Two years and a few days ago, I spoke my final words to my friend Todd. “I love ya, brother,” I said after a long weekday lunch and a few drinks. He grasped my hand and repeated those words, and walked out of my eye’s view forever.
A few nights later, Todd went to bed and never woke. He was 41.
Life is filled with regrets. Lord knows we all carry some of them with us, but letting one of my best guy friends know how I felt certainly is not one of them. Todd and I, along with our third partner in unprosecuted crimes, Toby, made a habit of saying goodbye by using a word men too often avoid, particularly with each other.
Cancer becoming part of one’s life brings a new perspective. Death becomes more tangible and lunches become free. And shying away from saying what one feels seems pointless. People say “life is short”, but even when you know in your bones you are going to defeat this cancer, that phrase deeply connects.
Todd taught me about friendship and loyalty. He showed me how real men stay good fathers even in the face of a bitter divorce. And, in his passing, Todd Farrar made it clear that telling your best guy friends that you love them is lasting.
Toby and I still tell tales of our time with Todd. In that way, he will never be gone. We all come and go, but if being remembered fondly by friends and family is a life accomplishment, an angel should drape a gold medal around Todd’s neck.
I recently sat alone on a boulder in the mountains of Colorado, a clear stream breaking at my feet, tumbling down to its own destiny. I felt completely at peace, the soundtrack of nature surrounding me, and then tears ran down my face.
Since my diagnosis of prostate cancer, eventual surgeries to remove and repair damage to my body (some of which was not connected to my cancer), and post-surgical news that my cancer had reached into my bladder (but thankfully at this time has not metastasized in lymph nodes), I have worked diligently to stay out of my dark places. And this moment wasn’t a visit into the darkness.
No, this moment was one of realization. I have spent my life trying to achieve, to create, and to make my mark, so to speak. And what does it really mean when you sit alone, pondering the magnitude of the world and the insignificance of your accomplishments, no matter how great they seem to yourself and others? I am only a man, wounded for the moment, seeking wisdom and peace, needing to set aside the weights of regrets I have carried with me for no reason. I just want to settle my soul, and to understand what it really means to be an ant in this colony we call Earth.
Is my place any more significant than the bull elk or bear, than the haze-covered mountain or the high valley below, than the boulder upon which I sit or the wildflower that has found its spot in the world at its side? Probably not and certainly yes become the conflicting answers I accept. Here I sit as others stroll the path behind me, either noticing me or not. This is life.
All I have wanted to do in this portion of my journey is to observe and participate, to put words together that express what I see and feel in order to communicate. I am a writer, but one who is uncertain about how I arrived at this place, where I am known for covering sports but that was never my intent.
This cancer and the blog that you now read have reminded me that I am not a sportswriter. I am a writer. I chose to limit my palette for professional reasons, and I love what I do. It is natural work and people actually pay to read and hear my thoughts, as well as those of my co-workers. I am blessed.
Now, however, it is time to reacquaint myself with the man who writes because that is what his being commands. High in a closet in our home office sits a stack of nine-inch by 12-inch boxes, inside each of which rests a copy of a very mediocre novel I wrote more than 20 years ago. Being published was the dream, but the process of stringing together characters, dialogue and storyline into 120,000 words of beginning, middle and end was the real accomplishment.
It was as if I rose from this rock and shouted into this beautiful wilderness not to get a response, but because I only needed to do so. Seeing those boxes are like the echo that passes my ear.
Maybe I will return to my novel, update and improve it, or maybe I will let it be and move on to something more profound such as a movie script to make people laugh, a play to inspire people to sing or a grand novel of a man’s many lives strung together with deceit and put in focus only as he faces his inevitable end, surrounded by a family who never really knew him.
I have much to say in my life as a writer, and that is why I accept my cancer not as an illness but as a message. Our time is finite. Each in their own allotted time, that bull elk will fall, that mountain will erode, and that flower will wither.
It is my goal this fall to continue to write about sports, but also to find time to write about other things, and to do so while beating back cancer one radiation treatment at a time. I may fail in some of this, but I will not fail to try, which is what I have been doing for more than 20 years with my life as a writer beyond the realm of sports. I shall not fail to express myself when needed, whether it’s a shout into the wild or a simple hug and an “I love ya, brother” to my friends.
A few months ago I said that phrase to a close friend, Ron, who responded, “I’m not ready to go there yet, Fitz.” I understood. A lot of men aren’t prepared to say those words to another man. It’s how many of us were raised.
Since then, I have undergone surgery and recovered, and now prepare for a bigger fight to halt this Stage 3 prostate cancer before it spreads more demonically through my body.
Ron, his daughter, who is in her early 20s and like a niece to me, and I recently ate lunch. As we parted ways on the sidewalk that day, Ron said, “I love ya, brother.” I responded with a smile and an “I love you, too.”
I have measured my success in sales, in adoration, in awards, and in web page clicks and retweets, but my new perspective has taught me something else. All of those are important in their own way, but when I leave this place and continue with this soul’s journey, I will leave behind a more important echo: one of expressed love to those who deserve it and by those who returned it when I needed it most.
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