That We Could All Live Like Chris Did

My friend Chris fought like hell. He  defied every life expectancy prediction (by a lot) and talked himself into every clinical trial he could find and did everything a cancer patient could be expected to do, to get to live. And he still ran out of time.

I first met Chris a few years ago at my good friends’ Christmas dinner. Rod said his big boss at Deer Valley was coming, so I expected… well, not what walked in. Chris ho ho ho’ed into the living room wearing a battery-operated vest that had blinking lights and reindeer on it. He wore it all. Night. Long. Even during dinner. Blink, blink, blink. Luckily, no one spilled any liquids on him; he probably would have caught fire. And his wife, Kathy, is a professional mountain biker. They pretty much epitomized fun. I was excited to make these new friends.

Two years ago, Chris became my big boss, too, when I started working as a mountain host at Deer Valley. I loved  working for him. He was kind and funny and thoughtful. And he had the most uncanny knack of skiing up behind me just as a guest was stumping me with a question. He never once let on that I was being asked something I should know. In his Chris way, he just took care of it with a smirk and a wave as he skied away.

When Chris was first diagnosed with several kinds of cancer, all with too many letters and syllables to be anything but bad, we commiserated and compared notes. I’d been through chemo and cancer surgeries and can speak the language. I helped connect him with Livestrong oncologists for extra opinions and tried to show him that many people there had his back. It’s a powerful thing to me, and I hope it gave him strength.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was diagnosed again with cancer this fall, Chris was on the phone, commiserating, comparing notes. But as I was coming through successful surgery and mapping out my treatment plan, the evil cancer was metastasizing into Chris’s brain and he was being kicked out of his clinical trial in Boston. He went for ten last  brain radiation sessions just as I was starting my 27. Turns out we had the same radiation tech, whose face lit up when I mentioned Chris’s name. It never took long for him to win someone over.

What I loved most about Chris was that he lived the shit out of  life. He left from those radiation sessions to go kiting in Maui for two weeks. He was on the mountain bike and at the Jewel concert and  cheerful in his text messages asking for pumpkin muffins. Chris has been living every day like it could be his last for as long as I’ve known him, and from what I’ve read, as long as anyone can remember. It is grossly unfair and unjust that cancer took him away  from all of us at only 40 years old. Like his multitude of friends, I am heartbroken not to have more time with him, but I also know I’m so lucky to have known him at all. If you never got to meet him, you missed something special. He made me a better person just by how he lived his life. All the way to the end.

My friend, Chris, fought like hell. I’ll never forget his courage, his strength, his crazy sense of humor, or how he was so much bigger than life. The world is already a little dimmer, a little more boring without you in it, Chris. But I bet heaven is rocking. Rest in peace, Chris, we love you much.