“When we look for the best in people we happen to be with at that moment, we are doing what God does…participating in a sacred act…” –Fred Rogers

Hello, readers. So tonight I am busting out of my drinking comfort zone…I stopped at local brewery, “Seedz,” (who, by the way, are in the running and currently in the top 5 for USA Today’s BEST NEW BREWERY. Pretty damn impressive!) I went there because I have these bookmarks advertising my pet services, and they are a dog-friendly place. And, guess what? Unlike the snooty-ass “local” bookstore, they HAPPILY took my little dog mug brimming with my pathetically amateur marketing attempts. Even put it in a window next to the free papers. And, I met someone at the bar with a dog who took my card, too. Win-win!

I went home with a bottle of “Blended Saison Ale, re-fermented with rhubarb, cherries, and sea salt.” Now, does that not sound delish? Well, it might be, minus the Saison part. Bahaha!! Really, though, both John and I are decidedly not fans of brews with anything Belgian-y in them, and this ale has Belgian yeast. Which husband describes quite accurately: “Belgian beers are like drinking sweat socks.” Damn him, he’s right again…but “Kriek et Rhubarbe” is going down okay, since I’m taking it in with leftover pot roast, whose rich burgundy sauce is masking any lingering foot smell and taste.

Roy and I last meet in his expansive sunroom, an addition he had put on to his house some time ago. It’s filled with plants and warmth, which is just as he wants it. I tell him I’ve been reflecting, and I make an observation.

“I feel like you became acquainted with loss early and often, that death was a theme in your life long before it should’ve been.”

“Yes,” he says. “By the time I moved here permanently, I’d lost all my immediate family. In the years 95, 96, 97 and 99.”

Boom, boom, boom, boom. He states it without a trace of self-pity. Sprinkled throughout the next decade would be endless losses of the elderly he’d taken care of, as well. And particularly difficult, the loss of his beloved friends, Les and wife Annabelle.

I comment how traumatizing this is. My mom, mother-in-law, and father, all gone in a short span, so I know.

“It really was. And during those nineties years I was also waging war with my workplace, who were actively trying to kill us all off. Make us disappear so there wouldn’t be pensions to pay.”

I don’t say it, but I wonder if that pressure, grief, and strain helped to create a fierce internal battle, resulting in his eventual diagnosis. To simplify, Waldenstrom’s is a type of lymphoma, in which cancer cells crowd the healthy ones out of the bone marrow. It’s timeline and trajectory is poorly understood, even among oncologists. At that point Roy spent the majority of his free time doing research on treatment, so It’s not an exaggeration to say he knew more about his disease than the doctors treating him.

He was 57 when diagnosed. The fact I am a year older does not escape me.

“What was your reaction? Were you angry at God?” I ask him.

He ponders this. “No. My attitude then and now was, “it’s life on a planet. We’re all gonna go. I knew with my personality, I needed to tackle it as if it were a problem like anything else. I had to look at it objectively and see what could be done.”

He rejected all options except that of biologic therapy, and even that, he put off for a year. His doctors had a fit, he says. The reason for the delay, which he says made not one bit of difference in the end? His best friend Les was terminally ill.

“I had to,” he says. “Les got his lung cancer diagnosis, and the outlook was dire. From what I could see, he’d decline much more rapidly than me. In various ways, he and Annabelle needed my help.”

Roy ended up doing twenty-nine cycles of Rituxan and steroids, a savage routine that in his words, “merely prolonged the eventual torture, sapped my strength, and f-ed up my heart.”

I ask him if he’d do it again, which is a hard question to answer.

“A million dollars worth of worthlessness and wrecking my body? No. Except…it did buy me time. I settled my affairs the way I wanted, and assisted Les and Annabelle in doing the same. Not everyone can say that.”

The treatment “cut off the head of the dragon, where two more grew back.” He’s tired of fighting the beast. After seventeen years, who wouldn’t be?

The break with the church began with fissures that ended in a full-on chasm.

