stayed out of the hospital, but I still deal with a serious autoimmune disease I’ve had for 30 years.
I managed to keep meeting my deadlines, Montra struggled through the effects of chemo and countless other drugs and a week before Christmas, she found herself being admitted into the hospital through the ER again. I tried cheering her up and we made it a goal she would be home before Christmas. Her first series of chemo treatments came to a premature end. The farther away she got from her last dose, her appetite slowly came back and she felt a little better but we got to spend Christmas together at home.
Montra’s surgery to remove what was left of the tumor was in January. Despite the stress it put on every cell of her body, the chemo had done its job. Again, the medical team and Montra’s surgeon performed their jobs to the highest level.
After a month of recovering from surgery, Montra went back to work. Her hair was growing in dark and thick. It had never been below her shoulders since I’d known her. But now it was short. I kept telling her she looked like the new mayor of St. Louis.
In the months since, Montra was hospitalized a third time, but for something completely unrelated. It knocked us both back a peg or two. Unfortunately for her, the latest setback will linger for a while before going away.
Next month, Montra will do what countless cancer survivors have done, and that’s to ring a bell to signify she’s alive and beating cancer. It had reached stage three. We are so lucky. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve drifted off into a memory we shared together in the last year. I always tell her, there is no me, only we.
On a perfect Saturday weather-wise, Montra did what she always does on our road trips. She handled all our music. We talked and laughed about the trips we had made before.
When I took her to Sikeston where my mom lived at the time for our first Christmas together, the old Ford Bronco I had didn’t have heat. But it had four-wheel drive. It had snowed and was freezing but we made the trip safely. No cell phones or internet. Just each other. A few days later on the way home, I looked over at her and her nose was red. I could see her breath in the cold. Suddenly, she took her shoe off, stuck her foot on the dashboard, put a red mitten on it and crowed like a rooster. I knew I was marrying her.
We hadn’t been to Sikeston in 10 years when we pulled off I-55. We ate first at Lambert’s Cafe. We got there as soon as it opened. Good thing because within a half hour there was a line out the door. I had met owner Norman Lambert on more than one occasion when I lived in Sikeston in the 1970s. It was a small diner then. The food was up to par. Montra caught a “throwed roll” and we moved on to take a tour of Sikeston before our next food stop. The town was preparing for the Sikeston Jaycee Bootheel Rodeo, which it hosts every August. Horse trailers were everywhere. About a half dozen cowboys were riding their horses at a gas station.
We saw a lively exhibition of young cowpokes trying to ride sheep. I say “trying” because none of them made it that far.
Bo’s Barbecue was our next stop. Montra opted out of eating for a second time in two hours, but there was no way I wasn’t getting a pulled pork sandwich with the coleslaw on it. Dexter Barbecue is close by, and there are plenty of other choices for barbecue, but when I lived there, I ate at Bo’s. That’s how I make such decisions.
Our original plan was to make BG’s Deli in Cape Girardeau our final stop. BG’s is widely known for having the best potato skins. Having graduated from Cape Girardeau Central in the 1980s, BG’s had been around for a few years and was a popular hangout. But it’s closing this month and it would be our final chance at those skins. However, I knew I was pushing my luck if I ate again. Plus, we wanted to make one more stop that had nothing to do with food.
We pulled off I-55 at the Perryville exit and within a few minutes were at the Missouri Veterans National Memorial. One of its main features is a scaled version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, two black granite walls that come together in the shape of a V, listing the names of the more than 58,000 men and women who died in the war. I’ve never visited the one in Washington, D.C., so this was a somber moment.
To our Vietnam veterans: Thank you and God bless you. To my wife and life’s co-pilot: I love you and here’s to many more getaways and memories.