Sad Pocket

Years ago, on a whim, I went skiing. Or, to put it better, I went on a skiing trip, dressed up in ski clothes and didn’t ski. All that time spent not skiing added up, and I needed other things to occupy my time, so I hatched a plan. Others used snow as a way to crash into trees. I would use it to make my soda pop cold. It had the added benefit of not requiring puffy clothes. I was a genius.

With cunning and shrewdness I enacted my plan. I went to the store. I bought some Pepsi. I buried my six-pack into the snow, and spent my time watching skiers fall. It was a plan too simple and elegant to fail.

I figured 15 minutes would just about do it, and when I went to the snow bank to pick up my ice-cold beverages, they were nowhere to be found. I searched the snow bank. I did a perimeter search. I looked all over, but it was overwhelmingly clear: someone had stolen my sodas. I trudged back up to the lodge, my plan in tatters, cold Pepsi not in hand and went back to my game of billiards. My next shot consisted of the 4 ball into the sad pocket.

Obviously, the event itself isn’t a big deal now. It wasn’t long at all before I was back to my normal self, exchanging tales of skiing adventure with others (mine were false, of course). What affected me most about the event were the underlying issues. They were the reasons I remember the event so clearly. I wanted to be able to choose how I would share and divvy out something that belonged to me. I had something taken from me. Someone had betrayed me, and I had experienced loss. I really wanted those beverages.

As the years progressed, I felt and experienced better examples of loss. I volunteered for the track team and got cut. I played on a basketball team so there would be 5-on-5 only to be told a few minutes in that my team would prefer to play a man down. I have more examples. Not all of them involve poor hand-eye coordination. Some of them are awful and heart-rending. I’ve no doubt everyone has a list.

I had reached an in-between place. People taken away from me unexpectedly and relationships dissolved had been dealt with in as healthy a manner as could be expected. My life had moved on. But then I got a phone call. It was simple, as this sort of thing tends to be. I was told that my friend has cancer.

While it is true that I haven’t kept in touch with my friend over the years as I ought to have done, he is still very dear to me and I love him very much. I felt like someone punched me in the gut. The facts were these: the cancer is the most benign kind you can have while still having cancer, which is as relevant to me as learning that a person with an I.Q. of 210 kicked you in the groin. Whatever honor may have been bestowed upon you by being kicked by a genius is rendered useless because of the fact that you’re on the ground clutching your groin. Sorry for the mental image there, but I trust that my point has been made: the event is the event. The sorrow is the sorrow, and cancer is cancer. Hodgkin’s lymphoma may be treatable, but is still scares the hell out of me, and when I was told that Bob has cancer, I was overcome with emotion.

Early surgeries didn’t do the trick. Some of the cancer was taken out of his neck and chest, but not all of it. Soon Bob will go through chemo, and he’s already cut his hair, in preparation for when it will fall out completely. No doubt the emotions that Bob is going through are complicated and conflicted. He lost his Dad not too long ago to pancreatic cancer, and I’m sure this bout of cancer is an irony he could best do without.

Cancer in my friend? This isn’t an unhealthy person we’re talking about. Bob was my jogging partner in China. He jogs still. So why on earth is this happening to him? It isn’t in my pay grade to ascertain which person has suffered enough and which person hasn’t. I don’t want that job. Thoughts such as these have no benefit to the subject at hand, and I had to yank myself away from them. Instead I find myself dealing with the facts as they are, no matter how difficult it is, and deal with it that way.

As a friend of someone with cancer, I’m faced with complexity of thought. It tears up my emotions. On the one hand, this isn’t about me. I’m not the one feeling torn apart every other Wednesday by chemicals that have no business being in a human being. I’m not the one losing my hair, or having to teach summer school while dealing with mortality. My friend does, and that sucks.

On the other hand, it is useless to refuse to admit it. My emotions are conflicted as well. Sure, it makes me feel selfish, but there it is. I had years to be friends with Bob. Everything I have within me wants this to still be true. I had plans that were faultless and flawless. My Pepsi would be cold and I would then drink it, and my friend would outlive us all. Someone took my Pepsi, and something took my friend’s health. I was hacked off about someone stealing my sodas, which they had no right to do, and I am hacked off about cancer stealing my friend’s comfort and time. I’m so angry about it that I don’t give a flying flip that my metaphor is simplistic and silly, perhaps even offensively so. None of that is of the slightest importance to me. You can have my six-pack of Pepsi. I want my friend to be rid of cancer.