FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2003
Our friend, Haji - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER - I never really thought about dying until I went to go see my old friend Haji Gentleman in the hospital. It was a couple of years ago. He had just had some pretty intense cancer surgery. It's not that death wasn't around me, but when I learned Haji had cancer, I never thought it could happen to someone like him. He was so young, so seemingly vibrant. He was someone who was my age.
What scared me was that here was someone I grew up with being felled by the disquieting affliction of our time. Here was life happening to us. We were growing up. Life was happening far too soon, I thought. Then any fears I had were quickly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of pride and comfort watching Haji battle this scourge. He was so strong, while everyone around him was getting weary. Haji would smile softly, trying to make us feel better. No one was more kinder, no one was more gentle, no one was more dignified, no one was more remarkable than our friend, Ira Hajime Gentleman.
Admittedly, Haji and I were not terribly close. I couldn't tell you, without looking it up, when his birthday was, or even if he was religious. I didn't know details like that, but I knew what a remarkable person he was, what a kind, self-effacing and warm guy he was. And I did know him for a long time, going back to the days when we were knee high to a grasshopper in elementary school. We went through that place at the same time, and we both went to the same high school, where I got to know him better, and from where in grade 10 or so, he moved off to Vanderhoof, north from here, near Prince George. Surprisingly, his move to the hinterlands made us closer. I wrote him letters, the only person since whom I have ever sat down for, pen to paper, letting the thoughts flow, in slightly unreadable cursive writing. He, bless him, would say he could read my writing. He, bless him, would do the same for me. He would write letters that would be fraught with misspelled names (mine usually, as Joseph would be 'Joesph'), but they were perfect in that they sounded exactly as though he were right there.
What I always did with Haji, whenever he'd come down from Vanderhoof for a visit, was talk about the old days. Surprisingly he took to this. Vanderhoof was dreary for him, and a terribly long ways from the home he left years earlier. Talking about the idle gossip and dull news about all of his friends made him feel connected to them. It filled in the distances of time and space.
When people get cancer, they're given odds. Odds are supposed to be beaten, and if anyone could it would be him. Whatever the odds were for Haj, after he was first diagnosed, I knew deep down he could beat them.
He lost his hair. He grew it back. He lost weight. He put it back on. He would be weak, but he would bounce back. There was no stopping him. He'd snowboard, he'd fish, he'd go hunt. He'd fall out of a boat, tasting the salt of a lake. He'd travel to his beloved Japan. He'd do everything that would tire someone healthier. Twenty-one years isn't a terribly long time, but Haji packed so much in his twenty-one years that it makes me realise none of it was wasted. One is so proud to have known him.
I didn't know Haji well, but I knew him best in those quiet moments. Those moments when I knew he was behind me, defending me. Those moments when I knew I had a friend I could count on, not because we went back so long, but because it was Haji, and I knew I could count on him. There is no one I know who was more loyal, more modest and humble than him. I only hope to God, he knew that it was mutual. Haji was the kind of friend everyone wants. If I had a cold, he'd probably ask if he could sneeze for me.
Half-Japanese and half-Caucasian, Haji, I got the feeling was always trying to live down both sides of his unique and remarkable heritage. He embraced both, and what was fascinating was his desire in later years to learn more about the Japanese side which intrigued him a great deal. Just after we graduated in 2000, not finding post-secondary school much of a hook, he went to Japan for a year or so. He lived amongst his homeland, the heritage and culture his mother also longed for. I could tell his parents instilled and encouraged exploration of that important part of himself, and Haji went for the experience of a lifetime. It was an experience that was remarkable in that he got to experience what many hadn't, and it was wonderful that he got to do something that he wanted to do. It was living a dream, he once wrote me.
Not long after he came back, while deciding what adventure he would do next, the wretched cancer struck. I don't know if it was a premonition, but one evening in late August two years ago, I decided it was time to write to Haji. I put pen to paper and wrote him a missive that was no more than four pages. I was to send it, when I got a call the next day that Haji was in town, not back home in Vanderhoof, but in the hospital. It was serious. Cancer. Haji? No, not him. Couldn't be.
