Riverside to Indio, and some hard news

 It was a hard ride today, with a long climb early and head winds late.   We rode through and past some beautiful mountains but I didn’t see or appreciate it much.

Literally moments before we departed I got a text from my niece telling me that my older brother Bob died this morning after a long bout with cancer.

Bob was a great musician, an Eagle Scout, a bit of a hooligan in his youth, and a man who served his country with great pride, first as an enlisted soldier in the Army and then in a civilian capacity supporting other soldiers.

He’d been in the hospital for a good long stretch, battling pneumonia then learning of a devastating new cancer diagnosis.   Given his health and long battles with other cancers, they offered him hospice, or a treatment that might help, or that might kill him.  A 50/50 shot.  He chose to fight.

But then, Bob liked to fight.   He fought kids in school.  He fought our parents as a teenager.  He fought neighborhood bullies (one time, memorably, an entire pickup truck full…).  When an argument escalated, he fought his high school swim coach and was somehow not expelled.   He fought registering for the draft even though he enlisted voluntarily.  He fought strangers online.  He fought me about politics anytime I would engage.  

I don’t like to fight, and it saddens me that I could never get to a place with him where we could exchange more than a handful of texts pleasantly.   At least not until he reached out a few weeks ago to ask me to share his news with our parents because he couldn’t bear to do it.   And I’m glad we had a chance to share some tender words for…idk…maybe the first time?

So Bob fought cancers for six and a half years, but they kept coming back, and a third form — acute leukemia — was diagnosed just weeks ago. 

He was offered hospice, or a coin flip of a treatment option, and decided to see one last time if he could will that coin to come up heads.   Kind of a baller move, knowing what chemo to destroy diseased bone marrow would do to his body, but holding onto faith it might work.

Through all that fighting, Bob kept seeking a deeper spiritual connection.   In high school, Native American traditions.  Then Scientology.  Then a splinter group of Scientology.  Then Reiki.  Probably a few stops I don’t know about.  And finally back to the traditional Christianity of his youth, and Bible study, and diligent online attendance at services when his body was too weak to show up in person.  

What is faith but holding onto hope, insisting on hope, through a long series of coin flips that keep coming up tails?

I lost much of my faith after my younger brother Mark was shot and killed in 2013 and the church offered me little to address my anger and grief.  But maybe faith can be like green shoots that push, unbidden, through the rocky dirt of a field that has long lain fallow.

I don’t know what is out there.  After.  Beyond.  So I’ll go back to my church in the morning, pedaling to the horizon, and seek solace in memory and sun, and the simple joy of miles ticking by.

Godspeed brother.

P.s.  Mom, Dad:  I’m so sorry.  I promise to be extra careful on this ride.