I have been in the room twice in my life as I have watched boyhood heroes cling to their final breathes of air after battling for so long. Assuring them that is okay to let go, that we in the room would do everything possible to carry out their wishes in totality. Neither were my father, however both we like secondary fathers to me.

One my godfather and one the husband of my godmother, but had important roles in shaping me as the person I am today.

Tom was a uncle that lived most of his life at a distance, he moved from the family because he didn’t fit in as he was a gay male in a small town. He was tormented by not only his peers but from his own mother and father as well. He lived a hard life early on and found refuse in running away.

I didn’t know the whole story until he fell victim to disease and faded very rapidly, I was only in high school just after my accident when he moved back to basically reconnect with family and live out his days. I learned about the cruelty of life and how to partially deal with it through his story and pain of trying to explain why he wasn’t there to share in our lives but now is basically dependent upon our assistance to leave ours. Back then, the treatment, stigma and hope to live with the disease called AIDS was so different. Back then there was little hope and he was resigned to his fate, but that journey through it was both difficult yet so important to him and us.

Ron was married to my aunt, so he wasn’t blood relation, but I don’t know that I had a tighter bond with a family member than him. He was blunt, to the point blunt, and he didn’t sugarcoat life as many adults do to children in their lives. I spent a couple of weeks each summer at their house each year, it basically was my only time as a child that I wasn’t tied to the farm and felt connected to the world outside of that farm.

We were on his boat the year after I graduated High School working on the engine, and he thought he wrenched his shoulder somehow. Little could I expect by the time I went back to school that fall that I would receive the phone call that he was diagnosed with cancer, and it had spread to a point that they didn’t think there was much hope in terms of treatment.

He fought bravely, but it just wasn’t caught in time to have any hope and he faded very rapidly, within a calendar year was gone.

I hurt like hell to sit with him over weekend conversations, to watch him basically resign himself to his fate. To watch how it affected my cousins and their children.. most that were not old enough to really grasp the reality of the situation, but often now ask tough questions about their papa.
Ron was not a saint, but he had a heart of gold. He asked me to draw the image for his gravestone so that his childhood home was always close. I hold close and guarded those final conversations over that year, his requests and wishes that he did not want to burden his children with. I hold his letter he wrote after my accident, his declaration of how to deal with the upcoming changes in his stern manner, however it was about the only time he really showed his soft underlying compassion; as one of my most prized possessions. I often turn to that letter for guidance, not in direct examples but in the spirit and manner in which to carry forth.

My stories didn’t end with a recovery, and they are not of a direct relative like a father or a child. They were filled with great pain and conversations that I don’t think should be intended for anyone let alone a young adult still struggling with his own recovery and trying to process what is being asked of him. Both these stories live on today in some of their final requests they made of me, but I honor them to this day.

Some pains just never fade, but in them there are joys, memories, and the knowing that they knew how much you love them.