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I have this incredible medley of anger, grief and frustration right now.
A person whom I was once good friends with, but who became more an acquaintance in the last 5 years died recently. Still, he was one of my steadier friends in the mid to late 90's.
He was a fat smug bearded geologist with a big heart who took care of my cats during a time when I was pretty desperate.
There was a LOT I didn't agree with this man on, and he was pretty convinced he was always right, always always always right and no one could convince him otherwise.
This man was the biggest smoker I've ever known, he even had a nick-name from the smell of smoke he always carried with him, no matter how well showered he was.
The fights I had with this guy about his smoking were pretty uncountable, since for a while there it seeped into most of our conversations in some way or another. It became about who was right or not, and even if we talked about ice-skating - it was really somehow a secret code for smoking related issues.
He stubbornly claimed that there was no real evidence of connection between cancer and smoking, and if he'd been alive today he'd say that global warming was a myth - just because he lived of off the kicks he'd get from mocking common sense.
Yeah, well, he was diagnosed with two forms of cancer early this year, and when I met him in May, when I visited Sweden I had this truly bizarre experience.
We sat, the two of us, at this outdoor restaurant in Uppsala, him looking 15 years older than he really was, and so weak he couldn't drive his own car anymore and had to be chauffeured to wherever he wanted to go. This proud man talked to me in hoarse whispers because of what the heavy treatment had done to his lungs, and his hand shook when he lit cigarette after cigarette. And with this weird weak voice he had, in between the nicotine drags, he told me that this cancer that was harassing his body was still not not necessarily smoke-related.
And then, two months later his body was so weak that he died in a home accident related to not coping with side effects of the medication.
He basically died in a way that no one ever wants to die, and I can still for my inner eye see the yellow nicotine inner walls of his bathroom where he was found.
I've dreamed about him 3 times now.
Good bye old friend and asshole. If I had you here alive, I'd kick your ass - no, I'd kick your ass a decade ago, I'd camp on your nasty old carpet and throw out your fags every time you lit one up.
A person whom I was once good friends with, but who became more an acquaintance in the last 5 years died recently. Still, he was one of my steadier friends in the mid to late 90's.
He was a fat smug bearded geologist with a big heart who took care of my cats during a time when I was pretty desperate.
There was a LOT I didn't agree with this man on, and he was pretty convinced he was always right, always always always right and no one could convince him otherwise.
This man was the biggest smoker I've ever known, he even had a nick-name from the smell of smoke he always carried with him, no matter how well showered he was.
The fights I had with this guy about his smoking were pretty uncountable, since for a while there it seeped into most of our conversations in some way or another. It became about who was right or not, and even if we talked about ice-skating - it was really somehow a secret code for smoking related issues.
He stubbornly claimed that there was no real evidence of connection between cancer and smoking, and if he'd been alive today he'd say that global warming was a myth - just because he lived of off the kicks he'd get from mocking common sense.
Yeah, well, he was diagnosed with two forms of cancer early this year, and when I met him in May, when I visited Sweden I had this truly bizarre experience.
We sat, the two of us, at this outdoor restaurant in Uppsala, him looking 15 years older than he really was, and so weak he couldn't drive his own car anymore and had to be chauffeured to wherever he wanted to go. This proud man talked to me in hoarse whispers because of what the heavy treatment had done to his lungs, and his hand shook when he lit cigarette after cigarette. And with this weird weak voice he had, in between the nicotine drags, he told me that this cancer that was harassing his body was still not not necessarily smoke-related.
And then, two months later his body was so weak that he died in a home accident related to not coping with side effects of the medication.
He basically died in a way that no one ever wants to die, and I can still for my inner eye see the yellow nicotine inner walls of his bathroom where he was found.
I've dreamed about him 3 times now.
Good bye old friend and asshole. If I had you here alive, I'd kick your ass - no, I'd kick your ass a decade ago, I'd camp on your nasty old carpet and throw out your fags every time you lit one up.
