TheBanyanTree: A Life Lived Online

[Monique Colver]

His wife died Friday while in the hospital. She never got to go home.

I've started a fundraising campaign for their daughter's education find. So
far, we've raised over 2k.

Monique
On Dec 3, 2013 10:17 AM, "Monique Colver" <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not mine, of course, though it may seem like it.
>
> I'm on this list. Not this list, another list. I've been on there for years
> -- it's for people in my profession -- bookkeepers, accountants, CPA's,
> EA's, etc. I've been on there for so long that after my surgery in the
> distant past a group from the list sent me flowers. Some of us have met,
> some of us are friends, some of us are friends but haven't met yet.
>
> There's a guy on the list. There's always a guy. He shares everything
> that's going on with his life, and many people find him insufferable not
> from the sharing, but because he's often a key troublemaker when political
> discussions go awry. There aren't supposed to be any political discussions,
> but they pop up now and then. He's annoying enough with his pronouncements
> that I've considered switching sides merely because I don't like being on
> his side.
>
> But that's a pretty weak excuse for switching my political persuasion, so I
> haven't. But this guy . . . he was a history major in college, so he's
> certain he knows everything and those who disagree with him are
> fearmongerers (?) and not paying attention. And when it's pointed out to
> him that he's often the problem, he doesn't get it, his level of
> comprehension often being not as much as is required.
>
> A couple of years ago he shared that he had a girlfriend, Shannon, and that
> they were going to get married.
>
> He kept us apprised of their march toward the altar. Many wished him well.
>
> He keeps us notified of scifi marathons and classic radio shows. He talks
> about how well done some tv shows are, like the Walking Dead (which I've
> never seen, despite my love of zombies).
>
> He told us of a car accident he was in where the other driver, who had
> caused the accident, was killed. That shook him up.
>
> He told us when he married Shannon.
>
> Then Shannon got pregnant! While some of us may have thought, "poor kid,"
> we congratulated him.
>
> He talked of his wife often, and her pregnancy.
>
> He emailed me once and asked if my book would offend his wife. She's a
> psychiatric nurse and he thought I might be in the business of bashing
> people in the industry. He's oblivious to what goes on around him in the
> wider world. I told him I didn't know if it would offend her, or if she'd
> like it, that I really couldn't tell him. So he didn't buy the book, and no
> big deal to me. It was just a strange question, I thought.
>
> Shannon got transferred to a remote location, as if West Virginia itself
> weren't remote enough. Now they were moving to a remoter place.
>
> He wrote about his struggle with his business, how he didn't know how to go
> remote with his clients, and he kept asking the same marketing questions
> year after year until some people threw up their hands in impatience.
>
> The baby was born, and he often talked of taking care for her while he was
> working.
>
> The baby's not yet a year old.
>
> And Shannon, a lifelong nonsmoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and they
> couldn't fix it, they could only slow it down.
>
> And this guy is faced with losing his wife and having a small baby who
> won't remember much of her mother.
>
> The other day she went to the hospital to have her lungs drained, and they
> found more cancer they hadn't known about.
>
> They're getting a second opinion.
>
> Meanwhile, people send emails telling him they can beat it if they will
> just think positively.
>
> We're a stubborn people, us humans. That's probably a good thing, but if I
> ever get cancer, which is likely with my family history, and people tell me
> that I can just think it away, I'm likely to virtually smack them upside
> the head.
>
> I've never smacked anyone anywhere except in self-defense, so that's really
> not likely. I'm more talk than bite.
>
> I can't add to the chorus of "We're praying for you!" because I don't do
> that, but I can hope her cancer goes into spontaneous remission and then
> goes away by magic. I hope the same for another friend on the east coast
> who also has a terminal lung cancer. And another friend's daughter on that
> same list, who has been fighting cancer for six years. It just keeps
> getting worse and they've removed much of her. She has three children, two
> of them not much older than the cancer. They're all young, all these women.
>
> We're no longer bound by geography, by a closeness in knowing people
> face-to-face. We live in a world where Don's sadness can be shared with a
> group of people all over the US and Canada, some of whom don't care for
> him, but when someone's faced with the horrible things that happen in life
> that doesn't matter so much. We're all of us united against the common
> enemy. We hope for the best for those we know, even if they've annoyed us
> in the past. We can transcend social constructs and meaningless barriers if
> we just listen.
>
> M
>