joegoda | Rollin with the punches... (Reply)

Bout 2:33 am I got a call. Now, this isn't always that unusual for me. I have a few friends that live far away, and I've been known to wake up from a dead sleep to answer the phone, because you never know. It might be the Publisher's Clearing House, or it might a voice that says "Mr. Beebe, we have a job for you."

I woke straight up, but my brain wasn't quite with me. I had a optometrist appointment at the ungodly hour of 8:45 in the morning, and so I thought it was time to get up and get ready, even as I was talking on the phone.

Some of you know of my friend Carolyn, who lives in North Carolina. When she was 28, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she was 28, she beat it and the evil that cancer is faded into the background.

I met Carolyn by breaking one of the sacred rules of Call Center work. She called as a customer, and as I resolved her issue, her soft southern voice gave me the number to call her later, and told me, not asked me, but told me to call her later.

Well... When a soft southern voice asks me to jump off a bridge, will I do it? Probably. I'm a sucker like that.

We started talking, and we created a friendship, and a little bit later we created a love. It was a love that spanned 1500 miles, but it was a real and as strong as any I feel for quite a few of those reading this. There were some ideological differences that would probably never be bridged, but it didn't matter. She's my friend, and I love her. Her beliefs are what keep her strong.

I first met her back in May, 2004. She went a year before telling me that the cancer had come back, and we weren't to talk about it. She put her faith in God and knew that the outcome, regardless of everything was in His hands. That didn't mean she would ignore treatments. In fact, over the last 4 years, there have been quite a number of them, and some of them very radical and even experimental. I guess that's a redundancy. ALL cancer treatment is experimental, I think.

So I was up and running around, making sure the coffee was turned on, so I could have at least one cup before I was out the door. I had the cell phone to my ear and she and I were talking about her being in the hospital again, and she was breaking the rules by calling me, but she didn't want me to worry because we hadn't talked the previous evening.

I knew she was in the hospital. We've been speaking pretty much every night since last November, when she flew on the Red-Eye to Cincinnati for one of those radical treatments I mentioned. That scared her badly enough that I simply refused to let her think for one moment that she was alone in all this. Granted, I couldn't be there to hold her, but I could listen and laugh and talk and listen. Since that night, we had spoken every night except when she was in the hospital. I told her, and I held to the promise, that her call would stop the world, and some of you have witnessed it.

At 2:35 am, I heard Carolyn say the words that I had heard a few times before from other people in the same situation. She said, "I'm tired of life."

I know the time because I'm a bit compulsive like that. I count things. I touch the corner of rooms and buildings. I check to see what time something has occurred so it can sit in my memory, in case I ever need it. When I realized that it was 2:35 am, and not 7:45 am, I turned off the coffee pot and I went back to bed, still talking to Carolyn.

We talked for a few minutes, and I told her that there is not a thing wrong with letting go when the world got too rough. I've had to say that to three other people that I loved. Letting go when the world got too rough. It's another way of saying, "Hey. Maybe your job is done here. Maybe it's time to go onto the NEXT big adventure, away from this world. Away from this place of your pain. Maybe it's time to go."

I don't know what her prognosis is. You see, she doesn't talk about her cancer or her pain with anyone. She tries to even not talk to me about it, unless the pain is so great that she has to reach out to someone. She hasn't told her mother, her sons, her co-workers. Nobody. And due to the new privacy stuff in place, the clinic she's at won't even tell me if she's a patient there.

So I wait.

I wait for a call from a soft southern voice on the other end that cheerfully says "Hello, buddy!" Or, I wait for the call from one of her sons, who has been directed to call me in the case of an emergency, in the case that something should happen to her. A voice I will not know, but will know immediately why the voice is calling me.

Sherry told me today, after my optometrist appointment (New glasses - Trifocals), that it was going to hit me hard. I shrugged it off, cuz, you know... I've been through this before. Never gets easier, but it quits being a surprise.

So, if we're a bunch of us together at Pub or something like that, and I get up because the phone rings and come back looking not too happy, just keep laughing and talking and singing. Poke fun at me, so I'll smile. Poke fun at Tim, so I'll smile. Because, it's you folks that keep ME going. And Carolyn would have wanted it no other way.

As I wrote this, I wondered why. I don't like pity, and I don't like to whine. I leave that for the experts. I prefer to write my little stories and complain about the affairs of the world.

I think I wrote this because you're my family, and the one thing I know about you guys is that sadness shared diminishes. Joy shared increases.

So, thanks in advance. I don't know when it'll happen. I know it will happen. And I know that you guys will be there for me when it does. Even if you're not standing next to me, you'll be there. How cool is that?

Now, I'm gonna take a couple of Ibuprofen and see if I can write another chapter of Sid. There's a demand, you know.