I was staying at the Westin
I was playing to a draw
When in walked Charlton Heston
With the Tablets of the Law

He said, “It’s still the Greatest Story”
I said, “Man I’d like to stay
But I’m bound for glory
I’m on my way
My ride’s here…”

 (From “My Ride’s Here” as written by Paul Muldoon and Warren Zevon)

 

I got a nice email from Mike Vineyard back in early May.  Mike is the brother of Steve Vineyard, my pastor who passed away unexpectedly back in January of this year.

You might remember.

I won’t share it exactly but in his email he said he had read and enjoyed some my posts and had even subscribed to the website.

I don’t know Mike.

He didn’t remember meeting me and truthfully I don’t remember meeting him either.  Ever since having Donny’s funeral at the Sterling United Methodist Church, I don’t like to attend funerals there.    So I generally make myself as busy as I can be helping out in some way that keeps me distracted.

But I surely appreciated his comments and his desire to receive my future posts.

 

“My Ride’s Here” was the eleventh studio album released in May of 2002 by singer-songwriter Warren Zevon.  I read that he described the album as a meditation on death.

It was released several months before Zevon was diagnosed with a type of cancer called mesothelioma.

Warren Zevon passed away in September of 2003 at the young age of fifty-six.

 

According to the Mayo Clinic:

Malignant mesothelioma (me-zoe-thee-lee-O-muh) is a type of cancer that occurs in the thin layer of tissue that covers the majority of your internal organs (mesothelium).

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and deadly form of cancer. Mesothelioma treatments are available, but for many people with mesothelioma, a cure isn’t possible.

The primary risk factor for mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos.

 

My brother Carl had mesothelioma.

He died on Tuesday morning, about fourteen months after his diagnosis, at the young age of sixty-six.

 

According to my California brother Gary, who recently was able to spend a week with Carl, he told him that he really liked the song “My Ride’s Here” by Warren Zevon.

Zevon didn’t know he had mesothelioma at the time that he wrote that song.  Yet most interpretations believe “My Ride’s Here refers to the last ride, the one that takes us to the other side.”

Another wrote: “I hope when my time comes I can show half of the class that Warren had and that I can catch my last ride with the dignity he had. There’s no warning, no big production, just the fact that it happens to all of us.”

My brother was a class act.  A genuinely nice guy.

Back in April, I connected with a friend, Lee Scott, who was part of the group of friends we hung with back in Jersey in the early 70’s via Facebook.  I told Lee coincidentally my brother and I had been reminiscing  and talking about him a short time before that.  He asked about Carl and I explained what was going on.  In his response, he said he was sorry to hear and that Carl “was always the more sane of us.”

He was.

He was the pragmatic one.

 

We have all heard this said I’m sure “yeah I know that guy, he would give you the shirt off his back!”

In the literal sense, I don’t know if my brother Carl would have given you the shirt off his back.

He needed that shirt to hide the wounds, the scars, and the colostomy resulting from years of fighting rectal cancer, then lung cancer.

But he would have given you anything else you asked for and more often, even if you didn’t ask.

He just showed up.

Then he met a form of cancer he couldn’t beat, one where “a cure isn’t possible.”

And he faced it with dignity, continuing to give right up to end.

 

I still don’t know Mike Vineyard.

But I feel like I know him a little better today than I did last week.

I know what he felt like back in January and I expect I know what he feels like today.

 

Since Donny’s accident, I believe as the Bible says, God knows the day your ride is going to show up.  I know that it happens to all of us, and as much as we would like to think otherwise, we don’t have control.

And so Tuesday morning, without a lot of production, and to some degree for us, without warning, Carl decided, as the song said,

“Man I’d like to stay

But I’m bound for glory

I’m on my way

My ride’s here…”

 

 

Well, okay then.

 

I wish you would have waited another hour or two, but I understand.

 

You couldn’t miss your ride.

 

I love you.

 

I will see you when I see you.