Stumble It!
I‘ve been thinking a lot, lately, about friends. Part of it is that I have reconnected on Facebook with a passel of high school and college classmates who I’d lost touch with. You know what? I did not expect to have such a good time reconnecting with who I was not so close with, seeing what they are doing, discovering who has families now, and where careers and life have taken them.
With getting older comes the greater likelihood of death, I suppose. When I was a teen growing up in Northern Minnesota, I knew an alarming number of kids and folks who died. Fortunately, I have had a nice stretch without any close friends or relatives dying. But time and tide wait for no man.
Last week a good friend from work passed away. Cancer took Bruce on a Thursday morning. He’d survived colon cancer a few years ago, but it returned earlier this year and invaded his body in numerous places. Bruce was one of the sweetest, gentlest fellows I’ve ever known. He had a smile on his face all the time. I can’t see anything but his grin when I think of him.
He and his partner invited us out to ride on their speedboat one weekend the summer before last. Bruce understood that we were having a hard time with the relocation to Portland, and went to pains to make sure that we felt welcome. We had a blast watching my daughter and his granddaughter play together on the banks of the Columbia River.
One of the things that has flashed through my head these past few days is how I almost didn’t know Bruce. I mean, he was probably almost 50 years old and I only knew him for a little more than two years—a tiny portion of his life. We didn’t spend much time together outside of work; we wanted to do more of it. But, we were busy and time escaped us both and now he’s gone. That bothered me for a couple of days, until I realized that I was lucky enough to have moved to Portland at a time in this world where our paths crossed and I was able to know him for a short while.
And I guess that was a pretty darn good deal for me.
More on this topic to come. Two former colleagues of mine from Minneapolis are battling cancer. One of them, Kristen, is fighting her last fight, and I am afraid the disease has the upper hand. I don’t believe in miracles, but I am hoping she’s got a stroke of luck in her back pocket.
Song of the day: “Easy/Lucky/Free,” by Bright Eyes. Watch this one, it’s a pretty remarkable video.
Filed under: raging thoughts | Tagged: cancer, death, friends
hi…
I’m Sarah, an old friend of Erin’s…. found you thru her. I enjoy your writing a great deal, and this post in particular made me decide to add you to my list…. (heh heh, so my teeny tiny blog audience is now privy to you, via a link!) just finished (well, finished is a debatable term) a four year study and book project on cancer stories related to radiological pollution from the Cold War. Spent hours with perfect strangers who revealed themselves in total and utter vulnerability and pain and rage and love for their children, in hopes that telling their stories would change something, anything. We avoid cancer in this society, we don’t like to talk about it. Which is a damn shame, because not only does it make those experiencing it invisible, it robs the rest of us of something so powerful and important, something you clearly understand: awareness and gratitude. Awareness that our lives are unpredictable, that surviving takes Work sometimes, and that dying demands gratitude and storytelling from the rest of us—- gratitude to have known them, storytelling to honor them. And I love Brighteyes, and that song was beautiful. My partner and I got together in part because of a shared brighteyes song (Landlocked Blues).
Random trivia.
Anyway… hope to meet you the next time i’m in PDX getting my Erin-fix.
Sarahfox
[...] a month ago I told you about my friend Kristen who was raising her gloves one last time in her match against cancer. Along with [...]