Tough Ten Minutes

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I don’t care who you are or what you do, 5;00 on a Friday is a good feeling.

My phone rang right at 5:00.

My screen flashed a name of a Italian guy who’d once been a friend but I hadn’t spoken to in a few years. I recalled that he’d been sick.

I hadn’t called to check in.

Should I answer?

I felt like a dope.

I didn’t even recall what he was sick with.

He started right in.

He was feeling better since the transplant, he said.

I tried to page through my memory...transplant?

Heart? Kidney? Liver?

It was actually bone marrow. He’d been really, really sick.

We chatted for a long while. I apologized for not knowing he’d been THAT sick.

“I’m gonna be fine,” he said. “I got a lot of years left.”

While I was on the phone, Jake came rushing in:

“Mac Miller just died.”

My boys have filled me in on the rappers. I wouldn’t know a Mac Miller song if you played it over a loudspeaker at the super bowl.

But I knew he was just a kid.

26-years old.

“An overdose?” I asked.

“Hope not,” Jake said.

But it was...

...and my boys and their kids were sick about it...

...and I couldn’t help but equate the two...

...my buddy...sick and fighting hard to stay alive...

..and a famous rapper...who overdosed.

I know it’s an epidemic. I realize he was suffering too, but man, in just that short period of time...

...how fragile.

How sad.

“I don’t get it,” I said to Sam. “When we were kids all we did was drink. Heroin was for rock stars. Now it kills kids.”

Meanwhile...

“I can drink some red wine and eat pasta soon,” My Italian buddy said.

God Bless them both, I guess.

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