“Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather,” Jesus said, and a big, slow wheel of them circled over my 2025. This time last year my health was draining away. Lyme disease, we thought, or hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, so the symptoms indicated. Our GP dismissed our pleas as we sent up rocket flares to him about how, into the spring, I could barely walk, eat, or sleep.
My one pleasure in those draining days was slouching to the patio and falling, exhausted, into the lounge chair in the full heat of the afternoon, falling asleep and hoping that the sun would burn out whatever was killing me, or would just get it over with and finish me off, a good way to die. But I always woke up, and by the late spring a walking cadaver, I slouched back inside. I couldn’t compose, I couldn’t focus, and on top of it all I was miserable company. I was good for nothing.
Give it time, our doctor said as he tweaked a dosage; I was being treated, he said. Fortunately, my wife is dogged and would not accept that. As Tom Brokaw wrote in A Lucky Life Interrupted, you must have an advocate in these matters, and Jackie is the fiercest one I could have. Her research was unstoppable. Also, a friend related my story to his friend, a doctor, who talked to me and in his alarm over my describing to him the bones of my condition, offered advice and help.
We went to specialists and finally, an ear, nose, and throat doctor took one look in my mouth, at my discolored tongue covered in painful ulcers. She said it was one of the worst she had ever seen. “You need to be in the hospital now,” she said.
“Now? Like, right now?”
“Right now,” she said, “and don’t go to a community hospital. You need to go into the city.”
“Like Penn?” My friend’s friend had recommended that.
“Penn would be a very good choice.”
So we drove from Lansdale to University City in rush hour and checked into Emergency. It was July 24th. That first night the verdict came in. I had multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Along for the ride was amyloidosis, a very dangerous condition sometimes accompanying MM, extra proteins piled up by the body. No one knows how you get MM. No one knows how you get amyloidosis. I was teetering on the brink of death, floating in and out of two coma-like troughs. I had dropped from my lifelong 185 pounds to 144, the proverbial skin and bones come to life—or death. A doctor spoke to Jackie about preparing. It was that close.
Fortunately, MM chemotherapy treatment has advanced, even in the last couple of years, and wonderfully, my numbers began to shift. One, a “lightchain” number which in a normal state resides in the low two digits, had shot up into the four-digit stratosphere. But chemo punctured it, and down it plummeted into normalcy. My beleaguered kidneys roused and made a comeback; doctors had been discussing dialysis.
Chemo doesn’t get rid of the amyloids, but it does stop them in their tracks. The body, over months and months and months, must flush them out on its own. They often attack the heart or brain, but they go anywhere they please. All signs pointed to mine taking up residence in my throat and tongue.
I was in the hospital for seven weeks. The horrors of medication-induced delirium nightmares—lucid fictions as real as life—slowly vanished after I pushed back and told the staff to stop giving me sleep drugs. Two stays in ICU. Unending torpor. Weakness. I couldn’t turn in bed. Constant tests and scans.
Jackie slept on a couch in the room. Our daughters, their husbands, and our two grandsons visited. Gifts from God, undeserved, each of them. I looked awful; they all smiled. My girls and their men, what life they gave to me. Angus, the three-year-old, said, “I hope you get better soon, Opa.”
I gained strength enough to hold my hands over a laptop keyboard and completed a composition. In early September they sent me to “acute” rehab, also in the Penn system, where physical, occupational, and swallow therapies helped me to move and improve a little. With a walker I walked ten feet, then 20, 40, 55, collapsing into a chair, sucking air as if I’d run four miles. My blood pressure went way up, then way down: they had to watch this.
On October 7th I was shipped on a stretcher, by ambulance, to subacute rehab in the northern suburbs, closer to our home but more importantly, to Fox Chase Cancer Center, in whose care, with Penn’s blessing and recommendation, I was now transferred. At 69, I was the youngin at this residence, but I envied those ancients sailing up and down hallways behind their walkers. However, more victories attended my journey. I could lean on my elbow and swing my feet off the bed and onto the floor, all by myself. I finally got control of, as is politely put, my continence. My walker journeys now routinely went from 100 to 160, 220 feet. I walked in my room without the walker (a nurse scolded me when I told her). For chemo trips to Fox Chase, I could get into the car’s passenger seat on my own. I can now swing my feet in and even click the seat belt myself.
I’ve been home since the week after Thanksgiving, adjusting to my old, new surroundings. Therapies continue at home. I’m eating some real food, supplementing the feeding tube and hoping, eventually, to get rid of it as my swallowing continues to improve.
Jackie remains my rock. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Probably, I wouldn’t be here at all. She takes care of my sorry old skin and bones, takes care of the house, and continues to do her own work. She is the greatest gift I could have on this planet, and it was by far the smartest thing this galoot ever did, proved over and over, when I married her 46 years ago.
And we have a new GP.
Yesterday I went to church, our New Year’s Eve service, the first time traveling in the car to anywhere that wasn’t a doctor’s appointment, the first time inside the church since June. After receiving communion, I wept, a brief, powerful storm overtaking me as the body and blood invaded where death had reigned.
Why had it all happened? I don’t know. I receive inklings of answers through prayer and the wisdom of scripture, but the command to stay faithful arches over everything that befalls me, no matter what. I believe; help thou my unbelief, Lord.
I’m surprised by how much went on musically in 2025, despite my dropping out of sight for half of it. I finished five works, including Jesus Stood on the Shore for the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Seattle, Let All the Strains of Joy for The Crossing in Philadelphia, A Rhythm to Walk In for NEWVoices in Wisconsin, and The Gift to Sing for Dolce Canto in Montana.
Six works premiered in 2025, including Jubilate Deo and Even the Grass Must Sing, both for chorus and orchestra, and Endless Morn of Light for six solo voices and viol consort. I was able to attend three of the premieres, including flying to Seattle for the 23-minute oratorio Jesus Stood on the Shore.
Khorikos released my son my son on CD, and many works saw performances around the country in my busiest year yet.
ECS Publishing released America, the Beautiful for SSAA and piano on its Craig Hella Johnson Choral Series, and the distributor MusicSpoke continued to add titles of mine to its catalog.
I began a new chamber work and also created score videos. Now 18 of them populate my YouTube channel. They’re a great way to quickly see and hear a work, and I’m glad I had the time to figure out how to make them.
If you have a minute or two, you can see all the details of 2025’s activity on my home page. I’m grateful for all of it, and every year gets busier. 2026 still looks thin by comparison, but the new year always starts out that way. I’ve listed confirmed performances; there are others still to be confirmed, and maybe even a surprise. Thankfully, I have many deadlines to meet.
I’m grateful to everyone who commented, emailed, messaged, mailed cards, or called. You have no idea how much that means to me and yes, to my recovery. To those nearby who could visit, what a tremendous joy and affirmation that was.
And to everyone who performed my music or who asked for a new work, I know it wasn’t in your plan, but you gave me yet more reasons to not give up, to push through, and to live in the hope for a better 2026 and beyond. Thank you all.