When asking who means the most to us, we often find it is those who, instead of giving advice, choose rather to share our pain. The friend who is silent in a moment of despair, who stays with us in an hour of grief & bereavement, who faces with us the reality of our powerlessness, that friend makes clear whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters.- Henri F.M. Nouwen
We had for years been in the habit of texting one another. Just a poke. Now his wife did the texting.
Not to make your day worse, but here’s the news.
Roger is in the hospital. He fell last night (1am) and couldn’t get up. Called the paramedics and they found his blood pressure very low (80/?)and heart rate very high (140), running a temp. took him to ER. They found blood clots in one lung and pneumonia. Gave blood transfusion and will consult with oncologist this morning. poor guy.
Poor guy indeed.
Previous texts said he was sleeping more with less appetite.
Told her I keep hoping he will snap out of it, so to speak, get a respite.
“It’s me, I’m still here,” I wanted to hear him shout.
And hug everybody he’s ever loved.
Just one more time.
Early March Roger goes to the hospital for tests and they keep him there. “Pancreas and pain and big weight loss are making things uncomfortable.” Pancreatitis, they said. We left it at that.
His dear friend, retired Nike executive David Kottkamp, had just succumbed to cancer and he had been asked to speak at the memorial service.
Roger wanted my help.
“Like what would you say at my celebration of life?”
I would talk about the personal, I told him. How – after Nike axed my ass – you called me at 8:15 every morning to make certain I got up from bed and started my day. How you talked me out of getting a motorcycle, because you knew I’d kill myself. That time you kept the huge biker from killing me because I making out with his ‘old lady.’ How you were always willing to pay for your share of the drugs. The small acts that show the true man.
“Beautiful.”
April 21. He sent some ‘funnies’ to a few friends.
May 15, I get a text. “Life is good.” It’s our motto.
Then nothing. I reached out on June 6. How about those Yankees? How you?
June 6 “I am in trouble.”
What kind of trouble? How big?
June 7 “I could die in this waiting room.”
June 13 He’s in the hospital. “I walked to bathroom with my trusty walker and attendant.” Still putting in the mileage.
June 14 Good morning, I texted.
“No no no!! Ain’t happening.”
Next text: “Terminal.” One word I don’t believe we have as yet said out loud. Not yet. Not out loud.
June 27 “Never back to hospital. Feels good to write that.”
Here’s where he gets the bad news. An aggressive tumor on the pancreas. Quite a partial sentence when you look at it.
Sounds like an alarming emergency. “Let’s set up an appointment to set up a course of action – how’s July 11?”
I am still not over that. Tell an old old man he has “an aggressive tumor on the pancreas,” so let’s meet back here in two weeks? Doesn’t seem right. Normal perhaps but not right.
Hopefully, when it’s my turn – checks watch – RFK Jr. will have all the medical and insurance industries completely patient-oriented. Another thing, Bobby, maybe fix those MRI and mammogram machines on Day 1.
Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 11:48:38 AM EDT, Roger Tragesser wrote:
At cancer doc. Surprise! It is terminal and all they can do is keep me comfortable. Smile and don’t be a negative burden. Waiting for final doc to magically appear. Sucks. Wife exhausted. Very hard on her. Sorry sorry sorry!!
Sent from my iPhone
Roger T.
“Negative burden.” Who, me? What does that even mean? “Smile and don’t be a negative burden.”
I didn’t ask him. I am no oncologist but I think I had this figured out months ago.
My left knee first blew up Independence Day. It’s bad when it’s good. And – get this – my Rehab intake evaluation was scheduled for ten weeks after the injury. Some pro football player gets shot in the chest and they say he might miss four games. I want his health insurance. Hell, let’s be honest, I want his body.
Think I was on comeback Number Thirty-Nine. I had worked myself up to a 0.9 mile walk in a season’s best 22:30. If I was feeling good, maybe fifteen minutes of weeding. Those grass-killing bastards don’t care if I am laid up.
June 29 I asked Roger if he had any weekend plans.
“Stay warm. Watch news. Read. Love wife and dogs. Drink fresh coffee. Not fall. Just basic stuff.”
Oh, look, 7/11 finally got here.
On Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 09:31:52 PM EDT
Long morning but we received good news. The additional tests revealed Roger is a candidate for immunotherapy. He had chemo today and next week will have both. He isn’t feeling well now but hopefully will get a good night sleep. Doc also adjusted meds to manage pain and we should be able to start Saturday morning but it will take a few days to see improvement. We repeat process next Thursday which means another 3-4 hours at doc office.
September 8. It was Sunday. Ragnar and I circled the usual block – get my second wind about ten minutes in – in maybe 24 minutes. I am still that guy. Basically, a warmup and a cooldown. Feels like an Oreo without the icing.
Didn’t weed, because I drove into town to go shopping. Shouldn’t push it, a trick this old dog is still learning. Leaving grocery, pushing cart to the car, I can’t help noticing I am walking okay. Feeling optimistic. A novel sensation.
Get back home. I am using my new cane. Unloading the gallon of milk and other packages, I already feel a gnawing problem. Those three steps intimidate me and so we are here. Three steps.
My left knee blew up a second time – a gallon of milk too heavy – and I haven’t walked the dog since.
SECOND BLOW UP!!! Have decided to give me left knee a name. NEAL.
Day 2. Pain down enough I am able to read.
Day 3. Watching a bike race. Five hours and four minutes long. Commercial-free.
Forty-eight hours after my last shower, took a French bath, donned a fresh unscented outfit.
Have to wear baggy pants. To get over the knee, which looks even worse than I imagined. Felt worse, but I would never even allow myself to think like that.
But it is.
Thursday. Fourth dose of Prednisone. Neal remains non-weight-bearing. Looking at my recorded movies. Thinking maybe “Soylent Green” might be timely.
Roger was a superb racquet ball player back in the day.
The kind of guy who might bike Seattle-To-Portland on Saturday and run the Portland Marathon on Sunday morning. I told him I thought that was excessive.
We both knew that was the point.
Forty years later, he was meeting his trainer Monday, Wednesday and Friday for sixty minutes of weight training and a half hour of aqua running.
Plus walking the two eighty-pound. dogs four times a day. Six a.m., 10 a.m., 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
He was fit when he got sick.
This is why we worked so hard, I told him. So we can fight when the time came.
It’s time.
Nike launched their controversial LD-1000 during a halcyonic period in Swoosh history where they were signing athletes and coming up with fresh innovations. Their latest, which debuted to the world in 1977, was the LD-1000 and was beyond anything seen before in the sneaker industry. In today’s day and age, it doesn’t seem like much, but back in the 70s, a dramatically flared heel that resembled a water ski was way ahead of its time.
Phil Knight, Nike co-founder, remembered the model and concept in his memoir Shoe Dog: ‘The theory was that a flared heel would lessen torque on the leg and reduce pressure on the knee, thus lowering the risk of tendinitis and other running-related maladies’. The LD-1000 was designed by Bowerman with heavy input from Nike’s in-house podiatrist, and runners took to the innovative product straight away. While the new sneaker was made in good spirit, it turns out the flared heel had devastating consequences for runners.
Knight recalls ‘if a runner didn’t land just right, the flared heel could cause pronation, knee problems, or worse’.
Nike had to issue a recall for their LD-1000 shortly after discovering this pitfall and braced themselves for public backlash. Luckily, that never came, and runners were actually grateful for their efforts in attempting innovative new concepts. Back in those days, Nike was more willing to venture outside the norm, trying progressive concepts that sought to improve an athlete’s experience. It was a different time, especially for footwear brands that weren’t looking to push the envelope on what a running shoe cloud be.
Source: sneakerfreaker.com
I didn’t land just right.
Welch recalls – having recently been asked so many times – how did your knee get that way, do you think?
Wait a minute. My miracle last marathon forever PR was run on one leg. That’s part of the legend. I have a plaque.
Just remembered. As The World’s Slowest Professional Runner, and something of an early adopter of sports technology, I was often provided with the latest gear from the likes of Wally Larsen at Adidas and Geoff Hollister of Nike. Never mixing brands, of course.
