Band Member on Hospice

My friend of 44-years made it home to his family and hospice after sixish weeks in the hospital. He’s been in a tug-of-war with a benign cancer for a bunch of years. Benign means it doesn’t gallop about the body, but it also means, in this case, it quietly stopped responding to chemo and grew to an unrecoverable size. Meanwhile the chemo was making my friend very, very sick.

As with friends from high school years, we fell out of touch when I left the Island. We met again when the school did an all-classes year 2000 reunion. Most of us in the band were at that gathering. It was a blast! Since then we’ve kept in sporadic touch, but much more so in the last five years. Since he became ill.

As a musician he encouraged me to sing when I didn’t have the confidence to belt it out beyond a campfire circle. He and our band’s rhythm guitarist taught me how to play bass by watching the chords they were playing. Our claim to fame was opening for Jr. Cadillac at the county fair. And for most of two years, we hung out a lot.

His stretch goal was to get back to the Island for our band reunion at the end of the month. His son tells us that he’s not communicating anymore. We’ll dedicate every song to him.