...my friend died Saturday evening.
I talked about this a while back. He was the one diagnosed with a brain-stem tumor, which I knew was basically fatal. I think they diagnosed him last September, which means he made it about nine months with it malignant. Or so; he'd had glasses for a long time, so it might have been sitting dormant for years and no one had any reason to suspect anything.
I saw him once this past spring, and then I saw a few photos of him from recent months, and the steroids he'd been put on had done some nasty things. Like, remember Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor when he was wearing that suit? Remember what his neck looked like?
Yeah.
Plus, as I heard from his father, he'd eventually lost the ability to communicate—what since the brain stem is basically nervous system central and any pressure on it causes loss of motor skills and sensory-related abilities. So when I got the message from my sister that night, I wasn't really hit hard. I cried for two hours back when I first heard he had the tumor because I knew he was dying, and then once more about a week after that, but....
Saturday night I felt like I was looking at an hourglass that had stopped.
He was in a prison these last few months. When I saw him he was still getting some form of outside interaction, but the bars were there. After that, I know it was almost like being in Solitary. And now he's free of that. So I'm not sad. I'm relieved.
For me, the dying part hurts more than the death part. Once that happens, I can't bring myself to mourn any longer.
Went to visitation tonight. My mother went with me, I think so she could pay final respects and see his parents. I just went to see his parents. But they had a slideshow playing of pictures from his life, so I got to see a lot and remember a lot. That made me happy. He had a good life, even if I only remembered five or six years of it.
My mother got tore up, once in line and then again when we got to his mother. And then she was torn up, and since I'm a very sensitive empath that got to me pretty badly in the throat, too. She said she was glad to see us there, and she was tired but holding up, and then we did some glancing reminiscing for a moment. And then she told me something that I'm having a hard time dealing with.
"He always thought a lot of you."
Oh frack. Here I go.
We were together in the band program from sixth grade on, and we got seated close together during marching season since we could respond to each other well, I think. (Plus it made seating easier, and trombones are never ones to fight over chair placement for some reason.) And then in junior year he dropped out of the band and pursued a more thespian avenue, while I stuck with music and maths and sciences. So we drifted.
I saw him once or twice during each semester—you know, the whole run-into-each-other-on-the-way-to-class thing—but other than that our paths didn't cross a whole lot. We both had friends in common, but....
Then once I went to college, that was it. Until I heard he had cancer, I hadn't seen him at all, had barely thought of him, in fact.
And he thought a lot of me.
And I. I did nothing.
Merciful God, I did nothing.
I was like that even in college. I had several close friends who also attended the campus, but unless I saw them in class, that was it. I didn't really try. Now I have the excuse of being in a different major than them—but even the people I hung out with regularly last year were hung out with because I didn't have to go looking for them. I didn't have to try. If they had chosen a different location to convene instead of the room right past the stairs I needed to go up, I dunno if I even would have gone looking for them.
The only contact I had ever had with Cody, then, was that of happenstance. What was necessary. What I didn't have to make for myself.
And he thought a lot of me.
How the hell do I deserve that?