Oft injured but never “fatally” until I came across the LD-1000. It’s all coming back to me now. What I was told at the time by a slew of experts, the LD-1000 would – during the course of thousands of repetitive foot strikes – find your lower body’s weakest link. And – I paraphrase here – it will fuck it up.
Anyway, I went to work for Nike and Dr. Stan James moved my left knee cap a little.
Nearly a half century later, the LD-1000 is a time capsule of pain.
Basically crippled all summer long, I battled surprising pain, all the while thinking, hey, can’t be as bad as Roger’s. God, no, you know it can’t be.
That’s how I kept the pain at bay all summer long – not as bad as Roger.
Never told him how much I hurt. Neal got old, I should have told him. He would have laughed.
I made him laugh a lot.
Oh, my God, not another hurricane. No, I am not gonna evacuate; it’s all I can do to make it to the bathroom.
“Sorry sorry sorry.” Our other motto.
1981. When I got to Murray Boulevard, I could still run. Five or six miles, lickety-split. But all that selling and partying interferes with adequate marathon preparation.
We’d train together side-by-side at lunch every work day. Five or six miles around Beaverton. Roger claimed to have been a fullback at one time and he had the body for it. A couple hundred pounds, maybe six feet tall.
Coming back to 3900, across the street from K-Mart, we might have a discussion about picking up the pace. Or not. To see who got there first. Usually, I asked the question. He couldn’t stay with me if I went from distance and I had no chance if it came down to a sprint.
At Nike, turns out I was the sprinter and Roger went long.
Roger Tragesser hired on with Nike in July 1981. Started as an attorney in Human Resources.
Remember the first time I saw him. Roger was replacing a complete asshole as HR Director and he was being toured – by said asshole – through the executive floor. When he came to my door – a corner office across from the president – cursory introductions were followed down the hall with, “Don’t bother with Welch.”
I knew then you were somebody I wanted to get to know, Roger told me the next day.
Director of HR. 1982-83. His major achievement was assuring my gorgeous secretary advanced to a better position with a different company entirely. She was something else.
Assistant Director of Apparel Sales. One of his people became President of Brooks Shoes and another went on to lead Rogue Brewery. That’s who I ran with.
Memphis GM – oversaw renovation of Footwear Facility and building of Apparel Facility. I showed up there in 1992 with a five-foot redhead, a seventeen-foot camper van and one-hundred-pound Andy The Dog. And I had the flu real bad. Stayed a week.
European Consolidation of Business and built Customer Service & Distribution in Laakdal, Belgium
Nine months in Hong Kong as Operations Director before Asia Pacific offices were shut down.
Back to Europe and retired in 1999.
Somewhere somehow, he became a logistics guru.
Tragesser also likes the idea of having people in the process. “We didn’t want a system whereby people didn’t have to think,” he says. “Everyone should strive to make jobs easier for workers but we also need their heads, minds, and hearts involved in the process. Technology should help you be more efficient, but not supplant what an intelligent human being can do.”
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Nike+Europe%3A+a+front+runner+in+distribution+operations.-a017854403
An intelligent human being wouldn’t have married that woman.
Roger was the Best Man at my second wedding. Y2K made me do it. March 2000. Midway through the worst ten years of my life. Another novel I’m not writing. Somehow thought she wouldn’t be crazy if I put a ring on it.
Who’s crazy now? Eventually cost me five years and $75,000.00 US.
Roger bought all the booze and refreshments for the nuptial event. Many smiles were had by all, except the new in-laws. Fundamentalist crackers, but not in a good way.
Didn’t again see Roger in the flesh until May 2014, when I dropped into his custom-designed retirement home in Bend on my When Running Was Young & So Were We tour of the Pacific Northwest. Remember I almost got cold-cocked by an obese gas station attendant as I was about to fuel my vehicle.
I remember Roger cooked thick steaks just right and there was a stack of books with a Bible at its peak. Told him how I kneed the red-faced maniac in the balls before he could explain the law to me.
Like our old Nike motto – “Ready! Fire! Aim!”
We laughed.
I feel so helpless. So I sent him that card.
July 12 We were reminiscing. Remember how I was habitually tardy and you took off once without me. Just to teach me a lesson.