I ask him more about how he went from a most devoted catholic, to where he is now: still deeply, highly spiritual, but done with all the trappings. Much of this I already know, but I want to clarify.

Basically, it came down to two priests: one as arrogant and unrepentant as the day is long, and one so seriously whacked out he went to jail. The former actually refused to travel twenty minutes on a winter day to give a parishioner her last rites. At the hospital, Roy called the priest on their behalf.

“Tell them to find someone local,” was his response. Roy was apoplectic. “This is literally his job, and he couldn’t even make the effort to call them himself or make arrangements.”

This was one act in a long line of rudeness, much of it witnessed by me as well. The worst part was that the priest couldn’t do what he was always harping on his flock to do: “Apologize, be humble.” And if there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a hypocrite. That was the beginning of the end for me, and it hurt. I’d willingly converted to catholicism, John’s family’s faith, so that we could be united. To provide a stable foundation for two growing boys in an increasingly hedonistic and anti-religious world. I found so much there; a wonderful community, comforting rituals, and a bedrock of support for marriage and families. And the person I loved and admired more than anyone, my mother-in-law Mary, was like Roy. As holy as they come. I did everything I could to follow in those footsteps, swallowing my objections to the doctrines regarding the role of women and gays in the church. Then the pedophile scandals blew up. I ask Roy if that played a part in his fracture, because it certainly did in mine.

“Dear God, yes. The entire organization is corrupt from its head to its toes. It’s a funny thing when you step back and take off the blinders. Which they don’t want you to do, of course. But I saw it all with a clarity that astounds me now.”

“How do you respond to those who say that a few bad apples are not the church? That they don’t represent the true teachings?”

He becomes animated, as he often does during our talks.

“It’s not just a FEW bad apples they shuffle about. There are hundreds of thousands. Even the good ones, and I believe there are honorable priests, don’t stand a chance. The church has helped produce and facilitate this evil.”

It’s no secret the coffers and influence of the Vatican are vast.

I comment that I miss our lovely parishioner friends, and the power of prayer in all these Godly people gathered together. For me, it’s never been so black and white.

But Roy is resolute, adamant in the rightfulness of his actions.

“I don’t judge or wish anyone ill who still adheres to that life. For me, my eyes were opened. I still pray. I still believe in God. And I still help others, although that capability is diminishing.”

Except that it hasn’t. The majority of his estate’s proceeds are destined for St. Jude’s foundation, a generous gift that will keep on giving long after him.

I envy his skill in not second-guessing, his confidence in his path. A trait my husband shares, I might add. I ask him if he has any life regrets.

“Only one. I would’ve liked a family. When I was lying in bed a month ago, unable to move enough to reach the phone, I’m thinking, “I have nobody.”

I want to say, you have me. And John. But we know it’s not the same. So instead I say, “You know there’s no guarantee that any sons or daughters would’ve been sitting there.”

He laughs. “Do I ever. I’ve watched the dynamics in my friends’ lives. But I will admit, during one of those horrible nights, I had a come-to-Jesus meeting. I had a talk with God. We set things straight.”

“And?”

“It was an epiphany. I came out of it and felt cleansed…through the fires of adversity.”

I smile. “I can tell you’re much less agitated.”

“I am. I’m at peace.”

“What changed?”

“Well, the catharsis snapped me out of my anger. Truthfully, I think a lot about St. Therese. She’s quoted as saying she’ll spend her time in heaven doing good on earth, and that’s what I envision. I welcome and look forward to the experience.”

Continuing what we started in this life, without the doubt, judgment, and disappointments of an earthly existence. That’s a good place to be, I think. I ask him how he’d like to be remembered.

“With love. That’s all it’s about, isn’t it? Learning to love and be loved?”

Yes, I say. I hope I’ve contributed to that desire with these posts, and that you, my friends, have enjoyed the journey. I tell Roy the last one in the series can be when he’s departed, but we both laugh.

“I mean, I could go before you, ” I say. “You never know.”

We don’t. So until next time, provided I don’t meet my maker before, here’s to love, and being remembered fondly. Cheers!