I would like to keep this blog on the positive/uplifting side of things whenever possible, but I feel the need to relate this story. So, please bear with me as I get this out...
- Dedicated to the man who made my sister so happy for so long.
Larry was my sisters husband-type-person for about the last 15 years. He was a Vietnam combat veteran, avid outdoors-man and habitual fisherman (Though my sister would always out-fish him...). Larry recently passed away; a victim of lung cancer.
(I had written a crap-load of stuff here, cathartic for me, boring for everyone else. Take this stuff DELETE...
After a phone call from my sister, Ella, letting me know that Larry had entered the hospital and he would likely never be leaving, I headed out for the long drive to San Diego.
My relationship with Larry, though spanning fifteen years, was moderately superficial - or so I thought. We had shared many short, but meaningful conversations in the first few years of our relationship and many more over the past two years during which time my mother was dying of pulmonary fibrosis. During this two year span of time Larry was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. During his childhood and earlier adult life, Larry was a heavy smoker, and that habit had finally caught up with him.
Anyway, I spent the next four days in a hospital in San Diego sleeping in a chair beside my sister and learning that we don't always truly understand what we mean to others until it is too late.
...The DELETE button strikes again! Ha!
Over these four four days I held Larry's hand, laughed and cried with him, comforted him when he confided in me that he didn't want to die and that he really wished that he had never started smoking in the first place. We both cried then.
I was with Larry and my sister as he passed; I will never forget the sound of my sister weeping, or the silence that filled the room as Larry left us. I wish you the best, my friend, and that wherever you are you are catching the big fish and keeping them all for yourself.
See you soon.
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If anyone happens to read this; thank you. I wrote a CRAP-TON more than what is here, again, cathartic for me but would have been meaningless to you.
Please, show the people in your life kindness and love, for you never know when it will be too late, an remember; kindness doesn't need to be so random...
