You're A Dirty Dog, Melissa Mansfield...

We got so close. Melissa was cancer-free since August. There was general confidence. She overcame, we thought, one of the worst cancers. ALL has a 2 yr survival rate of around 20%. So, to die from the treatment, well, that’s hard to take.

If you haven’t seen what happens in a bone marrow transplant, you probably don’t know how brutal it is. You ask a lot of “Why are we doing this exactly?” But Melissa did not do that as much as the rest of us did.

Man, we came close. We thought that after getting out of the hospital last time she was turning the corner. The last week of her life, one of the clinicians told us, as we were facing some of the difficulties with the liver, that most people who had been thru as much as Melissa had were already dead, and that everyone was amazed not only at how tough she was, but how she did it without complaining.

So last night, after I put the boys down, I went out driving, clear my head, get some quiet. Listened to the radio and had to laugh because “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” by Poison, came on. I can’t stand that song, and Melissa liked it. I always talked about how bad the song was.

She used to laugh at me for going on various rants. They were predictable, so much so that she would start them for me before I did!

There’s a bridge in Louisville that the state has been trying to paint for 3 years, paying millions and it’s still not done. I would always say, “Me and Niedermeyer ( a custodian at Christ Church I was close to) would paint that for $1 million a piece. Give us a budget for spray paint, and we’ll do it.” So every once in a while on the way into the clinic, she would head me off at the pass and say something like, “I bet you and Niedermeyer could paint that bridge…”

Or if anything about the Queen came up, esp if someone tried to teach us commoners about protocol with the Queen, I would say, “We fought two wars so I don’t have to worry about her,” or “Andrew Jackson settled my right to chew tobacco in her presence if I want to…”

Or if Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” came on, I would start in on how I did not feel sorry for any rock star. “He’s making millions, so it’s really hard for me to feel sorry for him if he has to be on the road for 16 hours a day, or if yokels make fun of his long hair. Cry me a river.” She’d say, “you ruin every song!”

So, the Poison song was a favorite target. But there it was on the radio. I couldn’t change the station! I had to listen. I was just laughing, “Melissa Mansfield, you are a dirty dog!” I know, I know, she didn’t have anything to do with the DJ’s song choice. But the next song was “Love Me Two Times…”