My Friend Joe Is About To Die Of Cancer
My good friend Joe has terminal lung cancer and is in hospice. Has maybe a day or 3 left and will spend it mostly sedated and unconscious because the pain is so intense.
A rough around the edges kind of guy who lived “off the grid” the last 15 or 20 years. Wouldn’t hesitate to tell anyone to fuck off and was often a difficult man.
Smoked like a chimney for more than 50 years, which is almost certainly why he has cancer. Even after diagnosis would come back from chemo and immediately put a cigarette in his mouth and light up he loved it that much.
Estranged from his family because of his rough manner and general dislike of them to begin with, he trusted and designated me to make end of life medical decisions instead of them who he did not trust at all. It’s been awkward as I’ve been forced to communicate with them.
Yet even the doctors saw his interactions with them as they came to visit him in the hospital, and told me it was very clear I was his best advocate and concerned with what was best for him, they were not.
I met him in 2015 when the cat rescue I volunteer with was asked to help TNR and rescue cats on his property. An industrial area with his property down a dead end dirt road with no street lights. A run down garage for tractor trailer maintenance and repair, he lived in the offices with jury rigged electricity, no running water, lived rough like his manner. A trucking company was also on the property in the better maintained end of the building.
Cats were dumped there, wandered in, he and others fed them and did their best. Every year many litters of kittens came from the 15-20 cats there and the cycle continued. Many died of exposure, or run over by trucks, or caught by some predator.
Then I came along and we went to work. TNRd the ferals that were unadoptable. Rescued many litters of kittens and they went on to real homes. A few abandoned friendlies that also went to homes. I took in 6 of them myself, mostly feral cats that eventually socialized to one degree or other. Now a 7th I have trapped since he went into the hospital for the last time, and 2 more that I am working hard to trap including Homey, his personal favorite and friend. Half feral still or more and rough like Joe. I gave him my word I would get her and give her a good home. They were the last 3 and they will join my happy swarm.
He loves rock music, and we bonded over that shared love once he realized I do the lighting for a relatively famous band from this area. He was able to come to 2 shows in 2018 and 2019, the last concerts he ever attended. I am so glad it was my band and my lights he saw.
But now the lights are about to go down for the last time on my friend’s life. Time to exit stage left never to be seen again. Brought to this point by his own choices. An independent man who was happier living rough in a hard place than comply with how his sisters and brother in law and “civilized society” wanted him to live.
Which doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye. For as rough as he was, as unpleasant as he often was with other humans, he had a mother fucking big heart and we saved an awful lot of cats together.
A good man with a good heart my friend Joe. I will miss him and his rambling calls and texts dearly. I will miss the rescuing of cats together. I will miss our friendship dearly.
I hope he rests easy. He deserves it.
Thanks for reading if you have, I needed to vent. I lost another friend to cancer earlier this year, and my brother died from a heart attack a couple months ago. This is the 3rd whammy this year.