It was this time of the year just 3 years ago that my best friend was fighting for his life with cancer. It had started in his colon and spread to his liver. He called me that April to tell me about it and I flew up right away to visit. It was an understandably emotional visit and it brought us much closer together.
After that visit we talked on the phone several times a week. Sometimes he’d call me while I was at work and he was receiving chemo-therapy. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Mike knew he could call me and pour his heart out and I would listen.
The existential angst that a terminal disease brings makes you feel like your life has stopped; that everything up to this point is minutiae. The trouble is it only stops for you. Life doesn’t care that you have a disease or that it’s terminal. The bills keep coming only now there’s also medical bills, you still have a mortgage, your kids still act up and you still have to work or figure out how to keep money coming in. Your relationships are still what they were before your illness only now they have the added strain of a medical emergency.
I got word one day that my friend was very despondent, extremely upset over his life and his marriage. He had apparently separated from his wife and he was consumed by the thought that she had a boyfriend. He had threatened to kill them and then himself. I immediately called him up and it seemed like forever before he finally answered. He’d been crying and it was difficult to make out what he was saying at first. There was no reasoning with him and he ended the conversation with “I’m going to end this shit once and for all.”
He wouldn’t answer his phone after that. I was beside myself with worry, anxiety and panic. I called the police in his home town and explained everything to them. They dispatched officers to his house only to discover that it was empty and had a “for sale” sign in the front yard. They would continue to look for him.
I finally reached his brother at work and told him what had happened. He listened patiently and told me he’d “take care of things” and get back to me. There wasn’t much else I could do from so far away.
My family was in town for the holidays and we met at a local restaurant for lunch. I wasn’t good company as it was difficult to focus on anything but Mike. We’d no more than sat down at a table when my phone rang. Mike was very subdued. He said he was in police custody but was okay. When I asked him what happened, he said on the advice of his attorney he couldn’t say. I was really freaking out thinking that he’d killed or severely hurt someone. We talked for several more minutes and my heart was really breaking for him, his wife and family.
I’d worked for the police department years earlier and had talked to my share of people who had been involved in some horrendous crimes but I was never personally involved with them. It was very personal this time.
In the middle of this conversation, his voice lifted.
“Jesus man, I knew I could always count on you to do the right thing, but call the cops on me?! What the hell was that about?”
It took a few seconds for it to sink in - I wasn’t sure what he meant. When I pressed him to explain what was going on he said it all was a joke. No one was hurt, he wasn’t in jail and he thought it was great fun that I’d jumped through all the hoops he’d set up. My mind couldn’t absorb the hurt and betrayal. I asked him why he did this and he said he missed talking to me. We’d had an argument and hadn’t talked in a couple of weeks. I asked him, “Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me? What part of you doesn’t understand how sick and cruel this is? What the hell do you think is funny about making me believe that you’d killed two people and were now in jail?”
I was shaking as we continued to talk. People walking past me on the street were looking at me as the conversation grew more heated. He had no explanation and kept trying to blow it off as harmless fun. The final straw was when he blamed me for over-reacting. I was so angry and hurt I told him to never call me again and hung up. He tried to call back but I refused to answer.
When I went back inside the restaurant and told my family what had happened they all had a shocked look on their faces. My sister-in-law said he must have been influenced by his cancer and that I should give it some time and call him back.
Before his cancer, Mike had the habit of not calling me for years at a time. If I called him, he wouldn’t always return my calls. I understood that it was the way he was and it was always okay. When we would get together it was like no time had elapsed. We’d pick up where we left off.
Years earlier I told another friend about how Mike rarely stayed in touch and he told me, “He’ll call you when he needs you. You’re too good of a friend for him not to.” I couldn’t help but think of that prediction when the cancer struck and he called.
My wife used to get irritated with Mike as she knew how much I enjoyed talking with him and she thought he only contacted me when he wanted something like when he got married the first time. He called and asked me to make his wedding rings. I gladly did and we had a good time at his wedding but then several more years went by and I didn’t hear from him. Children were born and he got divorced but I didn’t know until he called with the news of his illness. By then he was on his second marriage and had several more children.
When I went to visit him for the last time, driving around Chicago late at night he told me that he never told his mom about his wife’s last pregnancy. Instead he took his newborn son over to his parent’s house were he put the baby carrier on their doorstep with a note indicating someone had abandoned the child. He rang the doorbell and then hid where he could see his mom’s reaction to her newest grandson. He thought that was incredibly funny. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want his folks to be in on the pregnancy too, but that was Mike. He was his own man and he heard a different drum beat.
With every friendship there’s a give and take. Good friends overlook each others flaws and failings.You learn to with-hold judgment because you understand everyone’s situation is unique and there but for the grace of God go you. This is how it was with Mike and me. We understood each other, we clicked.
