Home Is Burning

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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Dedicated to anyone who has lost a loved one to cancer or ALS

 

PREFACE

Hello. I was once told that the best way to make new friends is to compliment them, and I want you to be my new friend, so let's start with a couple of compliments.

First, you have nice eyes with which you read these words. Or, if you're blind and doing the whole Braille deal, then you have silky smooth fingers made from a thousand angels' wings.

Second, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. I love you already. Without you, dear reader, these words would just sit on my computer next to a folder called “Graduation Plans” where I hide some porno clips, and by
some
, I mean a lot.

Okay, now that we're already best friends and you love and trust me like a brother, let me quickly go over a few other things before we launch into the crazy, crude, sad, intense, and slightly inspirational story found on these pages.

As you know, this book is a supernatural memoir set in the year 3928—shortly after the first robot ghost was elected president, but before volcano monsters took over earth and added its second moon.

Just kidding.

Just a little goof up top. Sorry to stall. It's just that the subject matter of this book is pretty heavy, but fuck it. Here goes. This is the story of what happened to my family over the course of two years when my mom, Debi, was battling terminal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and my dad, Bob, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal neurological disorder more commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Boom, there it is. Two terminally ill parents slammed with misfortune at the same time. Sort of an extreme situation, I know. That's why I started with that bullshit about the robot ghost.

My four siblings and I had no idea what we were doing. No one really does when dealing with life-altering tragedy, but we did the best we could, which wasn't great.

Before you decide whether to take the plunge and dive into our family tragedy, you might want to know a touch more about me. I'm Daniel Joseph Marshall. I have also gone by Danny, Dano, Danny Boy, Big Dick Dan (self-applied and untrue), Dickhead Dan, Mellow Yellow, Marshmellow, Marsh Marsh, D-Marsh, and Turtle Fucker, for reasons I'd rather not get into right now. Oh, and DJ. My dad called me DJ, short for Daniel Joseph. This nickname was fine until
Full House
rolled around and created a female character named DJ Tanner. I then had to request that I stop being called DJ in public so mean kids wouldn't tease me so much. Though I went by Danny for most of my life, I made a switch to Dan recently, because I think it's a little cooler and doesn't sound as childish as Danny.

Physically, I'm five foot nine, though at a recent doctor's visit, I was told I'm closer to five foot seven. It's pretty shocking when you spend your whole life thinking you're one height and then find out you're another. I still consider myself to be five nine. That doctor and his stupid science measuring stuff were full of shit. I was born weighing six pounds, twelve ounces, on September 17, 1982, in Pekin, Illinois, though I've gained a significant amount of weight since then. I currently weigh in around 175 pounds. With my semishort height and my weight, I'm a little dumpy. One friend described me as being a sad little cannonball. I feel that's accurate.

My favorite foods are pretzels, beef jerky, gummy bears, sunflower seeds, and Hot Tamales, which might explain why I've gained so much weight since birth.

Though I was born in Pekin, Illinois—where the high school teams were called the Chinks from 1930 to 1980, before being changed to the much less racist Dragons—I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. My family and I are not Mormon. Like most non-Mormons in Utah, I got out of there as soon as I could. Don't get me wrong, I love Utah. It's a hidden gem in this generally ugly world. Most people don't give it a chance because they view Mormonism to be a weird religion. Mormonism is certainly a weird religion, but aren't all religions a little strange? And who really cares what other people believe, so long as they don't believe in rape or kiddie porn? Like Catholics. But no one should live in Utah his or her whole life. It's too much of a warped reality.

So I left Utah for college. I was looking for a place that was at the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, so I decided to attend UC Berkeley. Berkeley is a strange mixture of academics and homeless people, and a refreshing place to live—the type of town where you can be as kooky as you like but also go completely unnoticed.

