By Rhoda Fukushima

Pioneer Press

Monday, April 12, 2004

Growing up in Tennessee, Anthony Roberts was close to his big brother, Tom. Long after they'd grown up, Roberts, his brother, sister and other family members went to Hawaii for regular vacations. On one of those trips, Roberts noticed a mole on his brother's foot. It was July 1998 and marked the beginning of a process that continues to this day. This weekend (April 16-17), Roberts' new performance work, "Swing a Club," will be presented at St. Olaf College, where he is artist-in-residence in the dance department. The title comes from Tom's love of golf.

"In 1998, I saw this mole. It looked like a decaying raisin hanging off his foot. I was stunned that this strait-laced, very dependable person had not taken care of it.

"He finally went to the doctor in October. They decided to excise the mole. Hearing him say it was taken care of, I thought it was so. Until this point, all my impression about cancer was that with early detection, everything would be fine.

"There was a recurrence a year later. I got the same story from my brother Ñ they excised it, there were clear margins, everything was fine. I still was thinking he knows what he is doing, he's under a doctor's care, everything is fine. I hadn't done any research on my own.

"In the summer of 2000, his wife became pregnant. My brother started feeling nauseous, symptoms that could have been confused with sympathy pregnancy symptoms.

"In the fall, he talked to me about a pain in the middle of his back between his scapula. I had just come back from a conference that was intensive work on the computer. I came back with an irritating pain in the middle of my spine. I found research that said the pain could be normal if you had changed the height of your chair at your desk.

"Somehow, we were able to convince ourselves that it was not cancer.

"In December, my brother had gone in for a checkup. The doctor found something. He had a hot-dog-bun-size tumor that wrapped around his spine. He had tumors in his kidney. It was in his liver. They found it in his bones, his ribs, lesions on the brain.

"I found out the severity of it in February 2001. As soon as I got off the phone, I was on the Internet. I talked to the nurse of the oncologist who had made this final diagnosis. How did it happen? She took me back to the very beginning. He had been given the option of a lymph-node dissection, chemotherapy and radiation. For some reason, he chose not to go that route.

"I was hearing, 'Make him comfortable. They don't have anything that can cure it.' By this time, my brother had decided to fight. They found a doctor who said we could beat this thing. They decided to go for the radiation and chemo.

"When malignant melanoma is at that stage (3 or 4), it is pretty hard to treat. Hope is a great thing, but sometimes hope is a place where denial can live as well.

"When we were at one of his treatments, he asked the radiologist how long it would be until he could swing a golf club again. He'd been going on an annual golf trip for 16 years. The doctor said it would take about a year of healing and recovery.

"There were moments during the care giving experience when, as an artist, I was able to step out and say how beautiful that moment is Ñ something as simple as giving him a massage, seeing the outline of his body. There was a lot of beautiful, rich imagery in the midst of this turmoil.

"The nurse had prepared me for the Cheyne-Stokes breathing. Once we disconnect him from the machines, his breathing will slow. There will be a point where he will take a breath, then appear not to breathe anymore. He could skip several breath cycles. Then, he will take another breath. It is a sign that someone is very close to death.

"Everything happened just as she said. He died on March 31, 2001.

"At the beginning of 2003, I felt, 'Now is the time.' I looked at it (the performance project) as a process. I had no idea where it would go. No expectations. Being able to live with it this long has allowed me to maintain my health and sanity.

"I wrote a few stories. I called one 'Swing a Golf Club.' It seems just very right to honor Tom. He loved spending time with his friends on the golf course. This is for him."