Dunedin man stays calm in the face of terminal cancer

DUNEDIN

Roy Livingstone breathes. The story begins. April 17, 1943. Roy is a flight engineer, manning the top turret of a B-17. The Eighth Air Force has commanded the destruction of a Nazi industrial plant. He is 20 years old. His bomber, the Roughhouse, meets heavy resistance. The pilot dips into a tailspin, diving thousands of feet toward German artillery fire. Messerschmitt fighters and 20mm autocannons are close behind, ripping through the plane's fuselage. The force of the spin pins him to the wall. He can feel blood in the rough cuts on his head, the rush of freezing air. He can't move. He realizes he's going to die. There's a stillness. A feeling of calm. Then the plane begins to level. He parachutes from the bomb bay and lands in Bremen, where a Nazi soldier carts him to a prison camp. One story finishes. The next one begins. Sit with Roy and the stories spill out — the one about the Christmas party, the one about the railroad work, the memories so distant but kept vivid over decades. The history hasn't changed, but the telling is slower now, and spaced, to allow pauses for breath.

"I can remember that feeling," he says, as the prisoner of war days wear on, as the hurricane-tossed waves smash against the schooner, as the drunk driver nears him on Park Boulevard.

Always that same feeling, he says, of time running out. "Calmness," he says. "Absolute calm."

"When you don't have any chances, you might as well accept the inevitable."

• • •

Roy is 87. He is a veteran, a widower and a cancer survivor. He doesn't talk much about death.

"I don't know how much longer I might live," he says, slowly, over the feedback of his hearing aids. "I might live a month. I might live two months. I might live six months, although I doubt that."

Roy's second wife, Dorris, helps take care of him at home. They met at an ex-prisoners of war reunion — her late husband was held in Stalag XVII-B, same as Roy — and married at another one in 2000.

He's told her before she shouldn't put up with his illnesses, that he doesn't think she can handle it. She does. He loves her.

She lists his illnesses on a scrap of yellow legal paper. Chronic bronchitis. Emphysema. Abdominal aortic aneurysms and coronary artery disease. His heart beats too fast. His blood pressure's too high. And on top of the list: terminal lung cancer.

Chemotherapy and radiation had cleared it from his body two years ago. It came back soon after.

"When the time comes," he says, "I know I'm going to be in pain."

He doesn't dwell on it, he says. He keeps busy. He watches the news, talks on the phone and works on his Web sites. He has his books. He has his stories.

Old age hasn't stopped him, but it has slowed him. Once an avid golfer, shooting his age when he was 72, he now won't swing a club. His garden grows without him. The veterans newspaper he edited for years, the Military Ex-Prisoners of War Foundation Times, now lists him as retired.

He keeps copies of the paper in the computer room of his Dunedin home, opens them up to show off stories on the "Mystery Man of Stalag XVII-B" or "Those Dang Germans." Once a golf magazine publisher, Roy enjoys knowing he has an audience.

But the work has become too tiring, too demanding, and even when he can muster the energy to write, he feels ashamed of the mistakes. For his health, he had to quit.

"The more I think of things, the more I need oxygen," he says. "And that makes it all worse."

• • •

"Hospice Care (An Oasis when you need it most)," by Roy Livingstone.

"Three years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer in both lungs (stage four) and according to what I had heard, without treatment, that meant something like about four months to live.

"So I joined the Chemo Suite with Dr. Patel, in Clearwater, Florida, and accepted my fate — but not my wife.

"Dorris kept saying, 'We are going to beat it. We are going to beat it.'

"I would smile, and say to myself, 'God love her.' "

• • •

Dorris is playing bridge at the Dunedin Country Club when the Suncoast Hospice employees — the man with the oxygen refills, tough nurse Lorraine, the respiratory therapist who calls Roy a survivor — come to help. They listen to his stories. His caretakers, he says, are a part of his family.

They double-check his pills, the eight in the morning and the dozen at night. They check the two oxygen tubes that wind through the hallway. They bathe him, he shaves. They ask about his comfort, he asks about their alma maters. They don't talk about death.

Roy likes being home. His room, his raised bed and his pill organizers are his and his alone. He gets his potatoes, eggs and coffee in bed every morning, and he's allowed to wear his dress shirts and khaki slacks. It's quiet there.

But old age, Roy has realized, brings its own indignities. The misspellings, the loss of breath, the forgetfulness. Coughing up phlegm at the Mark Family Restaurant. Calling Dorris by his first wife's name.

It has been 18 years since his first wife, Grayce, died in a hospital. He gave her the morphine, drop by drop, and watched her slip away. He remembers he held her hand.

Before they married, her last name was Volpe, he says. Then he leans back in his chair, the seconds turning to minutes, and he scratches his head. He can't remember her first name. He's embarrassed.

"You lose your oxygen," he said, catching his breath, "you lose your memories."

• • •

"The Lonesome Chair," by Roy Livingstone.

"Over the years, I have lost most of my hearing," he says. "I am just as deaf as my father, and I realize it is my problem.

"Usually at a dinner table of six to eight strangers, the one who is hard of hearing is seldom involved in the conversation. He or she sits in the lonesome chair — and not because they do not want to be in the conversation.

"Then why is it so?"

• • •

The story begins. Roy is one of 130,000 imprisoned in a German prison camp, the Stalag VII-A. He is covered in scabs, sores and lice. The stench of murdered Russian soldiers under the floorboards make the barracks unbearable. He is afraid.

In recent days, he has escaped and been recaptured, has killed people and watched people die. He finds solace in a pack of smokes. The worst part of sleeping, he realizes, is knowing he'll have to wake up again. It keeps him awake.

Roy makes it home. The war is won. The story ends. But the memories linger.

Catching fish, $1.50 a pound, on a 90-foot schooner. Stinking so bad the seagulls stay away. Feeling the waves bash the deck. The calm.

Driving Grayce's car to a parade. That quick thought, "son of a b----." "I saw the car coming and I knew I was dead," he says. "And, again, that same calmness."

Sit with Roy and you'll hear the stories, the bursts of vitality, the long coughs. There's a fear there. He realizes he's going to die.

But there's a stillness, too. A feeling of calm.

"Dorrie said it's not fair," he says. "And I said, 'That's life. That's a part of life.' . . . It just goes on 'til you can't do it anymore. You can't breathe anymore.' "

"One kind of fear is fear for yourself. Another kind of fear — believe it or not — is love for somebody else."

Roy Livingstone breathes. The story continues.

Drew Harwell can be reached at dharwell@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4170.