The Metro News
Oct. 8, 2004

It was about two years ago, as I recall, that a doctor told me I was receiving too much medical attention. The way he put it was that I was being “over-doctored.”

This judgment came during a serious diagnostic session after I was referred to him, I suppose, by one of the doctors who were over-doctoring me. There had been some CAT scans, and both the doctors ordered ordering them and the doctor analyzing them had their names on some of the paperwork.

The session wasn’t all that serious. In the course of it, the doctor got out of his chair and showed me how a mutual friend of ours tries to hit a golf ball. During this demonstration, he had both feet off the floor at the same time, and I’d say the whole show called for a considerable amount of agility.

As I left, his final words were, “stay away from too many doctors. You’ll be OK.”

Moving closer ahead, to April of this year, the same doctor, serious to the hilt, told me I didn’t have long to live. “We’re talking months, not years,” was the way he put it.

I had developed a mild, but persistent, pain in my midsection, and this led to tests, which led to a referral back to the golf doctor. He looked me over and said he’d better have a closer look at the tests. He said he’d call me.

The call came on a Friday, ruining my weekend. Did it ever. He said he wanted to see me the following Tuesday, and to quote, “bring Barbara.” When a doctor tells you to bring your wife with you, it sounds exactly like dirt hitting the lid of your coffin.

The doctor’s sense of humor, and his ability to maybe hit a golf ball with both feet off the ground didn’t make the bad news any easier to take. I felt sudden compassion for horse thieves and occupants of death row, when I should have been thinking about what was ahead for me.

There was the biopsy, which is like having your appeal rejected. There was the last hope, the surgeon, who was confident he could operate and remove all the cancer, But it was a gamble that failed. The tumor had spread beyond control, to my magneto and onto my push rods and even to my differential. As I once heard an Okie explain it, “I was ate up with cancer.”

The operation was supposed to take four hours, but when I woke up in the recovery room just two hours after the starting time, I knew the game was over.

I was in the hospital, recovering from an artistic incision when the oncologist talked to me and my family about available treatments to slow the cancer and possibly add some quality time, as it’s called, to my life. They all agreed with my decision not to pursue that option.

My personal feeling was that I figured I’ll be closing in on my 84th birthday when my time comes, and that’s enough. I didn’t feel like gambling on paying out quality time to buy more quality time, with no guarantees.

I got out of the hospital and went home to recuperate. This process got a big boost when my children, deciding there would be no immediate division of the assets, also went home. It wasn’t long, however, before we were all back together.

In mid-June there was a countrywide Snider reunion in Oklahoma City, and to everyone’s surprise, mostly mine, It turned out to be very enjoyable. Everyone brought old pictures and newspaper clippings, and it took us three days to digest it all and visit cemeteries and other historical sites the Sniders made famous.

Barbara and I then spent the rest of June, all of July and the first week of August freeloading with daughter Amy and her family in Southlake, Texas. It was a long time, but it gave me the opportunity to learn again to appreciate the taste and fragrance of a good cigar and a touch of schnapps. It all works better in a lounge chair beside the pool.

In August our family and a few friends got together in Litchfield Beach, SC for our kind of revival., and to eat crab cakes. We were forced to evacuate by Hurricane Charlie, but only for one night, when we had to eat ribs.

We’re back in Topeka now, and I saw the oncologist Monday. He didn’t have any good news for me, and he wouldn’t risk the prognosis on how long I have to live. He said I could go where I want to go and do what I want to do, but that’s like saying that if that if I’ve never been to Cleveland, and always have wanted to go, now is the time. The same goes for Beaumont and Bozeman. But not Britton, where I grew up.

I won’t be writing forever, although you may be thinking I’m acting like I’m going to try. What is going to happen is that on days I don’t feel up to it, the staff of the Metro News will select columns to rerun. You’ll probably enjoy them more than the new stuff, right off the showroom floor.

I’d be lying if I told you I never think about the end, both when and where. I always wind up with my dad, and the night he died, in a nursing home. The family was there, and as it got very late, he told us to go home, saying, “I’m not in any pain, and I’m not afraid, so go home.” We left, and he died about two hours later.

I also think of my mother. She, too, died in nursing home, talking like she was a teenager again, teaching at a one- room school in western Oklahoma.

I also remember the night she and my brother took me to the airport to catch a late flight, and it was stormy, with lightning. She mentioned the weather, and I said it was OK, that if the plane crashed, my troubles would be over. And she said, “Or just beginning.”

I thought about that. Am I ready to go? All I know is that Father John Rossiter has punched my pearly gate ticket, but he can’t guarantee the reservation. He can’t tell me if I’m going first class, or even when my bus (?) leaves. So far, I have no reason to believe my departure will be like the movies, where Spencer Tracy will appear suddenly at my side, and tell me it’s time to go.

When that time comes, I can feel good about some things. Our children are doing well, and their mother, the best thing that ever happened to them, still will be around to help them for many years to come. Our grandchildren all show signs of learning to read and write, and they know their Grandma Snider will be here to do everything grandmas are supposed to do, and then some.

On the wall across from my typewriter hangs a rarity. It is an old-fashioned calendar from the First National Bank of Harveyville, and my wife’s family, and now our family, have been picking them up and hanging them for years.

They’ve served as a reminder to me that I am basically a small-town guy, and I’m at my best when I don’t forget that much of what I learned about life, and how to live it, with small town stuff.

Here’s an example: one day at a Snider’s summer outing, we were playing golf, and my grandson Will was piloting our cart. He was a terrible driver, so I had him stop, and told him to quit going so fast, to stay on the cart path and stop hitting the rocks that lined the path.

We drove on, and Will was saying, “Keep the cart on the path, and watch out for the rocks.” Today, many years later, when Will does anything, I question, I look at him and he says, “I know: keep the cart on the path and look out for the rocks.”

I am reminded now that if I had done all that all my life, I might not be so concerned about the journey that awaits me. And the Harveyville Bank calendar reminds me I’m living on borrowed time.