Bill Jamison.

In loving memory of Bill Jamison.
For: Bronwyn Neale and her family.

I remember the way that you went from family to a friend,
From a foreign old man to the person sitting next to me on every plane ride.
You'd make a faucet's sip a salt water paradise- turtles and coconuts as pieces of our Hawaiian adventure.
Those were the days I could let my fourth grade worries of spelling tests and locker buddies behind. That I could breathe in the sodium of the atmosphere and immerse myself in the way that the waves collided with your laugh.
Well that was then and now I can't even pick up a phone and say "Aloha, Crunchy Beard. How ya doing?"
It's amazing how one day you can be taking me on tour buses circling the Eiffel tower and then suddenly it's grasped you up into the sky, it's metal exterior is swallowing you and your thin white beard sheds with it's darkness and your eyes become hollow and I question the pace of your voice.
My mind is only semi-developed yet I am insightful enough to understand that this is not coincidence or chance.
This is the side effects of a hell, of a deep entangled force that longs to take one more smile away from the earth, of a chance curse that traded your daily glass of wine for a bi-weekly dose of chemo.
This hell that made my reality and dearest friend a being that can only live on I'm my faintest memories.
But you grandpa, oh how you made my Sunday mornings.
You made my insides twist with giggles when I dug up quarters from couch cushions while you'd spent a whole episode of Power Puff girls trying to convince me you were an alien.
You would strike my whole being with terror that my teeth would end up just as shaded as yours were-
The difference is strawberry smoothies can't wear and tare teeth the same way wine could.
The difference is my life can't move on and play out day to day the way it could when you were just a phone call away.
The difference is jet lag from Paris can't break you down the way that leukemia and esophageal cancer can.
Double whammy-
That was always your style right?
Big and bold and exciting.
What an exciting five months it was.
One day a text "Call ASAP- it's about your grandpa"
Next week a text "Call ASAP- they found something else."
Next month a text " Call ASAP- thing's don't look good."
Five months "Call ASAP- he's passed."
What?
But no, I say, no that doesn't make sense. My alien, my crunchy beard, my grandpa, my best friend- he was the one who inspired me, who's presence illuminated the room, who when things looked low always gave me a reason to look up- to him.
The words on my script start to blur together, I stand up and the classroom walls begin to haze over by the glare of my tears, I call even though I already read the fate and although I haven't wanted to admit to myself I can not say that I'm surprised.
I saw the way that you weakened.
It was just like those movies we'd all huddle on the hotel couch to watch-
some villain pricked you with something you can't begin to understand and it normalized the feeling of weakness and introduced the meek desire for death into your world.
You fell into a trance where hospital gowns were superior to your cargo shorts and safari hats and the smell of cleaning spray became your personal auroma that drowned out the scent of firewood.
And you lay there, for five simple little months, waiting for what?
True loves kiss? No, that didn't work.
A fairy godmother, good karma, a twist in plot?
And now I see this is not Europe pay per view, this is an episode of the American Medical System and you have fallen victim to something we still can't wrap our heads around and I can thank cancer for taking you from me,
for dimming the world a notch, and making my heart sink every time I see a man with a long white crunchy looking beard or smell a campfire.
But I can still sit here,
And be thankful that I still got sixteen amazing years with you.
That I got to travel the world so young.
That I got to share blood with my greatest role model and know that I truly was lucky enough to meet a man stronger than I could ever hope to be.
So here's to you.
Here's to the million of times we'd watch Peter Pan while eating cookies made from pixie dust.
Here's to every smores we made with extra chocolate because you always said chocolate was the closest thing to love.
Here's to every backyard safari,
Every London tourist trivia fact,
Every great Bill laugh,
Every Kodak moment from the first time I was in a hospital bed to the last time you were.
Here's to the owner of the second straw in my Milkshakes,
My tour guide,
My third grade relationship therapist,
And my greatest role model.
Here's to you.