In a span of 2 years and 8 days, I have witnessed two dear
friends get diagnosed, and lose ugly battles with pancreatic cancer. I am not
writing this to gain sympathy, for “my” loss is miniscule compared to the pain
endured by their beloveds. There is another loss to speak of. Your loss. If you
never had the pleasure of knowing Tom Cheever or Kevin Brooks. If you’ve never
heard them tell a story, or improvise a song. If you’ve never witnessed them
admiring their children, or looking into the eyes of the women they loved. If
you’ve never seen their fantastic smiles or better yet, heard them laugh, then
the loss is yours. Lives cut short (Tom 43, Kevin 55) from achieving
professional, creative and personal goals. Happy, healthy, lives. Admirable
lives. Imperfect, striving, beautiful lives. Potential unmet. Potential the
entire world has lost.
When someone dies of cancer, it seems as though the same
questions get asked. “Did he smoke? Was he overweight? Does it run in the
family?” What people are really asking is “What did he do wrong to bring this
on?” because, somehow we want to think that we’re immune. That if we eat this,
don’t do that, or practice the other, then we won’t get caught in cancer’s ugly
net.
Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It hates everything it touches.
It’s in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we consume. We are
playing Russian Roulette every day.
When I sat down to write this, I’d hoped for some kind of
uplifting message. That we each walk our journey, and we never know where or
how it’s going to end, and somehow that’s okay. Well, it’s not. It sucks. We
are richer for having known Tom and Kevin and yet poorer for having lost them
to a force that will not succumb. As the work they didn’t finish slowly fades, we’re
left to carry on without them. I am humbled by cancer’s cruelty and powerless
in its prevention. I have no lessons to share or wisdom to appreciate. These
are but two men. Two men I have known, I have shared meals with and laughed
with. There have been and will always be
others whose time with us isn’t nearly as long as should be, and we can only
move through our grief hoping that one day the pain will ease. But it will
never cease. And I guess that’s what it means to be human.
Life’s a bitch, and then you die.
