I don't normally do Friday posts. I fact, aside from vacations, I don't know that I've ever done one. I feel the need now because I want to get something down.
About a week or so ago, we ran across a scrap of paper that I had kept in a box since I left the U of M. Written on it, was the name and address of a friend that I had then. A friend I am ashamed to say that I had lost track of. I found him briefly around 1997 or so, the early days of the internet when there were fewer of us on it. And fewer ways to contact each other as well. I emailed him back and forth a few times. That was the last time I talked to him.
When we found that scrap, my wife urged me to try to find him on Facebook. I mean you can find anyone on there right? And I did. I saw his picture. Boy, had he changed. So I sent him a friend request. And I didn't hear anything. Thinking that maybe he was one of those people who have a life and do things other than spend time online, I thought no more of it. Well, this morning I got an approval on the friend request. I was overjoyed. I was going to be reunited with a friend that I had missed for all these years.
Then I got to reading his updates. They were not him. They were his wife. It seems that somewhere along the way, he had developed leukemia and was taking immunosuppressive drugs. Recently he caught chicken pox and was hospitalized. Then he had shingles. Then the medicine caused microclots to form in his blood. They caused his blood vessels to rupture and he bled internally. Then he was put on a ventilator because he couldn't breathe on his own any longer. Yesterday there was this post.
"Peter Buchy is being taken off the ventillator tomorrow. Please pray he has the strength to speak. He will be awake until he can no longer breathe on his own (no idea how long that will be) and then he will be made comfortable."
I went from very happy to extremely sad in the span of a few minutes. I've never been in this situation before. All the people I've know that had died were older than me. Not younger. And who knows how long he was able to breathe on his own. There have been no further posts. I can hope that there was a miracle and he survived the day, but for how much longer? Until I receive word that he's gone, I will continue to hope. But I'm afraid that there isn't much left.
It seems he got sick again a couple weeks ago. I'd had that damn paper for 15 years. And I decide to do something with it in time to learn he was dying and unconscious and wouldn't have known me if I'd been in the room. I feel like an ass for not doing something sooner. This is a lesson against procrastination I guess. Don't put things off until tomorrow, tomorrow may be too late.
I think the little phrase I thought of yesterday might need an unspoken corollary. Wander through the world as if you were seeing it for the first time, you never know when it might be the last time you see it. Out of all the people I knew, he was the person in whom life seemed to burn the brightest. The one for whom I knew great things were destined. Illness snuffed that flame out. I've missed my friend Pete for 15 years. I guess I'll have to keep missing him.
I'm sad today.
Later
Labels: Life
