Lopez hasn't asked Donegan how long he has to live, though he suspects the answer isn't long. In any case, he doesn't want to know. Lopez thinks the question is somewhat pointless -- doctors don't know with precision, anyway, or they purposely lie on the short side, hoping to give their patients a morale boost when they exceed expectations.
He apologizes repeatedly for his appearance, about how the radiation has peeled his scalp and face (in truth, it looks no worse than a mild sunburn).
Kirk McEwen, far left, Mark Ondayko and Bob Lopez have been doing 98 Rock's morning show together for seven years. The longtime Baltimore radio newsman has encouraged McEwen and Ondayko to share in his lighthearted on-air references to his cancer, which includes making cracks about his hairless head, the result of a recent round of radiation treatment.
(Photos Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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He apologizes for his on-air pauses and hesitation, a result of the brain radiation, he says. He apologizes, too, for his inability to remember dates and names, such as other people he's been teamed with over the years. "Jeez, I'm sorry," he says, genuinely pained.
Thoughts of his death do not exactly trouble him, but he does think about how his passing will affect others. He recalls the trauma he experienced upon the death of his father, Leo, after complications from surgery. Lopez was 12.
The memory of it causes Lopez's voice to catch. Soon, tears are welling in his eyes.
Then he starts talking about his own family, especially about how his demise might affect his daughter, Leandra. She is, he notes, 12 years old.
"She's written me a letter," he says, and his voice catches again, "and I've written her a letter."
He starts to tear up again.
In September, racked by six weeks of radiation and chemo, he took his wife and daughter to London and Paris for two weeks. He had to use a wheelchair to get onto the plane, and he spent much of the time lying in a hotel bed while his wife and child saw the cities.
So it wasn't much of a vacation. Except that it was.
"I'd never been there," he says. "I saw the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. The Louvre."
He's an atheist, and has been since his father's death. So he dismisses the idea of an afterlife. Instead, he thinks about all that there is to come and all that he may not live to experience.
"I'm not angry," he says solemnly. A pause. "I am disappointed."
A Lasting Impression
The other day after work, Lopez was at home waiting for a plumber to come by to fix a toilet.
The man arrived late, but Lopez didn't really mind.
"Hi, what's your name?" Lopez asked, greeting him at the door. "I'm Lopez."
"Lopez?" the workman said, brightening. "Same name as the guy on the radio."
"Yeah, that's me," Lopez replied. "98 Rock." He sized the plumber up. "You're a little older than our usual listener."
Yeah, maybe, the man said, but in any case, he'd been listening to Lopez for years. He told him about the time Lopez came to talk to a local group the man belonged to, how much everyone enjoyed that, about how nice it was to be in Lopez's home now.
Lopez listened to the man, and a big smile lifted his tired face. For a moment, all the talk of medical treatments and mortality slipped away.
It was as if you could almost read what he was thinking: You never know whose life you might touch.
