Those we miss

I just noticed that a friend of mine who died this past spring is still on my Yahoo messenger list. He was a Vietnam veteran. He spent most of his life working refineries in the middle east. Recovered alcoholic. No kids.

I met him at work. He was on my nightshift for a long while. He’d never seen Star Wars. I shit you not. Never saw Star Wars. He was overseas when that happened. So I brought in the original trilogy in to work and we watched it. He wasn’t terribly impressed but he understood the “importance” of it.

When I decided to get an apartment of my own (I’d always had roommates), he hooked me up with an apartment right next to his. Literally, right next to his. His front door was two feet from my front door for two years. We even had the same days off work so we traded off cooking on the weekends.

See, it just ain’t worth fucking up a kitchen for just one person. So we decided that we’d switch off. He’d fuck up his kitchen one weekend and I’d fuck up my kitchen the next. He certainly made me a better cook. I had to work pretty hard to keep up with his culinary offerings. He’s the reason I learned how to cook an absolutely kick-ass meatloaf as well as pork chops you’d kill your paperboy for.

So, we used to do what we referred to as “dinner and shows”. I would Tivo Stargate Atlantis or Eureka or Battlestar Galactica and we’d have dinner and shows. This was our regular weekend.

One day he told me the doctors said he had cancer.

Fuck.

He said they gave him 6 to 9 months.

Fuck.

Through work we had pretty damned good insurance (for major shit anyhow) and he went to MD Anderson Cancer Center. They said, “fuck 6-9 months, we can do better than that.” And they did. They worked fucking miracles.

I spent an absurd amount of time at MD Anderson for someone who wasn’t sick. Those people rock. If you ever get cancer, come to Houston and go to MD Anderson. There is no cancer they’re scared to fight.

Cancer really wanted Bob Gollan though. He beat throat cancer. He beat lung cancer once. He beat brain cancer. I shit you not…. BRAIN CANCER. They cracked his head open, cleaned him up and sent him back to work. After the brain cancer he worked for another half a year. Then the lung cancer came back.

That’s the one that got him. Honestly, he had me thinking he was fucking immortal. Then I got the call this past spring that he’d died.

He’s still on my Yahoo Messenger list and I never got his recipe for pork loin.

I miss Bob Gollan.