Dave and I both know what it’s like to have dinner with the Rohr’s and hear them all talk about Chip for an entire evening. It’s really tough to live up to the amazing Chip Rohr. I want to go on record with saying that I was never impressed with Chip. The way I looked at it, I was much better than him. I’m taller, I’m funnier, I’m better at telling stories, I’m better with impressions, I joined an actual branch of the military not just some social club with airplanes.
I never understood the fascination with him. I just wished for one second that my mother-in-law, my wife, his cousins, my sister-in-law, his nieces, his daughter, his friends, his college classmates, his high school classmates, everyone he met could shut up about how amazing this guy is.
Over the years as Chip and I grew closer, he only became more annoying.
He was always concerned about how I was doing. He wouldn’t leave it alone, he would call up and just want to talk about football and how his niece was doing. Whenever we hung out he would always bother everyone by making sure we had everything we needed. It was such a pain how he made everyone feel welcome and comfortable. Then he would monopolize all conversations by telling a dumb story that made everyone laugh. He was nothing but trouble.
When I came home from combat, he would, like a punk, listen to my stories and ask stupid poignant questions about my experiences and he would really listen to what I had to say.
He always cared. He had the heart of a lion. He was loyal to a fault. He always made sure that people were having a good time. He left this world a better place than he found it. That’s what is really upsetting. There’s no way I can live up to that.
About a year ago, my brother died from colon cancer. So sadly, I have some experience in this.
As people, we like to come up with sayings that help ease the pain. A lot of times these phrases and sayings help us express the emotion of the situation without having to come up with something on our own. We say these things because it guides us through a time where saying much else would lead to tears. When it comes to dealing with death, we go to these sayings quite frequently. It makes us feel better, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It helps us heal. Examples include:
“He’s in a better place”
“There’s no more suffering”
“He went peacefully”
There are two sayings that I’ve hated when it comes to cancer:
1) “They lost their battle with cancer.”
This makes it seem like there is something to be won. Cancer doesn’t fight like this. Cancer doesn’t care about battles and wins. Cancer is a killer. You don’t win a battle with a murderer. You either survive or you don’t. This phrase also makes it seem like our brothers were defeated by cancer. I disagree. Our brothers were killed by cancer. Even at the very end neither Chip nor my brother were defeated.
2) They passed away.
My brother and Chip were far too young to use this saying. It has always seemed too passive for my taste. It feels like we are trying to hide the reality of the situation. The phrasing never felt real enough for me. It never felt to me that they passed away. It always felt like they were ripped away. They didn’t pass away, they were stolen from us.
And here we are again facing another tragedy. I would be doing Chip a disservice if I didn’t include a little impromptu history lesson here, so here goes...
There was mention of something from the American soldiers who liberated concentration camps during World War II. They talked about the “banality of evil.” There is a point when faced with so much tragedy that it becomes mundane. The soldiers who liberated concentration camps came to a point where the horror became every day, almost routine. To a lesser extent, I faced it myself during my time in combat. There would be an attack, or an IED detonation and one soldier would be killed. It got to a point where your first response was “Oh thank God it was just one person killed.” The tragedy became normal. It was part of your experience.
But that was war. You knew going in that it could be horrible. We chose to face those horrors so others wouldn’t have to. It is the price that we pay to protect others from the madness of war. We carry that with us.
Today it’s not the same. I have lost my brother and my brother-in-law to something different. Cancer crept into their bodies and wreaked havoc. Both gave cancer a run for its money. I don’t know how they did it, but both died without cancer crushing their spirit. But where does that leave us? What do we do with all of this grief? How are we supposed to keep going with all this tragedy?
What is the lesson that we are supposed to learn?
This last one has been bothering me for a while now. I have lived my life with the assumption that there is something to be learned even from the worst situations. But I honestly don’t know what we are supposed to learn from this.
I can tell you what I do know though: In the darkest times, where it all seems overwhelming, where we can’t help but be filled with rage at these circumstances, where you think that this pain is yours alone. The good people around us will lift us up. We are never alone in our grief. We are here for each other. Whenever there is tragedy, good people step up and I see that here today.
I know that we have to actively battle despair. It will sneak up on you and drag you down for years if you let it. We must fight every day.
And I know that as long as we keep sharing our memories of those who we’ve lost, they are never truly gone.
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