When your oldest friend dies

Willie Nelson, God bless him, who turned 89 this year and is still playing concerts, once said something that struck me as profound. It was back when Willie’s old friend, the legendary blind pianist and song writer Ray Charles, died in 2004, so Willie would have been 71 at the time.

I can’t find his exact quote, but it went something like this: “One of the worst parts about getting older is how many old, dear friends you start to lose along the way. And with the passing of each one, you lose a little bit of your heart.”

Amen to that, brother.

That’s where I’m at, looking back at my oldest buddy, Craig Kovar, who died last Thursday at the age of 67.

Our friendship, brotherhood if you want to call it that, dates back to the 7th grade, 55 long years ago, September of 1967.

What can be written that could do such a tight connection justice? There are just too many memories to include in one piece, or tribute, as it were, because he had so many layers to his personality – funny, artistic, intelligent, a work ethic like none other, and one of the bravest, toughest guys I ever saw facing death.

How can I write a column about a guy whose house I used to visit and sleep over at when we were 12, and we both had bunkbeds? So, we’d switch back and forth, one house or the other, on most weekends. I can remember the two of us over at my house in my upstairs bedroom listening to the Beatles’ “A Day in The Life” over and over and over. Must have been late ’67 or early 1968, but I can still remember it like it was yesterday.

I can remember double dates when we were high school freshmen, still too young to drive. He and me, and the dates (personal pronouns – she), in the back seat, while one of our parents drove us to whichever high school dance was going on at the time – homecoming, the Christmas dance, the prom. I remember George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was one of our favorite songs back then.

The first formal dance we went to, I had no clue what a corsage was. Somehow, my parents had failed to guide me in that direction. Craig, of course, thought the whole thing hilarious the night of the dance when he found out I had none, just as we were getting set to leave my house.

He was laughing at my dilemma as he pointed to the corsage he had bought, all nice and pretty.

“What are you going to tell her?” he asked, obviously amused.

When it came to BS, we were both naturals at a young age – thanks to our similar paternal genetics. “That my dog ate it.”

I don’t think my date bought the line because I can still remember this funny look across her face as I explained the problem-dog situation and my lack of any corsage.

Why do some things in life stick in our head like a still photo, while so many others are forever lost?

At the start of 7th grade, we hit it off quick, which the teachers would soon learn, wasn’t a good thing. After all, our names were close in pronunciation, Gregg and Craig, and we both had rebellious spirits, courtesy in part, I think, to screwed-up dads, who ditched our moms for other women, which wasn’t common in the mid-1960s. Those were the days of the “nuclear family,” where most relationships seemed to last. Both our moms weren’t so fortunate.

Every weekend, Craig and I would go to the local YMCA, where we’d hang out all afternoon, swim, watch Elvis movies for free, and see what new mischief we could get into.

I hate to admit it now, but we had this running con going at the YMCA concession stand. The line was always too long to wait in, at least as far as we were concerned. So we concocted this scheme. We’d alternate weekends. One Saturday, one of us would go to the very front of the line and ask the woman at the check-out counter if “our shake” was ready yet. After all, we would say, we ordered it a half hour ago, so what’s the hold-up?

Whichever woman working behind the counter at the time would always look flummoxed.

“When did you say you ordered it?”

“A half hour ago,” one of us would say, looking legit, hanging on to our patience, but just barely.

She’d ask what we had ordered – two chocolate shakes -- and then she got the milk shakes made in a hurry, moving us, in essence, to the front of the line, and we’d pay her and walk off.

Then we’d head to the side door at the Y. Every time some lady approached, we’d open it for her, and then extend our hand, as if expecting a tip. We never got any tips, but we got more than a few reprimands – “Young Christian men don’t behave this way.”

Yeah, yeah, lady, can’t you take a joke?

Thinking back on it now, we were holy terrors.

Craig once told me, though, it wasn’t that we were such bad kids in the truly bad sense. We just had a mischievous side.

Our seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Navin, once got so upset with us over something, he tossed both of us out into the hall, and wouldn’t let us back into the classroom until we apologized for our behavior.

“Do you now believe you have paid your debt to society?” he would ask.

The “debt-to-society” part would crack us up every time, and we’d be sent back to the hallway.

Finally, when we could speak without laughing every time old Mr. Navin (who was probably only in his mid-40s at the time) would say “debt to society,” we said, “Yes, sir,” looking solemn, having no intention of changing our basic everything-is-a-laugh natures. We’d just be more careful next time and not get caught doing what we had just got caught doing.