“I don’t remember that. I remember I liked you right away because of your intelligence and sense of humor.”
I liked you because of your opinion of me. Ha!
July 29 “Cancer is winning today. To be expected I guess.”
October 6. Wrote the Tragessers a letter and didn’t copy Roger.
Keep thinking about how to talk about living and not living and hospice. And friends in need of consoling and I maybe mostly mean me. If I could hug him, I think we would both feel better.
I am more afraid of what he’s been going through these last too many months than I am afraid of death. I think. Also think no one of us knows until the question becomes factually relevant.
Few people I know have gotten more out of life than Roger.
And now I don’t know what to say to him.
Because I would say, “Let go. Declare victory. Remember those brilliant moments. Stop the pain.’
Not sure that’s what is right.
One of your best friends is on his last legs and it is is your job to cheer him up, maybe you’d have trouble finding the right words, right? Me, too. And Neal must have thought I was taking too long, sitting in my chair at my writing desk with my leg tucked just so as I have done for so many hours over the years when he blew up for THE THIRD TIME!!!
Not like it becomes a more joyful experience each time. More pain, less mobility. leave it at that. Fuck you, Neal!
Roger has it worse. I tell myself. I can’t imagine. And try not to.
Mentioned Roger anonymously in some writing a couple years ago. Photos don’t do Roger justice, he exuded male pulchritude. (He’d laugh.) Aging happens daily but often somehow manages to show up all at once. He was having one of those days.
I have an older buddy who is the epitome of health and handsomeness, well-tended in his early eighties. True story. My wife met him when he was seventy and she actually swooned.
Today he glances around his town and he feels like fossilized crap about his looks.
I peer around my part of the woods and I feel great about myself.
Told him the truth – he looks MARVELOUS. Still swoon-worthy. He just moved to the wrong town.
He moved to the popular and trendy Bend, Oregon, where professional athletes go after they retire at age forty. Still buff and ruddily vigorous.
In rural Florida, where Medicare cowboys roam, if you are not fat and not bald, you are what they call, forgive me for saying, ladies, ‘man-candy.’
In rural Florida, even in his early eighties, wouldn’t have been safe for Roger to leave the house.
I should know. Ha!
Cancer doesn’t care how beautiful you are or how fast you ran a marathon. Or how much money you have or who you are related to. Cancer is a bitch. It’s a C-word, for sure.
August 16 TGIF! Hope you are feeling better. Any plans for today?
“Survive cancer.”
I have faith in you.
September 9 was the last text I received from Roger.
But I continued to text him.
September 16 Happy Monday! Hope you had a better weekend. Pray you have a positive day. Life is good.
Oct. 9 I am using a cane and a walker, awaiting a Cat. 5 hurricane but thinking of you. Life is good.
Oct. 11 0710. It is done. You are gone. See you on the other side.
At first, we talked about winning his final race – “cancer is winning” – and the pain just got worse and more worse even.
So, we talked about surviving – Keep the streak going, you survived great yesterday – so just do it today.
Then silence. Nothing but silence from my old friend. Surviving keeps you busy.
I got the news the way I’d been getting the news for most of a month, from his wife. I am never asking him, how long you got? His bride of many decades, a bit of an angel, continued to keep me informed. Sad sad info. Sorry sorry sorry.
He’s gone.
Relief, for lack of a better word, washed out of me in honest tears of loss. At least he doesn’t hurt any more.
November 19. Today would have been Roger Tragesser’s birthday. He’d be eighty-six and I would have sent him a text.
Sorry sorry sorry about the Yankees’ loss and sorry sorry sorry about Trump’s win & that cancer scare but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Still November 19. 5:45 pm. I am scheduled for a prostate MRI. The second enema is supposed to be taken two to three hours before the procedure and it is a ninety-minute trip. Thinking I should bring an extra pair of pants.
Biopsy to follow. Life goes on and it is good. Except for my knee. Except for Neal. (Don’t touch that leg!) Normally, I might complain to Roger. Tell him how the LD-1000 is entirely to blame. He’d laugh.
Some old men talk to themselves because they outlive all their confidants.
Silence – all that’s left – and memories of an old friend.
A good man.
