Gone Too Soon

I interrupt my usual broadcast to bring readers sad news.  Cancer has claimed another victim, too young, too soon.  Andy Whitfield, a.k.a., the hot, talented Welsh born, Aussie raised actor who played Spartacus on the bloody but riveting cable series, has died.  He was just 39 when he succumbed to non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  He fought bravely for 18 months and all the while, I kept telling myself, he’s gonna make it.  He’s young, he’s in incredible shape and he’s got a wife and two babies to fight for. 

He’s gonna make it. 

But just a few short months after completing chemo and reportedly being ‘cured’, the media reported that the cancer was back and he was not able to continue with the series.  Uh oh, I thought at the time, fighting off dark thoughts and even darker fears.  No time for him to recuperate from the chemo horrors he’s already been though.  Why didn’t they get it all in the first round, I wondered irrationally whenI should know better.  Lymphoma is tough to cure.  It often makes a second more aggressive appearance after a year or two so it can take a couple of swings at bat before/if they get it all.  But this was quick, too quick.  And it’s a form of cancer that’s much harder to ‘cure’ come round two.  

I truly feared for him then. 

I even posted a shy and respectful note of support on his Facebook page, something I would never think to do at any other time because I don’t follow celebrities.  

When I returned from my business trip to Europe, a colleague who knew I had been rooting for him, sent me a link, trying to break the news to me as gently as possible. 

My friend Chris knows that I take every death from cancer personally.  As if I’ve failed somehow or maybe it is survivor’s guilt mixed in with the pain of losing such a talented, decent person. 

And here I am, full circle and back to angry, back to mourning, back to at a loss for words.  What do you say to a young widow and two lost babies now without a dad?  They don’t care that daddy was rising star with a hot cable series, they just want their daddy.  And his wife, she just wants the life she can with her husband before cancer blew up their collective reality, I’m sure.   

So there are no words of comfort that will suffice.  Not this time.  No, “he lived a long and happy life; no, “he had a lot of good years” because he didn’t.  He did not get any of that.  At least I have survived long enough to see my granddaughter born, to hold her and nuzzle her tiny, perfect baby self and to watch her reach out for me (OK, mostly when she’s mad at her mom for not giving her what she wants but she reaches for me nonetheless).  I’ve seen her walk and I’ve even watched her dance and now, she’s starting to talk, really working on forming those delightful babbling sounds into words.  I know that I will hear my granddaughter say, “I love you Nana,” someday soon.  I am not going to miss that. 

Nor do I now fear that I will miss Claudia’s first day at kindergarten nor any of her other many first milestones.  I have enough ‘clean time’ under my belt now to well and truly believe that I’ve got a really good shot at a long, happy life, replete with all the wonderful family moments that tend to go along with long and happy and life.  But even so, I’m sad knowing that when I have such good odds, that such a decent, talented human being, didn’t get the same shot.  

God, but cancer stinks and I want this monster slayed in my lifetime. 

Sooner even.  Humanity should not suffer to lose one more person to this insidious disease.