When There is Sadness, There Are Song Lyrics

Fucking cancer. I just hate it. I hate that it stole away everything he had, and left everyone he knew with so much heartache. My heart burns with love and sadness from all of the memories I have to try to save forever, never realizing how valuable they would be. They are all I have of him now. I didn't know how important it would be to play on his indoor soccer team every season or I would've done it more than once. I didn't know how lucky I was to be invited to all of his parties or I would've gone to all of them. If I had known his life would be so short, I wouldn't have pissed away so many of our plans. I'm angry at myself for not paying better attention. Do we all feel that way about people after they have died? I'm afraid of everything else I have missed in life from all of the other people I care about. Will I regret missing everything else, too? I'm sorry for everything I have missed. I can't take it back. I wish I could have been there more. Or maybe I couldn't possibly have been there more, and I need to accept that.

Today it was the band Bastille that rocked my world, dried my tears long enough to go back to work, and helped me see perspective and light when I learned Aaron had died. It was the only thing that made me feel better.

Bastille
Weight of Living, Pt. II: All This Bad Blood

I can't say the words aloud
so in rhyme I wrote you down
now you'll live through the ages
I can feel your pulse in the pages
I have written you down now
and all the world will read you
I have written you down now
you will live forever
in eyes not yet created
on tongues that are not born
you will live forever
forever

Tears on my Keyboard this morning

Roughly ten years ago, we were going to music festivals together and making out in a tent. He was devastatingly handsome and I was not sure I was worthy.

We met through a college friend (that I still think is awesome, surprisingly) and the three of us had wild and sporratic adventures that were never much planned but always fun. We had stupid fun, with childish trips to ValleyScare and XFest, house parties and late night sprinkler runs. Even when he got a steady pain-in-the-ass girlfriend and started needing more relationship advice and meaningful talks about life than a drinking buddy, he remained in good humor. We connected. We took our dogs to obedience school together and they almost got expelled (actually, his was a dropout). We were real friends, the kind of friend where when you see each other again after years have passed, you're still at ease and nothing has affected that bond. He made me believe that we didn't have to grow up.

Except now we do have to grow up, because he's dying from the brain tumor that is killing him, the one that knocked him in his ass 3 years ago and stole everything. He squeezed as much as he could out of those last few years; he immediately married a pretty awesome lady and had a son, and did what he could to make sure he was fighting like hell. But Cancer is Cancer. 35 is way too early to say goodbye and leave the party. 35 is still the age of weddings and babies and astronomical mortgages, of career changes and waking up to politics, of a few failed relationships, class reunions, or maybe some crazy adventures to cool countries. It's the peak before the decline.

Aaron, you're the one that got away.

Life is a gift, albeit brief. Cancer can be a love story if it is done with strength and weathered by two people who have enough faith in what is within them and beyond them. Here is their story. I hope seeing the documentary when it is completed helps to bring me closure. Right now I can't find any in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

When Cancer is a Love Story