Inspired

dedicated to Kim

I guess we all knew it was inevitable. He had long ago posted about his mild shock at hearing a doctor use the word “terminal.” Had kept us abreast of evolving drug regimens and their ever diminishing goals: beat the cancer, shrink the tumors, keep them from growing, slow their growth.

Every post was met with love and encouragement. You’ll beat this! If anyone can, it’s you!

We all wrote messages about his spirit, about how inspiring he was, his optimism, his unwillingness to let cancer get the best of him. He joked that he was probably the only one running the half-marathon with an ostomy bag. Such an inspiration.

Sometimes I wondered if it was a burden, being an inspiration. I wondered if he ever thought “ Fuck being an inspiration. I don’t want to be stoic and strong for you. It’s too much pressure, this dying inspirationally.”

Or did it help? Keep him sane? Inspire him to know he inspired others? Give a purpose to the random cells randomly growing in random patterns inside his body? Did it help him make sense, make peace with it?

Fuck cancer, his repeated sign off. So maybe not so much make peace. But fuel the fight. The spirit. The will to joke and play dodgeball and take self-deprecating pictures of his increasingly wan face, hoisting a tequila and wearing a defiant chemo-humor t-shirt.

He posted once that he felt like he was running a marathon that could never end, that could never be won. Keep running or die, the only two choices.

He fought harder and longer and with more passion and spirit than most. But I guess we all knew it was inevitable.

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