Bill Larremore, 1956-2014, and Courage

Another dear friend who taught me a lot passed away--early Tuesday.

Bill Larremore started attending our little rural school, Lewis and Clark Consolidated, in second grade, and he stood out in a lot of ways.  Bill had a pretty bad speech impediment in elementary school and had been held back a year.  He also had a step-father, which was also not considered normal back in the 1960s in rural Oregon.  And while all of us by adolescence were fascinated by girls, Bill's interest was unmatched.  I not only had never approached "first base," I didn't even know what or where it was.  Not so with Bill.  But Bill was anything but smooth.  He was the uncomplaining butt of interminable jokes about his inability to disguise what he was really thinking--a weakness that was like blood to sharks among boys of that time and place.

Bill and I, then, were different in many ways.  He revealed himself and was often teased mercilessly for it; I kept my thoughts to myself, my head down.  He struggled with school; I found it easy.  He played basketball, the high-status sport at Astoria High School in the mid-1970s that enhanced his standing among the ladies.  I ran cross country and track and never went to a dance or on a date.  He was sad when high school ended; I was elated.

Yet I always felt close to Bill, all through school and later, too.  He was the friend you knew would never try to hurt you to make  himself look better, the guy you felt "safe" with at a time in life when safety felt hard to come by.  After bouncing around for awhile after graduation he ended up driving a truck for UPS and developed a curiosity about a wide variety of subjects.  He always treated my modest successes as an author with a lot of pride.  And he was one of my few male friends who felt comfortable divulging his emotions.  Years ago he talked about how re-unions with his childhood buddies always brought up a lot of "L'more" stories of dumb things he had allegedly done or said.  "They're funny stories," he readily admitted.  "But I wish you guys would see that there's more to me than that."

Bill brought some of us back together a few months ago when he was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer.  In the following months he told me about his hopes and fears while never failing to ask after me, Wendy, and Peter.  I've never known someone in so much pain to express so much gratitude for his life or for his friends. Bill had recently retired and had just begun to do some of the things he had long dreamed about, places to visit, new topics to learn about.  After the diagnosis he hoped to at least get another year or two of living in.  But the disease progressed quickly.  Two weeks ago he was getting dozens of calls and texts a day--and felt guilty that he was too tired to answer them.

I've often heard the term "eating away like a cancer" without thinking much about the phrase's etymology.  On Saturday I saw cancer hollowing Bill out before my eyes.  But only up to a point.  As he labored to fight off pain and morphine he told me again how much he loved me, asked about my spiritual life, shared his fear of dying, told me he'd pray for my family.