“I have some bad news. Ran into A**** on my walk. She asked if I knew how T** was. Said the state troopers were at his house early this morning…mentioned suicide. R*** and I are going over in a few to knock on his door. I don’t know anything for sure yet. A**** was very upset, so was C***.”
She didn’t know T** had cancer.”
“T** if you get this let us know you’re okay. We’re worried about you.”
“He planned it out.”
“Dammit, T**. He could’ve survived this.”
“R*** and I are just thinking that maybe he is hospitalized somewhere. I know it’s a long shot, but I’m holding out hope.”
“I would hope so, but it sounds like he knew what he was doing and knew how to follow through. T** was/is very smart.”
“Some crying, I’m sad and frustrated because I know he could’ve beaten the cancer with chemo, but I also know he was in a lot of pain. I’m going to miss him a lot because he was a great guy. Funny, smart, fun to be around, and he had a relaxing persona. I just wish he was here with us. RIP T** 7/10/24.”
As I reread these texts between us friends and neighbors from one year ago, it’s of course bringing back all these feelings of being scared and worried for our dear friend. My wife and I made it this far before getting COVID, and of course we couldn’t help but think that our friend, who relied on us for emotional support due to his new cancer diagnosis, did the dirty deed while we weren’t able to be there for him in person. But who knows, really? Maybe he planned it for that day all along? We speculated that maybe he sent a timed email to the police department so they knew to go to his house, otherwise it probably would’ve been days before he was found.
While my wife and I are fairly new to the neighborhood (six years running, now), T** was the newest addition. He moved in about four years ago, and I found out about him from another neighbor. I’m generally not one to walk up to random strangers and introduce myself, but this one particular day while I was out for one of my solo walks down our dirt road, I felt compelled to do just that as I was walking by his house. I thought what the heck, so I walked up to his door, knocked, and a slightly cautious man who was about ten years older with gray peppered hair answered the door, peering out from the inside. I welcomed him to the neighborhood, said it was spontaneous of me to do something like this, so therefore I didn’t have any cookies or anything for him. He shook my hand and invited me in. He gave me a tour of the house, which needed a LOT of work, but he was clearly a handyman because he explained exactly how he was going to fix everything. This would prove to take a couple years for him to get his house set up the way he wanted, between working 40-60 hour weeks from his computer at home. After our first introduction, I continued on my walk with a smile on my face, happy that I put myself out there, and also relieved that he seemed like a good guy who was very open.
T** quickly worked his way into our hearts as he was indeed very friendly, considerate, and loved to talk. He could talk for hours on end without you getting a word in edgewise. This was good for me as I’m not the best at small talk. He went from being “a neighbor who’s also a friend,” to “a friend who’s also a neighbor.” We would often invite him over for dinner, drinks, to play cornhole, whatever, along with our other friends-who-happen-to-be-neighbors. He fit in immediately. He would complain about his running list of house projects, but not in a way that was ever annoying, because he was so charismatic. I would joke that our basement was looking pretty water-tight, just to get him to laugh and shake his head.
He was independent and almost always refused my/our help with his house every time, as he seemingly wanted to do it all on his own. And he had the know-how as well. He impressed me in many ways, as he seemed to know a little bit about everything. You could ask him a random question and he would somehow have at least some knowledge of that particular topic.
T** had begun a newish relationship before his diagnosis, which he also kept secret from us. Once the cat was out of the bag, we were so happy for them! I think part of his frustration stemmed from the fact that he was finally getting his house set up the way he wanted, he had met someone else who made him happy, he had good friends (the best he’d ever had, he told us), and then he gets hit with the big C diagnosis. How messed up is that? He was finally getting his feet back on the ground. T**’s new partner ended up inheriting his two very sweet cats.
T**’s wife had died of cancer a few years prior (presumably from smoking cigarettes), which was in part why T** moved out of their previous house and into this one on our road. That house reminded him of her too much and he wanted to move on. T** had also been a smoker for many decades, but we never judged him for that. It wasn’t our place to tell him what to do, plus, he had enough to worry about with his new house. One day, T** informed us that he had bladder cancer (something I learned in nursing school was that the middle-aged white male smoker demographic is more likely to get bladder cancer from smoking). We were in shock, but I was not entirely surprised. We could tell that T** was frustrated and pissed off about his diagnosis, but he also didn’t have complete trust in doctors. The reality of the situation was that he did have cancer, and it didn’t sound good. I let him know that depending on its severity, he might end up with a permanent suprapubic catheter, which is a tube coming from the bladder and out through a hole in your abdomen, usually to a collection bag. There is a small part of me that feels guilty for telling him that, because in my mind, maybe that encouraged his decision to choose his terminal path. I’m working on letting that go, however, because he also made his choices in life that led to this point. Hell, it even says so right on the cigarette package that smoking WILL cause cancer. I brought T** to a doctor’s appointment once and he broke down crying in the car on the way there, saying that we were the best friends he’s ever had. My wife would often go for walks with him down our dirt road when I was at work, but as much as he loved to talk, he was very stoic about his pain and tried not to talk about it much, let alone letting us know how severe his cancer actually was. The pained expressions in his face as he would suddenly clutch his stomach told us plenty, though.
T** was a smart man, and with a couple nurses looking after him when he would let us, he knew when to keep his mouth shut. I didn’t see it coming, and I wish I had. There were no signs, though, at least not for me.
Our friends held a bonfire for him in memoriam some weeks after he took his own life, which our wife and I were not able to attend, so we held our own fire after that with just the two of us. We each wrote a letter to him to be read aloud, which we then burned in the fire. Mine started out, “F#$& you, T** (I love you),” before I would read the rest of my long letter. I could hear him laughing at me as I burned it, as I know he would’ve appreciated that statement. We bought some Long Trail ale (his favorite libation) and had a beer by the fire as we cried. I was frustrated, angry, and sad, but I was finally getting the tears out. I wasn’t able to cry about his passing until then, which I think was because I was still in disbelief about it all. Things are better now, but every now and then as we walk past his house (which largely remains untouched), I say, “F#$& you, T**. I love you,” and I chuckle. In my heart, I still hold out hope that he sent all his friends a timed email for one year or five years from the day of his death, which would explain more about what was going through his mind, and that he loves us all but wanted to end his suffering. Something, anything. Nothing has shown up in our inboxes as of yet.
For a while after his death, the strangest things started to happen. The light above the kitchen sink began to flicker, seemingly in a pattern, and my wife said that a stable book fell off the bookshelf in our home office when she was home alone. Could be nothing, or it could’ve been T** trying to get our attention. Birds also didn’t chirp on his property for almost a month.
Even though you were in our lives for a very short time, I will always remember you as a great guy with a great spirit. I love you, buddy.
***
If you or someone you know are having thoughts of harming yourselves or their selves, it only becomes too late after the fact. Please dial 988 or go to this website: https://988lifeline.org/.
Next week, I’d like to talk about something more positive: a Vermont company which was formed to help take a chunk out of Amazon’s profits!