I did try to call Mike later but he didn’t answer and he never called me back. A few months later his wife called me to say they had lost contact with him and couldn’t find him. He hadn’t gone to any doctor’s appointments or chemo-therapy and he wouldn’t answer his phone. After much searching they finally found him staying in a friend’s apartment where he was laying in bed dying.
They took him to the hospital to try and get him stabilized. I called the hospital several times but every time they handed the phone to him, he would just hang up. They released him and he and went to die at his mom’s house. I tried several more times to call and talk to him but he refused to talk to me.
The next phone call was from his wife’s sister who told me that Mike had passed.
At the same time that all this was happening, my brothers, sister and I were trying to deal with our parent’s Alzheimer’s and getting them into a nursing home. My sister’s oldest daughter had just given birth but they had to life flight the baby to a childrens hospital in another city. No one thought the baby would make it.
It’s hard to put into words the grief, guilt and remorse I have over such a bad ending to what was a wonderful friendship. It was impossible to keep depression at bay. Even more so when mom died the following year.
Carrying this around for the last couple of years along with the ever-present estrangement from my daughter are what caused me to see a counselor again. When I told her about Mike she said, “It’s easy to see why you’re depressed after having gone through such a trauma.”
With those few words I felt like everything I’d been feeling had been validated. My feelings weren’t wrong or inappropriate. Rather, they were very human and understandable. The problem was in being stuck with them and not expressing my grief at all the loss.
I don’t hold anything against my friend. I only wish I would have been there for him in his hour of need. But thing do fall apart sometimes. He’s not here anymore, so I can’t ask his forgiveness. All I can do is hold on to the memories of our friendship and know that when he called that April telling me of his cancer - well, I answered that call and that’s something. I flew up on a moments notice and spent 3 good days with him.
Trauma comes in all forms. From illness, accidents, death and dying to relationship problems, work, children, crime, and on & on. We don’t know when, where or how it may affect us but sooner or later we’ll all have some rain fall in our lives.
TLC helps a lot but sometimes you just have to talk it out too. Depression causes you to withdraw and hold things in. Eventually those ‘things’ become like a piece(s) of emotional shrapnel buried deep inside but causing you a great deal of pain and discomfort as they work their way out. And work their way out, they must.
Take a look at what you’ve been through as though it was a good friend telling you what’s happened to them. You may find yourself feeling more compassionate towards yourself and that’s a good start to training your black dog.
It was this time of the year just 3 years ago that my best friend was fighting for his life with cancer. It had started in his colon and spread to his liver. He called me that April to tell me about it and I flew up right away to visit. It was an understandably emotional visit and it brought us much closer together.
After that visit we talked on the phone several times a week. Sometimes he’d call me while I was at work and he was receiving chemo-therapy. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Mike knew he could call me and pour his heart out and I would listen.
The existential angst that a terminal disease brings makes you feel like your life has stopped; that everything up to this point is minutiae. The trouble is it only stops for you. Life doesn’t care that you have a disease or that it’s terminal. The bills keep coming only now there’s also medical bills, you still have a mortgage, your kids still act up and you still have to work or figure out how to keep money coming in. Your relationships are still what they were before your illness only now they have the added strain of a medical emergency.
I got word one day that my friend was very despondent, extremely upset over his life and his marriage. He had apparently separated from his wife and he was consumed by the thought that she had a boyfriend. He had threatened to kill them and then himself. I immediately called him up and it seemed like forever before he finally answered. He’d been crying and it was difficult to make out what he was saying at first. There was no reasoning with him and he ended the conversation with “I’m going to end this shit once and for all.”
He wouldn’t answer his phone after that. I was beside myself with worry, anxiety and panic. I called the police in his home town and explained everything to them. They dispatched officers to his house only to discover that it was empty and had a “for sale” sign in the front yard. They would continue to look for him.
I finally reached his brother at work and told him what had happened. He listened patiently and told me he’d “take care of things” and get back to me. There wasn’t much else I could do from so far away.
My family was in town for the holidays and we met at a local restaurant for lunch. I wasn’t good company as it was difficult to focus on anything but Mike. We’d no more than sat down at a table when my phone rang. Mike was very subdued. He said he was in police custody but was okay. When I asked him what happened, he said on the advice of his attorney he couldn’t say. I was really freaking out thinking that he’d killed or severely hurt someone. We talked for several more minutes and my heart was really breaking for him, his wife and family.
I’d worked for the police department years earlier and had talked to my share of people who had been involved in some horrendous crimes but I was never personally involved with them. It was very personal this time.
In the middle of this conversation, his voice lifted.
“Jesus man, I knew I could always count on you to do the right thing, but call the cops on me?! What the hell was that about?”
