The Aerie

Have I mentioned recently

Have I mentioned recently how much I HATE cancer?

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the death of my friend Steve. I found this appallingly difficult to believe. The Anniversary arrived like Monday morning after a three-day weekend: miserable and altogether too soon.

Yesterday my wife and I went to First Avenue to celebrate Steve's life. Once again I was struck by the incongruity of the situation: spike-haired, pierced punkers had gathered together to honor a man gone now for an entire year. Nobody can say anything bad or stereotypical about punk rockers to me anymore. These people cared about each other, and were willing to go to some effort to show it.

And it was familial. One of the punk bands, Pumpkinhead, included two of Steve's nephews by marriage: the lead guitar and vocalist was 16, the drummer 12. Both of them cooler at their respective ages than I have been or ever will be.

We stayed through Plate-O-Shrimp, at which time it was pretty late for us old-timers. After the rather deafening celebration, I discovered that I had a message on my cell phone. It was my paternal-half-brother, who asked me to call him on something important. I knew that couldn't be good.

I called, and learned that our father - my birth-father - has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only three to six months to live.

Have I mentioned recently that I LOATHE cancer?

I'm beginning to get the distinct impression that I'm just not meant to have a father figure in my life of any sort.

My adoptive father is is dead of brain cancer, and my birthfather soon will be dead of pancreatic cancer, both of them well before age 70. Dr. Noel Johnson, the high-school teacher who gave me my vocation, died in 1989 of brain cancer.

The message I'm getting here is that I'm just not going to get to have anyfather figures during this lifetime. I guess I just get to go it alone, and fashion my fathering out of fantasy, fiction, and whole cloth.

In addition to my various adoptive, birth, and circumstantial fathers dead of cancer, we have my friend Steve, dead of cancer, my wife's second cousin, dead of cancer. Cancer cancer everywhere.

So now I have a whole 'nother reason to visit the East Coast in September. The wife is even planning for the whole family to go on the trip, but we'll see about that.

Posted by Albatross at July 28, 2004 4:52 PM