We left high school campus one day and headed to a strip center about a mile or so away that had a great snack bar. I could see time was running out, and if we didn’t start walking back to school then, we were going to be late for the next class. Not that being on time to class was ever one of my biggest concerns. In fact, I was late to most, as was Craig, but I think I was on some sort of probation at the time – “Don’t be late again.” That sort of thing.

Craig, however, wasn’t bothered by anything as definitive as time, so he stayed behind at the lunch counter as I started walking back to school.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, shaking my head, “I’ll see you back at school.”

I had already started hitchhiking by that time, so as I walked back to school, every time I heard a car approach from behind, I’d turn around and hold out my right thumb, hoping to catch a ride.

Typical Craig. He had caught a ride with one of his mom’s friends who was also headed to the high school. The two had run into each other at the lunch counter. As the car passed, he smiled and waved at me, never telling the woman, “Hey, that’s my friend, Gregg, can we please pick him up, too?”

Funny, but I can still picture that scene like it was yesterday. Classic stuff we used to do to each other.

Exactly 50 years ago this month, the summer of ’72, he flew out to visit me in Virginia Beach. My parents had moved there the previous year between my sophomore and junior HS years from the Chicago suburb where I had spent most of my youth. He stayed there for a week. I tried to cut back my part-time hours at the grocery store where I worked that week so we could basically hang out on the beach all day long, well into the night, trying to meet college girls from out of town and convince them that we were college students as well, instead of two 17-yearolds about to become high school seniors.

When they would ask us what college we attended, we had one name on the tip of our tongues. Can’t remember which one we used. The university of something-or-other

Ḟive years later, coincidentally, Craig was my first airplane passenger, along with my mom, after I got my private pilot’s license in January of 1977, he and my mom showed up at the airport, and off we flew. The fact that knowing me as well as he did, and Craig was still willing to climb into a plane with me at the controls, well, that’s real trust.

The Later Years

After college, we went our separate ways. I had discovered the world of aviation and then journalism, but Craig still hadn’t found his passion. He moved to the Phoenix area, close to his favorite uncle, and got into such phenomenal physical shape, that he ran in at least three marathons (26.2 miles). We stayed in touch though. That’s what life-long friends do.

We met up and partied in Arizona in 1982, but let’s not even go there.

I got married, and he got married. We both agreed that we married upwards and didn’t deserve as good as we got.

He started out with a white-collar job, but for some reason, his passion was truck driving. He got a Teamsters card, which was never easy to get, and then drove a gas-hauling truck around the Chicago area for the next 30- plus years.

The hours were brutal. He’d start work at 3 a.m., may have been 3:30, and then get off around 2 unless the weather turned sour, or the truck broke down, or whatever Midwest problem might develop. Not only did he work such brutal hours putting up with Chicago traffic, but he managed this same schedule six days a week. Saturday was his only day off work. With a large growing family, though, that would eventually include five children, parenting alongside the love of his life, Sharon, his day off was the day he worked some of the household chores.

I told him many times, man, I don’t know how you do it.

But he did.

The Medical Nightmare

At the start of this year, my old buddy had plans to retire toward the end of 2022. He wasn’t hauling gas anymore, but the truck driving job he had was less physically demanding, and only included five days a week, not six, but he loved it.

Then, boom, just like that, at the start of 2022, my old buddy, Craig Kovar, noticed he was having a little trouble swallowing. He looked up his condition online. Discovered, he would tell me later, that it could simply be a part of the aging process, and a lot of times, a simple endoscopy can widen the esophagus. After all, he’d been having acid reflux during the night for years and kept a bottle of Tums by his bedside.

With my old buddy, though. No such luck. After weeks of waiting, sweating out the process with his wife, Sharon, by his side, the dreaded diagnosis finally arrived: esophageal cancer.

Craig told me later that he felt like he had been sucker punched. All his life his body had stood the test of time, no matter the demanding labor his job entailed, and now cancer had invaded it.

I don’t know what most people know about esophageal cancer, but it’s certainly one of the worst forms of malignancy out there floating through the ether. The odds of surviving it for five years is about 20 percent, based on recent stats. Some studies give it better odds, some, less.

To be part of that 20 percent, though, the patient is basically put through hell on earth. Multiple rounds of chemo and radiation therapy. I think Craig had about 26 rounds of radiation therapy and eight rounds of chemo.

Then if you’re lucky and the tumor closing off the esophagus shrinks, the surgery required to completely remove it and stitch up the dissected esophagus, is without a doubt one of the most brutal surgeries out there.

