CityView Magazine

10 | January/February 2017 McFadyen's Musings Lost and Found in 30,000 Square Feet O ur parents knew exactly what me and my buddies were up to. I never recall a need even to get their permission. It was just part of our being high school pals, and they were fine with it. Yet, that same parent- approved action would today land us on the front page of the newspaper and facing felony charges. In our respective houses, one of my best friends and I would wake early (as duck hunters must), dress in the pressed khaki pants and blue button-down shirts our moms preferred us to wear and head out well before day in our jalopies. We met up at McFadyen Lake in what was then "the country." We would shoot at (and usually miss) the dawn flight of wood ducks and mallards before trekking back to our vehicles around 7:45 a.m. When we arrived at Terry Sanford High School before the 8:25 bell, we would put the shotguns and camouflage in the trunk of our cars and walk our blue-button-down selves to class. As I said, doing that today would be a felonious act. Aer graduation, our paths diverged. He went on to be a serious engineering student, while I wore down my fingernails clutching the precipice of academic failure. He quickly found the girl of his dreams, married her and proceeded to have a passel of children. e girl in my dreams always looked different than the girl in the dream the night before, and it took me a dozen years longer than him to narrow down those visions into one fine woman. He and I both returned to our family businesses, him confidently and me BY BILL MCFADYEN reluctantly. He went about living the life his mom had hoped he would. I went about exploring what it was my mom had been keeping me away from. We saw each other infrequently in those aer-high-school years. Yet, when we did, despite the diverging paths, we always saw in each other a basic goodness. We also remembered that neither of us was a very good shot at ducks. Five or six years back, we began to see more of each other. Around that same time, the news came. My button-down buddy's beloved wife was in a struggle for her life. Cancer. It was Stage 4 upon first diagnosis. at is grim news for any family, but it is especially scary when there are little guys running around fully dependent on their mother for traditional nurturing in a nuclear family. When my dad's death had been diagnosed, but while his fight was still being fought, Pop gathered all six of his grandchildren around him aer Christmas brunch. He had several pages of things he wanted to say to them. ey were the principles by which he hoped they would live when he was gone and by which he hoped they would remember him as having lived. One of the pages was from Jim Valvano's ESPY speech. It was the part about laughing, thinking and being emotionally moved to tears every day. And of course, there was the "never give up" part. For five years, the wife of my high school chum fought back against the ravages of cancer, never giving up. In that time, she inspired children into and out of college. She saw graduations and she knew the satisfaction of seeing her children become professionals in the corporate world. She held calloused young hands and stroked heads of long hair. She gave all of them the best of a mother's love. Despite chemotherapy and blood transfusions and pain and nausea, she maintained oversight of the household. She was the encourager as much as she was encouraged, especially to my old buddy in response to his fears of the eventual life he would live without her. Today, it is that very life that he is living. She is not of this world any longer. She is in that other world of glory that we can neither understand nor explain, only believe. And while her family misses her, they know their matriarch no longer shares in their pain. She lives anew and she waits happily for them. To her last day, said my pal, she thought that she would beat cancer. Perhaps she did not. However, she did not lose to cancer either. At worst, she fought it to a noble stalemate. In our most recent visit, my old pal told me of a poignant call from one of the daughters. Away in school, she was missing the benefit of the communal healing that happened at their house each day. Sensing need, he asked if she wanted him to come see her. She did. My friend has been many things in 55 years. Spontaneous is not one of them. Yet, in this new life that he is living, within moments of hanging up the phone, he was barreling west across our state's highways to minister to his

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