He was 16, almost 17, when he started getting them.

Severe headaches and double vision.

His Dad took him to the ER, and the doc on call happened to be a family friend.  The CAT scan didn’t show anything, but his gut feeling told him this was something serious.  They sent them on to Halifax, and they operated yet that night.

It was a brain tumor.  Part of it had grown into a ventricle, which they were able to clear with that operation. 

But they were told the tumor itself was inoperable; that they would start him on a low dose of palliative chemotherapy. 

They said there would be no cure. 

They said he had a year, maybe longer, to live.

Later, the tumor disseminated and traveled, via the spinal canal, down his backbone and begin to grow again there.

They did radiation to his spine in order to save the mobility of his legs, and later, after his legs had shut down, to save his arms.

But you can’t tie a 17-year-old up and expect him to go with it.  Not even cancer can. 

He lived as normally as life allowed, maybe even more so with some of the inventions he concocted to get himself around and to keep himself from being more of a burden than necessary to those around him.

*****

I met him for the first and only time at Memphis Zoo. 

His family was in the area, and we and some of our family made out to meet them there and go through the zoo.

I was looking forward to this.  Not the zoo.  I don’t seem to get the meaning of zoos, but that’s okay.  If you want to meet me at one and go through it together, I will.

I was looking forward to meeting him, because, in my mind he had become legendary. 

I knew, by then, that the amount of chemo they had given him already had exceeded by far what medical limits declared livable. 

I knew that he was in a wheelchair by then.

We found a parking space, facing east, and waited a bit until we saw a moderate looking full size family van pull up with Nova Scotia tags on it. 

It rolled to a halt near us, and the doors bulged open to allow family of different sizes and shapes, and even a bit of luggage, to spill out. 

I stepped over and met some of his siblings for the first time, but I was eyeing the front passenger side door.

It looked like that might be him up there.  He and his dad were chatting quietly just prior to getting out. 

His dad jumped out and the group moved over to say hello to him. 

I saw the passenger door ease open, and I moved over to say hello to the one slowly and carefully coming down from his seat, using only his strong arms and hands to support himself and hold himself in place while he waited for someone else to bring his wheelchair up to him.

Once his hands were free, I shook his hand and told him who I was.  He wasn’t unfriendly; probably more neutral would be a better description. 

I instinctively wanted to help get him situated, but I could see he was a man of his own by that time and had his moves and ways that worked for him.  His wheelchair tried to roll away from him as he was settling in to it, so I grabbed it and held it steady.  He paused to thank me.

But then he was ratcheting himself back up out of the chair. 

“What do you need,” I asked.

“I forgot.  Got some Gospel Tracts in my carryon I wanted to take with me.”

“Where are they?  I can get them for you.”

“Nah, I’ll get them.”

And so began the arduous process of hoisting himself out of his wheelchair, up to a standing position without standing on anything, back across the seat to his carryon and then back down after he had retrieved the tracts.

It was just him and I by that time; the rest had gone on to buy tickets or run ahead to see what they could see.

He got himself situated again and looked up at me, taking stock of me it seemed.  After a brief quiet spell in which we both settled into knowing each other, he said, “Folks take these tracts way easier from a person like me.  I’m not threatening to them.  And a zoo is the best place to hand them out.  Lots of people all around.”

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “This guy has different priorities than a lot of folks coming to the zoo today, including myself.”

I stayed near him during the entire zoo visit.  I don’t recall anything of the animals.  But I do recall, very vividly, a young man who shared the Gospel with anyone who came near to him.

And it was exactly like he said.  People accepted what he had to give them readily. 

I think at least a hundred people had life-changing literature in their hands by the time we exited the zoo that morning.   

*****

He died when he was 23 ½ years old.  He lived 6 ½ years with that cancer. 

Really lived, in fact.