Richie Hass 1952-2008

Apparently the relapse hit Richie way harder than we thought it would...the blow was lethal. The fight is now over and Richie went as a warrior.

This morning, Richie and I said "see you later" as he went out to City of Hope to get his chemo. He drove there, he drove back, and I got to talk to him when he got home as I was on my way to an important meeting with a specialty employment agency. If it weren't for cellular phones we probably wouldn't have talked then. I was glad he made it home safely...Richie's weakened condition always made me nervous. That was 1pm. At roughly 1:30 he called me to remind me that I needed to pick up some nutritional drinks for him on the way back...I think he called because he wanted to hear my voice one last time, and it was good to hear his voice too. I was totally unaware that he really was hearing my voice for the last time.

After the meeting, which was highly promising, I called to let Richie know how well it went. I got the answering machine. I called back a few minutes later, thinking that perhaps he was just answering nature's call. Answering machine. I called a few minutes later, hoping that maybe I just caught him sleeping deeply. Answering machine again. Oh SHIT.

I told the answering machine that I was going straight home to check on him, that I'd go right back out to get the "boosts" (we had fallen into the habit of calling nutritional supplement drinks "boosts" generically after the particular name brand "Boost.") after I had made sure he was OK.

Got home. Not OK. Not there anymore. I got on the horn to 911 immediately, and within a few minutes (911 is not a joke in Panorama City, thank you Fire Station 7, thank you Mission Division LAPD) the paramedics were there. They confirmed what I already knew, and what I was trying to tell the 911 operator who was trying to lead me through CPR. That ship had sailed.

However, it is very important to note that Richie went HIS WAY. He didn't want me to see him die. We had watched together as my mother passed painfully and fearfully from end-stage colon cancer. He didn't want to inflict that on me. He didn't want to die in a hospital, not even one as inviting and hotel-like as Helford Clinical Research Hospital at the City of Hope.

I don't believe in an afterlife anymore, no matter how inviting the concept is, but I think there was a little of his essence hanging around as I made it abundantly clear to all family members who I talked to that no, Richie didn't want to have a Jewish funeral, he didn't want people to sit shivah for him, he didn't want to be buried at Mount Sinai with the rest of the Good and Klein clans, he just wanted to be cremated, and have half his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean and half scattered on the Hudson River, within view of the coastline of the New Jersey of his youth. He felt like half of him was East Coast and half of him was West Coast and that somehow he would be present on both coasts in his passage. Amazingly, nobody objected. They objected mightily when I told my family that I didn't think that my mother wanted an open casket to see her emaciated body after her year of battling colon cancer, and they had an open casket over my objections. This time they acceded to my wishes, and most importantly to Richie's wishes.

So he has passed out of existence his way. Unfortunately it was way too early and way too young but at least he did it on his own terms. There is a hole rent in my heart now that will never heal. It's like why gangbangers tattoo tears on their faces...they have tears that will never dry and so will I from here on out. However, to make this death not be in vain, I pledge the rest of my life to work towards supporting research to find cures to all blood cancers. All of them. Myeloma sucks and so does Acute Myelogenious Leukemia. So do the other varieties of leukemia and lymphoma. They all must be terminated with extreme prejudice. Richie is gone but there are thousands and thousands fighting this battle too. Saddle up, lock and load. Blood cancer is the enemy, and the war isn't over.

T+5, T+6: now the tough part begins

As much as I had hoped Richie would be spared the worst of the side-effects of a Stem Cell Transplant, he's getting hammered right now. WBC is down to 0.2. He's down platelets and Hemoglobin, so he's going to be getting a pint of blood. Another thing Richie is getting today is more Neupogen. This time it's not being injected, but infused with the rest of the stuff he's getting through the Hickman. Hopefully he won't get too much bone pain but he had a little with the Neupogen when he was self-administering it leading up to and during the stem cell collection.

He also got nailed with some really sad news: a person we haven't been extremely close to, but with whom we have been "good acquaintances" for years, is dying of liver failure after years of hard drinking and hard living. He was in County+USC for a while but is being discharged to die at home under Hospice care. It's way too much like how we lost the drummer of Richie's old band The Beatniks.

Brian O'Laughlin was a sweet guy who was a great drummer...you would have to be to be able to play the kind of complex drum parts Richie wrote. The poppy feel of Richie Hass and the Beatniks was deceiving: like a lot of really good pop, it was way harder to play and way more complex than it would initially "read" to your ear. Brian was also a stone-cold geek...he was online before I was, with a Commodore 64 and a 300bps modem...you could see words coming in when using one of those, it was amazing. Slow as shit, but impressive back when not much existed outside of business.

Anyway, Brian slipped away from us in a matter of a week...he had been hospitalized for jaundice as a consequence of Cirrhosis and it became clear he wasn't going to live very much longer after that. It hit him about a month after he finally started getting serious about cleaning up. He was going to AA meetings and had kept sober. Then this happened. Damn...that's got to be the worst addiction of all: alcohol. I am not for prohibition of any substance, but I think people have their priorities 100% screwed up wrt substance addiction. You can kick cocaine, you can kick crank, you can kick opiates, but damn, man...the booze is really freaking rough. Keith Richards still drinks like a fish even after getting off of the other stuff he was poly-addicted to. He's also outliving everyone's expectations, go figure.

Richie has luckily escaped the traps of addiction which have snared so many musicians through the decades. His core healthiness aside from the multiple myeloma has served him well through most of this process. However, this is a serious, severe process. In the past 20 years, City of Hope has not lost a single patient through the SCT process, but many feel like crap for a long time during the process. I was hoping it wouldn't be the case, but it may very well be that this is the tough time for him. And I'm going to have to bail today so that I can get some stuff done tomorrow and go to school tomorrow night, Tuesday and Thursday. I feel badly I can't stay with him longer, but it's impossible. I need to be back for a while. I hope he doesn't resent me for leaving me when he's needed me the most. Those of you who know where he is and know how to contact him...please do. He needs all our support right now.