No matter, my old buddy went through it all without any self-pity, which I often told him, I found remarkable.

In fact, I texted him many times, “I don’t think I would have the strength to go through what you’re going through.”

Not only were the treatments brutal, but so were all of the doctor/clinical appointments, which were spread across the Chicago suburban area where the traffic is a killer. In Chicago, when two docs are 40 miles apart, that’s a marathon driving session.

On top of the chemo and radiation treatments, my old buddy Craig had to have a J-tube inserted into his body, which is similar to a gastro-feeding tube, only it’s inserted in the small intestine. For him, life had truly become hell when March rolled around and the cancerous tumor had completely shut off his esophagus. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t swallow spit.

To add more misery to his battle, the J-tube never fit properly, and I won’t even get into the details of the added problems that caused with leakage from his abdominal area.

Still, my old buddy persevered with the love and support of his wife, Sharon, who did the driving and served as his chief caregiver.

He never lost his sense of humor though. He told me that the medical community in Chi-town was driving him crazy. He had one young psychiatrist badgering him about his depression.

Depression?

Craig finally got so fed up, he told the shrink who was bombarding him with questions about his depression: “You want to cure my depression? Then come on over and cure my (delete) cancer.”

Well said, brother.

The Faith Message

My oldest buddy, Craig Kovar, texted me last month that he would no longer jump through medical hoops. He had decided to enter hospice care and quit all the medical treatments still on the calendar.

“Just like that,” he wrote, “I found peace.”

He told me that the medical practitioners he was dealing with were always holding out a carrot and a hoop. He’d jump through one hoop, and here would come another carrot. And another hoop. The surgery they had hopes for (an esophagectomy) kept being extended even though recent tests showed that the tumor had shrunk and hadn’t metastasized.

He had done everything asked of him, but then the medical specialists wanted this from him, and then that. They wanted him to spend more time talking to the psychiatrist who was billing him by the hour over the phone.

By the time Craig’s surgery date had finally arrived, the esophageal cancer had spread to his kidneys, and he had developed sepsis (the body’s extreme response to an infection).

“I’m done with it all,” he texted last month.

Heaven’s Hope

Craig had this unshakable faith that Heaven was in his immediate future. As soon as his disease-wracked body gave up his soul, it would be immediately transported into a place of beauty, with no illness, no worry, no pain in sight, surrounded by all of his lovedones gone before.

“Words can’t begin to describe what it will be like,” he once texted me.

That’s what kept him going during these last five months, and that’s what removed all fear and doubt about his future place in the universe. Thanks to that, he had no fear of dying, which I personally find to be an amazing thing.

One of the last texts he sent me read, and I’m paraphrasing, “We’ll meet up there (heaven) Aug. 8, 2055 (my hundredth birthday), but we might want to tone down our behavior just a little so we don’t get into any trouble.”

Craig is a perfect example of why I have such contempt for a best-selling author like Bart Ehrman. He was once an Evangelical, but now considers himself an agnostic (has no belief about God one way or the other).

He sells tons of books (“Misquoting Jesus,” etc.) discounting the New Testament, makes millions off the 30 or so books he’s written, while working as a tenured professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I’ve read a few of his books. I’ve listened to a few of his debates on Youtube, and he can easily poke holes in scripture. With the amount of study he has under his belt, it’s not hard to do if one wants to abandon all faith.

Clearly, there are discrepancies, contradictions, between the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). For a person of faith, though, like my buddy Craig, they don’t detract from the bigger picture – there is a beautiful afterlife that does exist.

I think to myself, why do that, though? A writer and professor like Ehrman sure isn’t poking holes in the Quran. Coward. But if people choose to believe a certain way, why would anyone choose to essentially discount what they hold most dear, if not for money? Do what they can to tear down any hope?

In my buddy Craig’s case, next to his wife and family, it was his belief in Jesus as his savior, and the Bible as his foundational rock, which made him a believer in Heaven and the future afterlife. That is what got him through the last five months of “pure torture,” as he often described it. Not in a self-pitying way. Just matter of fact: “pure torture.”

I’d read one of his texts in March, describing his predicament, his inability to swallow something as simple as spit, and I’d try to replicate his predicament, pretending that I, too, couldn’t swallow anything, and I would always come away with this simple thought – I don’t know how anybody can survive a day of this, much less weeks, which turn into months.

He would text me photos of cans of cherry 7-Up. One of his favorite drinks. Or pictures of sweet lemonade, telling me that when he beat the cancer, he was going to drink a gallon of the stuff.

“I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in four months,” he once texted me. “This isn’t living.”

