"Junior Birdman" plays in my head as I battle sadness with Camp Spikehorn, Scotch with Marc, Topsy and oil-stained feet on a country road

 I learned today that a cousin, who I love like a brother, is in the fight for his life up in the Detroit area. 

I don't need to go into details, other than the fact I left him a slightly profane message on his answering machine, because he is unable to speak clearly because of some irritation in his mouth, apparently caused by his treatments. I'm a newspaperman, so profanity flows naturally.

Since I couldn't talk with him, I talked into the machine about the summers he and his brother spent with Eric, me and my mom and dad. And I said that he better get feeling better because the bus was getting ready to take us out to Camp Spikehorn, outside Grand Rapids. 

I know none of that makes much sense to anyone but me. 

But my Champ cousins and my brother and I grew up together, at Camp Spikehorn or running down the dunes over near Holland, Michigan. Or the one Thanksgiving when we all were outside my grandparents' (George and Bea Champ's) house at Walnut Lake and a deer hunter shot into a tree near me. I survived. In fact, we thought it was kinda cool.   I spoke with my cousin a few weeks ago. The diagnosis was dire, but he was counting on months, years even. Now they are talking about hospice. He'll be 72 in September.  He was baby-sitting his grandchildren when we spoke.

Oh yeah, and then there was the beach at Walnut Lake. We'd walk on the trail through the swamp from the Champ house and across the dirt roads, that had been sprayed with black oil to keep the dust down. 

We spent our summers with black soles on our feet, either from going to the lake or just across Sunnycrest to harvest wild blackberries in the field.  

And the dog, Topsy, my grandparents' old hound, who would follow us through the woods and back. Sometimes, by the time she got home, she smelled of the dead fish she'd rolled on near the beach. We probably didn't smell so good ourselves.

It's been a lot of decades since Camp Spikehorn and the beach at Walnut Lake. But in my life I've never been happier than those days, before life began catching up with me. 

My cousin, Marc, and his brother, Jeff, not only mean everything to me, they are my connections with my early, happier life, my "Wonder Years" or whatever. And their sister, Michelle, too, though she was older and not as much around us as the boys were.

Their dad, my Uncle Joe, had his lungs turned into so much Swiss cheese by Nazi flamethrowers in the Battle of the Bulge. For a long time, my mom, his sister, and their folks didn't even know if he was alive. No officers came to the house to say he was dead. But if he was alive, nobody had kept good track of him.

But he was healing, slowly, in a British hospital. He came home mortally wounded into a decade-long death dance. Yet he laughed and hugged. He was a great and loving man.

When I was a kid, Uncle Joe was my hero. I named my son after him. Uncle Joe also scared me, as on the days of family gatherings out there in the small house in the woods at Walnut Lake, he'd have to go into my grandpa's bedroom, where Grandpa Champ would work the old hand-pump oxygen machine in an attempt to keep Joe alive.

Uncle Joe died long, long ago.  I remember when my mother got the phone call in Grand Rapids, telling her that her beloved brother had finally succumbed to Hitler's war machine.  I never saw her more grief-stricken as she wailed away at the telephone nook, by the reach-through between the stairs landing and the dining room.

She had been vacuuming the dining room when the call came.

I saw him in his casket, but my parents didn't think I was old enough for the funeral. Eric and I waited out the funeral and ate fresh tomatoes. No, that's not really a big deal, but it's true. I would rather eat fresh tomatoes than go to funerals now, but that's not proper death etiquette.

I probably ought to think this through more, turn it into some sort of formed writing. But I'm just typing from my heart right now. And it hurts.

It had been a bad day already, as I dealt with work issues.  My meeting with a boss was interrupted by a phone call I couldn't take, but I recognized the number. It could only be bad news. And I knew it had to be about Marc.

Tears crept into my eyes, which I rubbed, but continued my meeting. Had to. Gotta take care of my family and I love my job.

I focused on my boss and what he had to say to me, but I really didn't feel completely there. I knew that something had gone wrong with Marc in his battle with cancer.

And it had, as I found out when I talked to my own brother, Eric, and to our cousin Michelle.

I laughed a little bit in my soul, though, when I thought of the four of us, like brothers, riding the bus to Camp Spikehorn. Singing the "Junior Birdman" song, complete with the hand-motions. If you never did that, you are supposed to turn your hands upside down, forming upside-down goggles with fingers, as you sing along about the upside-down airman.

Marc and I served as bartenders once at an ill-fated family wedding. No details needed here, other than that the marriage didn't work, but the wine and Scotch really fueled the bartenders. My dad had provided the booze, and he wasn't stingy about quality. Marc and I relished Dad's choices so much that we each took a bottle with us back to Eric's apartment, where we drank the night away. And talked about Camp Spikehorn.  

Because of life, we haven't been together a lot since we were elementary school kids. 

Our parents all moved us around the country. 

There were occasional family get-togethers. Mostly at funerals, though.

I'm rambling here.

I can't say what will happen. It certainly looks bad. But I don't know if I've ever been around a more-upbeat guy than Marc. I'll never forget that smile, the hug, the fact we kissed each other on the lips, Mafia style, when we saw each other.

I've lost a lot of my friends to cancer. My parents are gone to disease and age. A cousin on the Ghianni side of the family, my beloved Ronnie Conte, died long ago because there was a congenital hole in his heart that finally caught up with him. Jim Kelly and some of the Buffalo Bills came to his visitation. But that's another story. 

Other "friends" decided that my politics, ethics and my general sense of fear and loathing mixed with mad laughter wasn't worth putting up with. I didn't need them, anyway. Ah, look at all the lonely people.

But I've kept going, knowing there were people in this world I loved and who loved me. Marc, Jeff, Michelle, Eric, Ronnie's brother Robbie. And, of course, my daughter, son and Suzanne. 

For me, well, this is a sad time. I'll be even more lonely one day, I hope not soon, because of this fucking cancer.

The laughter, the kisses on the lips, the Scotch and the hugs will be missed.

I told Eric, "it's that time in life when this shit begins to happen. We are old, brother."  

I guess we are.

I know that I feel old today when I think about this magnificent cousin who is fighting for his life.

I just hope he takes a moment to think about Walnut Lake. Topsy. Black-oil-covered soles. 

And those musical bus rides to Camp Spikehorn. "Up in the air, the junior birdman; up in the air upside dow-ow-own; up in the air, the junior birdman, keep your noses off the grou-ou-ound."