Holy shit

Earlier I was washing the dishes as I always do and singing along to "Romanticide" when I heard dad call me from the stairs. A phonecall came in for me. My first guess was a friend that'd ask me if I could come over, but it was actually that friend's boyfriend. Both of 'em are my best friends.

I asked what's up and he repeated the question to me, so I figured he was just fooling around. I told him that I was washing dishes and I began to notice that his reponses were... off. When I asked him what's up he's like "aah... it's weird..." Thus, something was wrong.

Turns out, his grandma has pancriatic cancer and was also given 5 month's time. Holy shit. Holy shit.

He called 'cause he needed someone to talk to and also with my family's experience with losing Nicole to cancer (different type). I told him that it almost seems different for each person but the common thread is that it's difficult.

He was like "I guess I'm supposed to be sad, but I'm just kinda.... meh" (can't remember his actual wording here but it was close). I guessed "Shock?"

Further on, I told him to feel whatever emotions come to him since no one is really "supposed" to feel any which way. If you were supposed to feel one thing, then you'd feel it.

We had an off-topic conversation soon after but there was still a different sort of tone to his voice. It's freaky to think about...

I told him in the past that he worries me because he opens himself up to everyone's problems and he's a good listener, but outside of relationship stuff... I think this is the first big problem he's told me about. We've had conversations where we talked about stuff in his past but nothing "current" seemed to happen. There was one thing though, but I didn't know it was even happening until his girlfriend came over to my house one day and burst into tears when she told me. He hid that pretty well, almost.

This though.. he's opened up to me and it's almost weird because I've gone though something similar over 8 years ago.

I don't know if he's close with his grandma (it seems he is with his emotional response), but either way she is a part of his identity and family history and it's just really kinda.. devastating to think about the fact he's losing that and that there isn't anything that anyone can do about it. He isn't a control freak, but he does like it when there is something he can do about something and gets really quiet and uncomfortable otherwise. With his girlfriend though, she has sensed that he's wanted to help her out of her family situation but whenever she talked about it with him she just wanted him to listen and not really say much about it since there wasn't anything else he could do. It was a tense time for them.

With an impending death though, that is a whole other can of worms. Listening in on how he reacts in the months ahead is... definitely going to be different. It hurts me to think about but I cannot imagine what him or his family is going through. Yes, there is the prior experience with Nicole but she had fought for 2 years before passing on. With his grandma, it seems like they found out very recently and that she didn't get a chance to fight it off. Five fucking months. That's terrifying.