No, it isn’t, my oldest friend. My biggest hope is that you’re now in some place much better, where we’ll meet up again one day. I’m just truly sorry for all the pain and misery you had to go through to get there.

A guy like my oldest buddy works hard all his life, serves as a good husband and father, gets set to retire, enjoy time traveling with his wife, enjoy the new grandbabies, and then bam, he gets hit with one of the worst forms of cancer imaginable. Five months later he’s gone from being a rock-solid truck driver to someone who can barely get out of bed.

The End

If I get to Heaven, I’m hoping God can one day explain to me how any of this is fair. Like what happened to my buddy Craig. Because it sure isn’t. Not in my book. I can point to a lot of jerks in the world, public figures, now in their 90s, and no doubt, they’ll die a peaceful, painless death.

I texted that question to my second-oldest buddy, Jack, the other day after telling him of Craig’s death. We met in 8th grade.

Okay, so I tossed in some profanity as I asked him to explain it all to me.

“Why do some of the biggest (delete) in the world live to be 90, and then good guys like Craig die at 67?”

Not an exact quote, but close.

My buddy Jack, still sharp and quick as a whip, texted back immediately the solution to the question, after offering condolences to Craig’s family and saying, yeah, how sad it is for a guy to work for so long, do the right thing, get set to retire, and then get hit with some dreaded disease. Here’s what Jack said he’s going to do:

“That’s why I’m going to turn into the biggest (delete) you’ll ever know.”

Meaning, of course, then he’ll get to live to be 90. Being a nice, honest, decent guy like Craig doesn’t seem to carry any rewards with regard to long-lasting good physical health, but being a jerk seems to have its lasting merits. Do an online search for “evil people seem to live long lives,” and there are stories written about the phenomenon.

Maybe that is the answer to the question that never makes any sense: why do so many of the good die so young? Like my buddy Craig, they’re too decent. They show up on fate’s radar, fate takes aim, and then bam.

Because face it, in today’s world, 67 really is too young to die. With today’s modern medicine, 67 is the new version of the old 47.

Personally, I’ve learned something from this whole sad experience. Craig and I had this way of ticking each other off on occasion. It was like we had never left seventh grade, arguing over who had the most zits.

We would needle each other, looking to get under one another’s skin, intentionally or not, although when push came to shove, we’d always be there for each other.

The last time this happened, it was in late 2020. He was convinced that COVID was being overhyped. Convinced that we should just get on with our business and not worry about it so much. I was just the opposite, convinced it was a big deal.

He’d send me memes, mocking things like facemasks. I asked him to stop because I found the whole pandemic too (delete) annoying, but he wouldn’t, so I quit talking to him for most of 2021. All the while, though, knowing that we’d get back together at a future date. It wasn’t like he was going away forever. We were both still too young. We still had plans to attend the Master’s tourney one day. How, we didn’t know, but we’d get to Augusta one way or another.

Then he got through to me on a phone call in March. Called the newspaper office, which was unusual.

Something’s not right, I thought, so I called him right back. He beat around the bush for a while, before I asked him, “So, are you alright because you’ve kind of got me worried?”

Not really, he said, and then he gave me the disturbing news — esophageal cancer.

I have known of at least three people who died from it, and I knew it to be one of the worst forms of cancer, but, hey, when it came to Craig, he was going to beat it. That’s what I kept telling him, that’s what my wife, Jan, kept telling him, and that’s what I kept telling myself. He’s going to beat this. Then he didn’t.

So now I’m left sitting around thinking about the big chunk of 2021 we missed talking, texting, laughing. If he left out the COVID part, Craig had a great sense of humor and was way above average in the intelligence department, no matter what our high school grades might have showed. He was creative, an artist, witty, funny, logical, and we had the ability to make fun of most people and most situations.

It's like he once texted me, “When we were young, we would laugh at almost everything.”

Which was true. We found almost everything amusing, until our report cards showed up.

We were in a big-box store once. Probably freshman year. A store manager was standing nearby. Craig told me to throw him one of the big balls in the container near my side. It was one of those light plastic balls. So, like an idiot, I threw it to him. While the ball was still in mid-air, Craig turned a little and let the ball hit him in the side. Just before that, he yelled something, so the store manager would turn his head just in time to see me throw the ball. Like it was my idea, and now I was the guy being tossed from the store for causing a commotion.

Seriously? Memories like that are priceless, I think. Especially as we grow older.

What I learned from this personal loss — sadly, too late — is that you can never hold your family or best friends too close, because tomorrow holds no promises, no guarantees.