From Berkeley, I got a job working at a strategic communications and public relations firm in beautiful and scenic Los Angeles. I love traffic and pollution and assholes speeding around in BMWs, so Los Angeles was a great fit for me. I had started a pretty nice little life in Los Angeles. I lived in an apartment off Sunset Boulevard, had a job and a girlfriend I loved, and owned couches with built-in recliners—sort of the American dream in action. I was following that path we're told to follow: go to college, get a job, start instantly planning for retirement, find a significant other you enjoy being around who makes you feel like the world is bright instead of dark, be fun and happy and successful enough to have said significant other fall in love with you and see you as a long-term-provider-type figure, get married, buy a home, start a family, stay away from drugs and alcohol so you can raise that family in a functional way and thus give them a shot at following a similarly safe and happy path and pass along your genes, be proud of your children for doing well with the opportunities you gave them, retire, watch yourself wither away while reminding young people to live it up and have as much sex as possible while they can, etc.

The whole dying-parents mess interrupted that path. I was pulled from what I thought was the real world into a situation that made the real world seem fake.

*   *   *

Full disclosure: there is a lot of bad language in the book. Best to explain that up-front so you're not completely shocked when you see words like
fuck
,
shit
,
fart
,
hell
,
son of a bitch
,
asshole
, and
motherfucker
next to words like
dying
,
death
,
cancer
, and
Lou Gehrig's disease
. It's very difficult for me to write a sentence without using a bad word. That last sentence, for example, was fucking impossible for me to write.

My family has a very crude sense of humor. Our swear jar was always filled to the brim. When times were stressful, we'd take breaks where we were allowed to yell any obscenities we wanted at each other—sort of a venting mechanism. I'm sure some concerned neighbors would walk by our house and hear a burst of profanity-laced yelling flying out our front door. It was our way of dealing with the world and reducing some grief and depression.

And if I'm really being honest, we just like to offend Mormon people. I know this sounds stupid and petty, but growing up in the Mormon-dominated state that is Utah, we were often made to feel like outsiders, “The Other,” which is an unusual thing for a prosperous white family in America to feel. When you are The Other, you begin to resent the majority and look for ways to piss them off. Swearing did that for us.

My mom and I, in particular, have very foul mouths. I always thought it was hilarious when she swore, so I mimicked her behavior. When I was about ten years old, I was lying on the couch reading—undetected by my parents—and I overheard my dad and mom having a little discussion about one of my dad's co-workers. My dad was complaining that the co-worker was a bit of a jerk, and my mom said, “Bob, here's what you do. You look him in the eye and tell him to shut the fuck up.” I thought it was hilarious. After that, I decided that, like my mom, I'd swear all the time.

When my dad got sick, we all really amped it up. Increase the pain input, increase the swearing output. Makes sense. And because of the stress, we became increasingly blunt with each other.

*   *   *

I wrote this book because I'm just a sad dude with a big heart who really loves his dad. This book, in many ways, is a love letter to him. Jesus, that sounded sappy. But whatever, loving your dad isn't a crime. I owe him a lot.

My dream is that our story will give people who are currently caring for a loved one—no matter the age, ailment, or situation—some comfort in knowing that another family of shitheads has ungracefully gone through something similar. You're not alone. Tragedy has company, as someone aside from me probably said at some point.

I also hope this book paints me as a tragic hero (of sorts) and makes more people like me, or even love me. That's what life is all about, right? Being loved, loving others, and feeling good about yourself? I've also heard it's about collecting a bunch of material possessions to fill the void. Maybe I'll try that one day.

*   *   *

Okay, enough bullshitting. Let's get this show on the road. As you read, please keep in mind what great friends we are, and remember, through all this intense nonsense, that I'm just a slightly dumpy dude who loves pretzels and his dad.

 

THE BOMB

“I fucking love it here,” I said like a spoiled white asshole as I looked up at the cloudless sky, seeing only palm trees against the perfect blue.

“I know. I could stay here forever,” said my girlfriend, Abby.

Abby and I were celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday at the JW Marriott pool in Palm Desert. She had flown into Los Angeles from Berkeley the night before, and then we had driven out to the desert in my shitty Subaru. We were drinking frozen tropical smoothies full of alcohol, the endless sun beating down on us as we read pointless books with entertaining storylines. The pool band played “Don't Worry, Be Happy” and various Beach Boys songs on a loop. We had incredibly important conversations about incredibly important topics, like where we should eat dinner and how much post-dinner sex we should have. Shit, maybe we'd even hit up a late-night hot tub session if we had the energy after all the eating and fucking. The world was ours.