I'm not now positive that it was lung cancer, but whatever it was, it wasn't looking good. We went to visit him in one of those wards, where it's two to a room, no noise, nothing but rampant seriousness. He was hooked up to two or three tubes. He was asleep. He looked emaciated. He didn't look good. We sat around for a while, allowing him to sleep, allowing him to rest up after painstaking surgery. Eventually, he batted an eye and caught glimpse of me at the end of the bed. He tried to get up, trying to sit up, trying to be presentable. Even then, I had to tell him it was only me and he needn't bother. I got the feeling he was embarrassed by putting me into the trouble of coming to visit him. I got the feeling he was sorry for getting sick. That was Haji, always trying to explain things, trying to comfort us, when it was so blatantly obvious he needed it more than the rest of us.
The Haji I knew wasn't going to take this lying down. He'd fight. He'd get better; because that's what we all expected of him. And he had to if he wanted to be amongst the great grand wilderness of the outdoors that he adored so much.
I saw him earlier this year, twice. The first time he looked a little weak, a little off kilter, but still Haji. His hair had thinned and he was looking a little gaunt. The second time I saw him, he was bounding up stairs, his hair thickened slightly, and it was a marked improvement from his prior visit. Things were looking good, I thought. False comfort.
Then that call. He called me sometime this summer. I missed his first few attempts, eventually he got a hold of me some Sunday morning at 9.00, and just before I was heading to bed (it had been a long, sleepless night prior). He was calling me from the Eldorado, where he'd stay when he couldn't get a room at the Easter Seal House. (The same Easter Seal House he nearly burned down, cooking hot dogs on his hotplate.)
He sounded different this time. I knew he had more to say than, 'Hey Joe, I'm in town.' I asked, "How are you?" He cleared his throat a little, and said, "Not well, the doctors say they can't do anything anymore." I nearly dropped the phone. I could hear the resignation in his voice. The passions were spent. Then he said: "The doctors say I'm going to die soon."
It broke my heart that morning. Struggling to fathom what he said, I pummelled him with questions: What are you going to do now? Where are you going? Where are you going to be? What are you feeling? Are you okay? Are you comfortable? Do you need anything? What can I do? What can we do? Who should I call? And on and on it went. I asked if I could see him. He said he had stuff to do. I knew what he meant. I said I would tell people, and he said, sure, but not too many. The man needed his dignity now. He deserved it.
Haji afforded me much deference and respect, much more than I ever deserved. But then he did that to everyone. Everyone I've talked to these past few days have said nothing but kind things. There's no innuendo to insinuate, because there just wasn't any. He lived his life on the up and up and was just so warm. He lived his life with a quiet dignity and a humility I have never since encountered. He looked as if he was sorry for getting cancer, and sorry it made come down to go visit him. And whatever you tried to do to tell him or convince him otherwise, he wouldn't take it.
I wrote his family a letter a day or two ago. For them the pain of loss must be unbearable. I dare not imagine what they must be going through. Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children. I tried to tell them how much Haji meant to me and those that his life touched. I hope they know that I will be forever grateful for his warmth, his courage and most of all, that quiet grace that he carried himself with. It endeared him to so many others, and to me, it meant so much.
The way that I and a few of his friends from high school found out that he died was so quintessentially Haji. It was nearly a month before we found out he had died. It seems that he had gotten rid of a lot of his stuff before he died, including a lot of the phone numbers of his friends here in Vancouver. It sounded so much like something he would do. Preparing for the inevitable, to the end he refused to be a burden. And in a way, for those of us who knew him well, it made the news slightly easier to bear. To the end, he was always thinking of others before all else. For that, he went straight to heaven.
Haji Gentleman was a very special person. He brought all those that encountered him joy and laughter. Through his life he was there for us, for small and quiet things that we thought nothing of at the time. In retrospect, for every lunch hour we sat joking around, laughing at each other and everything else, it meant so much. Through his illness and his death, he taught us about life. Like Warren Zevon, he taught us the value in enjoying every sandwich, as it were. And in the end, the way we found out about his death, is sort of his way of teaching us how to move on. With the death of my Grandmother, earlier this year, I learned exactly why grief is the price we pay for love. Haji's death teaches me that again.
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©2003 Joseph Planta.