It took a few seconds for it to sink in - I wasn’t sure what he meant. When I pressed him to explain what was going on he said it all was a joke. No one was hurt, he wasn’t in jail and he thought it was great fun that I’d jumped through all the hoops he’d set up. My mind couldn’t absorb the hurt and betrayal. I asked him why he did this and he said he missed talking to me. We’d had an argument and hadn’t talked in a couple of weeks. I asked him, “Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me? What part of you doesn’t understand how sick and cruel this is? What the hell do you think is funny about making me believe that you’d killed two people and were now in jail?”
I was shaking as we continued to talk. People walking past me on the street were looking at me as the conversation grew more heated. He had no explanation and kept trying to blow it off as harmless fun. The final straw was when he blamed me for over-reacting. I was so angry and hurt I told him to never call me again and hung up. He tried to call back but I refused to answer.
When I went back inside the restaurant and told my family what had happened they all had a shocked look on their faces. My sister-in-law said he must have been influenced by his cancer and that I should give it some time and call him back.
Before his cancer, Mike had the habit of not calling me for years at a time. If I called him, he wouldn’t always return my calls. I understood that it was the way he was and it was always okay. When we would get together it was like no time had elapsed. We’d pick up where we left off.
Years earlier I told another friend about how Mike rarely stayed in touch and he told me, “He’ll call you when he needs you. You’re too good of a friend for him not to.” I couldn’t help but think of that prediction when the cancer struck and he called.
My wife used to get irritated with Mike as she knew how much I enjoyed talking with him and she thought he only contacted me when he wanted something like when he got married the first time. He called and asked me to make his wedding rings. I gladly did and we had a good time at his wedding but then several more years went by and I didn’t hear from him. Children were born and he got divorced but I didn’t know until he called with the news of his illness. By then he was on his second marriage and had several more children.
When I went to visit him for the last time, driving around Chicago late at night he told me that he never told his mom about his wife’s last pregnancy. Instead he took his newborn son over to his parent’s house were he put the baby carrier on their doorstep with a note indicating someone had abandoned the child. He rang the doorbell and then hid where he could see his mom’s reaction to her newest grandson. He thought that was incredibly funny. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want his folks to be in on the pregnancy too, but that was Mike. He was his own man and he heard a different drum beat.
With every friendship there’s a give and take. Good friends overlook each others flaws and failings.You learn to with-hold judgment because you understand everyone’s situation is unique and there but for the grace of God go you. This is how it was with Mike and me. We understood each other, we clicked.
I did try to call Mike later but he didn’t answer and he never called me back. A few months later his wife called me to say they had lost contact with him and couldn’t find him. He hadn’t gone to any doctor’s appointments or chemo-therapy and he wouldn’t answer his phone. After much searching they finally found him staying in a friend’s apartment where he was laying in bed dying.
They took him to the hospital to try and get him stabilized. I called the hospital several times but every time they handed the phone to him, he would just hang up. They released him and he and went to die at his mom’s house. I tried several more times to call and talk to him but he refused to talk to me.
The next phone call was from his wife’s sister who told me that Mike had passed.
At the same time that all this was happening, my brothers, sister and I were trying to deal with our parent’s Alzheimer’s and getting them into a nursing home. My sister’s oldest daughter had just given birth but they had to life flight the baby to a childrens hospital in another city. No one thought the baby would make it.
It’s hard to put into words the grief, guilt and remorse I have over such a bad ending to what was a wonderful friendship. It was impossible to keep depression at bay. Even more so when mom died the following year.
Carrying this around for the last couple of years along with the ever-present estrangement from my daughter are what caused me to see a counselor again. When I told her about Mike she said, “It’s easy to see why you’re depressed after having gone through such a trauma.”
With those few words I felt like everything I’d been feeling had been validated. My feelings weren’t wrong or inappropriate. Rather, they were very human and understandable. The problem was in being stuck with them and not expressing my grief at all the loss.
I don’t hold anything against my friend. I only wish I would have been there for him in his hour of need. But thing do fall apart sometimes. He’s not here anymore, so I can’t ask his forgiveness. All I can do is hold on to the memories of our friendship and know that when he called that April telling me of his cancer - well, I answered that call and that’s something. I flew up on a moments notice and spent 3 good days with him.
Trauma comes in all forms. From illness, accidents, death and dying to relationship problems, work, children, crime, and on & on. We don’t know when, where or how it may affect us but sooner or later we’ll all have some rain fall in our lives.
TLC helps a lot but sometimes you just have to talk it out too. Depression causes you to withdraw and hold things in. Eventually those ‘things’ become like a piece(s) of emotional shrapnel buried deep inside but causing you a great deal of pain and discomfort as they work their way out. And work their way out, they must.
Take a look at what you’ve been through as though it was a good friend telling you what’s happened to them. You may find yourself feeling more compassionate towards yourself and that’s a good start to training your black dog.