Thanks to everyone for the Ts, the Ps and most importantly, the Ws.
And now for the Gustering......
I'm in my early 40s and know too many damn people in my age demographic that have been hit directly by this damn thing.
Susan – Sat next to me in Math and History Junior year. Not best of friends, but certainly could lose ourselves in a conversation whether it was in class or at a party. Susan didn’t make it to Senior year. Brain Tumor
Steve – Went to high school with ‘The Serb’ too. A year older than me, the guy was bigger than life and he’d Dalton the throat out of anyone that crossed a person he cared about. But then brain cancer crossed him. He even had the ##### beat at one time. Clean bill of health. ‘Come back every 6 months for a checkup’ clean. He didn’t come back for the 6th month checkup, he was back in 3 because the cancer came back with a vengeance. Steve was gone before we knew it. At age 26 Cancer won.
Bob – Another guy from the same group of high school friends as Steve. Guess what, more brain cancer! Bob beat it too at one time. It was about 2 years later when he woke his wife up by ‘tossing and turning’ in bed one night. Only he wasn’t tossing and turning, he was seizing. About 6 months after that, Bob was gone too.
John – Worked with John. Didn’t know him at the time he found out he had cancer, but the prosthetic leg was all the proof I needed. As a kid, he broke his leg in a fluky way. Kind of like that Louisville kid, bone out of the skin and everything. Leg was weak because the bone cancer had basically eaten it away. They took the leg off below the knee. John was lucky, breaking his leg probably saved his life.
Kym – A mother of kids that my son goes to. 4 kids. 2 of them adopted. Great girl, loves a party and is great at being the life of it. They were real and they were spectacular, at least they were until breast cancer hit. The Mastectomy probably saved her life.
Jenny – My wife’s best friend. Skin cancer. Already has had two procedures done. Prognosis is good, but probably won’t see the sun
And now there’s Chris – The latest entry into the FU Cancer chronicles.
My son and Chris’ son (Zach) played T Ball together and became best friends. Through helping out at practices, me and Chris developed a pretty good relationship too. It got to the point that our families started hanging out together frequently (always an added bonus when the moms / wives also get along great). The kids had sleepovers at each other’s houses. We went to sporting events together, dinner together, even shared a family trip. It was pretty much everything I envisioned when it came to what would happen when/if I became friends with the parents of the who my kid hangs out with.
I have to admit that I never knew how Chris did it. For starters, the guy’s a stud on the level of Disco Stu. Marine vet, was in Desert Storm. He can make the panties, of both females and males alike, wet. If we were both single, being his wingman would have been glorious. But Chris wasn’t single, Chris was happily married with 5 kids. He worked 2 full time jobs to make sure they could make ends meet. And in spite of working like a dog, he was always in a good mood and always a great father. I mean always. To be honest, I’m not sure ‘great’ even does it justice. The best way I can describe it is that he was the kind of guy that I’d look at and think ‘As a father, I should be more like him’.
Over time, we didn’t completely lose contact, but certainly didn’t hang out like we did in the past. No longer happily married, Chris and his wife got divorced and the wife moved the kids a couple of towns over. While our sons never went to the same school, living further apart lessened the amount of time they spent together. The distance, on top of Zach not handling the divorce well, also strained their relationship. Zach, who always had a bit of a temper / meanstreak, got worse. He became more violent and crass. He was rude to my son’s everyday / school friends, both in person and on Xbox Live. When he was around on weekends, I’d see Zach bully other kids, or his siblings, while my son would just look on in disbelief while trying to get him to stop. I even overheard him tell my son ‘Remember that time you were sleeping over at my house and started crying about your grandmother dying? I’m never going to let you live that down!’ Keep in mind that my son was 9 at that time and the sleepover took place about 2 days after his grandmother had unexpectedly died. When I told my son I had heard what Zach told him and then asked him what he thought about that, my son replied with, ‘I don’t think Jim is the kind of kid I want to hang out with anymore’
Needless to say, with our kids not hanging out, and Chris’ life in upheaval (the guy also had his house foreclosed on, his mom died, a real #### storm of luck), we hung out less and less too.
Over the last 2 years, I’d say we would see each other two or three times a year. Usually random encounters at the bar or grocery store. He’d pop by my house here or there too once in a while. Usually to invite my son to his kid’s birthday or something. (The kids never formally discussed why my son didn’t want to hang out anymore resulting in Zach trying to hold onto the friendship much longer than my son did. And to be honest, something that I’ve always carried some guilt around about is that me and Chris never discussed it in depth either).
Fast-forward to yesterday. Random text from mutual friend that Chris has cancer. Lungs and liver, chemo not doing the trick, prognosis not good. From what I’ve been told, it sounds like he’s completely cut himself off from the outside world. The only reason anyone knows is because the ex wife is aware of the situation and has confirmed it to others.
Lots of rumormill / grapevine crap going on right now, but odds are that Chris isn’t going to make it. There are mumbles that it’s because of his time in Iraq / Kuwait and Gulf War Syndrome is to blame. 5 kids are going to be fatherless before the oldest even gets out of High School.
Bourbon did its job last night as its probably the only reason I got to sleep. Today, still pissed at the world.
That site is what led me to see the World's Largest Cedar Bucket, which took the title when the previous World's Largest Cedar Bucket was destroyed in a mysterious fire.
We were going to be in Oxford and thereabouts for a variety of things. We were heading to a place that, when I googled, took me to that site, and I looked to see what else was in Oxford. I didn't actually think anyone would believe I wanted to see the World's Largest Cedar Bucket for anything other than shtick purposes.
