Trying to Make Sense
Josh was one of my best friends, if not my best friend. He fought a rare form of cancer for five years before finally succumbing to the effects. I wrote a lot in the year following Josh’s death. A lot of it was just describing what happened and how I felt about it, a lot of it was nonsense. What follows is a heavily edited, and mostly rewritten account of what happened and how I felt before, during, and after Josh’s death. I’ve removed as many names as I could, and I kept the relations as vague as possible because I don’t know if anybody involved wants to be mentioned.
I spoke to Josh two weeks before he died. I had just finished competing in the FILA Submission Wrestling USA World Team Trials, and called Josh to talk about it. We had wrestled together in college, and afterwards we both got into jiu jitsu. Josh talked me into entering my first competition, so I wanted to let him know how far I had come. After filling him on how I did (not great) we caught up a little. I found that he had just moved, and was about to start a new job and a new treatment. He told me, “I am ready for things to get better.”
The last sober conversation I had with Josh was the Friday before he passed away. One of Josh’s relatives had posted something cryptic on Facebook, and I didn’t have a chance to call until my drive home. When I finally called, Josh told me he was in the hospital but didn’t elaborate why. We chatted a little and cracked some jokes. He told me to call him back on Saturday when I wasn’t on the road, and he would let me know what was going on. The last thing he said to me, total sober, was “Peace out.” I understood something in that and told him, “Peace out.”
I didn’t get a chance to speak with Josh on Saturday, but I found out through family that he had been admitted to hospice care. I immediately booked a one way flight out Sunday. I sent an email to my boss telling him the situation and that I hoped I still had a job when I got back. He told me not to worry and do what I had to do.
Years earlier I had made the decision to not mourn him until he died. I would have the rest of my life to mourn. This was the correct decision. Whether or not he was in hospice care, I was flying out to spend some time with my friend.
I was waiting for another friend to pick me up from the airport when I noticed a sign for a chapel. I had never used an airport chapel before, but this seemed as good a time as any. I followed the sign, which took me down a hall to another sign, which took me to an elevator. The elevator didn’t go to a chapel, and there were no hints as to where it might actually be. I had come this far, so I prayed in the hall that Josh would be able to hang on until I could see him again.
Eventually my friend picked me up and we drove to Josh’s house. By the time we arrived, he was on a morphine drip, a little loopy, but otherwise in good spirits. We said ‘hi’, gave him a hug, and then went in the kitchen to get a drink.
Near the end, he started dipping in and out of consciousness. When he finally died, I was out in front talking with the friend who got me from the airport. We had said goodbye to a third friend who had just left, and the two of us reminisced about all the good times we had together. As soon as we stepped back into the house, it was evident that he had passed. I grabbed my friend’s shoulder. He sat down and started crying. I made an internal decision to keep it together as long as I could, and I hoped that it was long enough.
After a minute, I picked up my drink and went out to sit on the porch. I did not cry. I did not cry because crying was not sufficient to express the emotion I was feeling. It wasn’t sadness. It was coming to terms with the terrible and the impossible. As I was forced to accept what had happened, the emotion I was experiencing was ‘no.’ The best way I can describe it is head pain.
When the coroners arrived, nobody watched them take Josh away. Except for me. I don’t know if it was impolite, but I felt I should have helped. I don’t know if they would have even let me help, and I didn’t ask. Before they wheeled him out, I touched his head and was surprised at how cold it was.
I spent the following week driving across several states to the funeral with Josh’s family.
I didn’t have a suit for the funeral. I didn’t have a nice shirt, or tie, or anything else like that. I was packing to visit my friend, not for a funeral. I borrowed a suit from one friend, and it was way too big. I borrowed a shirt from another and it was too small. I have no idea where I got the tie from.
I was a pall bearer, along with other wrestlers and the friend who picked me up from the airport. It was raining, and I think that Josh would have liked knowing that we had to lug him uphill through the mud. I think he would have also liked that I stomped all over the cuffs of that borrowed suit.
The best description I’ve been able to give about what life was like after Josh’s death is that it was like life without the color blue. It was as if I woke up one day and found that the color blue didn’t exist for me anymore. Not only that, but the concept of blue didn’t exist for me anymore either. It was like I had this vague sense that the day before there was something more to the world, that things were better and more vivid. I couldn’t talk to other people about it because they could still see blue, they knew what blue was. I didn’t understand how to communicate it. The best I could do was cobble together questions like, “Hey, wasn’t yesterday better somehow?” That never got a satisfactory answer.
I no longer enjoyed things that I had enjoyed when Josh was alive. Whenever I did something that we used to talk about, it just reminded me that he was dead. I desperately needed some kind of normalcy, and I couldn’t find it because my friend was such a big part of my life. The baseline to my life no longer existed. I was floating through space.
After I returned home, I felt like I was ready to accept it, or grieve, or do whatever you’re supposed to do. I had been mentally fighting so hard to keep it together, that I couldn’t just let go. I would try to relax and stop fighting, but nothing ever happened. This knot just remained. It wasn’t active like anxiety or dread, but I could feel it at every waking moment. For a long time, this was just the way things were. I had managed to shut something off completely and I had no choice but to carry it along with me.
I finally had a catharsis one night. I had spent the whole day hanging out with friends, and a few of us decided to head to a bar that evening. I ordered, but before my drink came the knot released. I didn’t make a scene, but everything that I had been pushing down in order to function in my day to day life came rushing to the top. I must have worn it on my face, because the young woman sitting next to me asked what was wrong. I told her, and she paid for my drink and rubbed my back while the bartender brought it over.
The only regret I have about how I acted during the last year of Josh’s life was that I didn’t compete in the jiu jitsu tournament at the Arnold Classic. It was where I first competed, and was the last time I competed with Josh. We went back to watch some mixed martial arts a few months before he died, and I could have signed up. Josh had stopped training by then, so it would have been just me. I would have competed if my division was on Saturday, but it got moved to Sunday and I was flying out at the same time. Maybe that is just an excuse. Maybe I could have made it. Since I wasn’t competing, and didn’t have to make weight, we went to Waffle House after the fights and ate hash browns with everything on them. It was fun, but I wish I would have entered the tournament.
When I found out that Josh was sick, I remember telling him once that if he needed anything I would help him get it. I knew I didn’t need to say it, it was already known. But I also knew that it would eat at me if I didn’t, and I didn’t want to bug him about it every time I saw him. Josh had a big family and circle of friends. He had a lot of people that were concerned about him. I was concerned about him too, but I didn’t think that constantly bringing it up would help. I decided the best way I could help was to be the same friend I was to him before he got sick. That meant asking him for help and advice sometimes. In fact, one of the most amazing things I saw Josh do was counsel and comfort those close to him, who were suffering because he was suffering. Strength like this should never have chances to be proven.
