home. When she found out, she arranged for us to travel business class.
We knew that Matt was having tests but had not heard the outcome, so I called home. I broke down on the phone when I heard the diagnosis, and when I returned to Linda, I was barely able to talk. I said something like, “It’s cancer and it’s bad.” We both just sat there and cried. We were unable to talk for a long time. Later we got up and walked aimlessly around the airport, tears falling from our faces. Linda finally asked me if we would get home in time to see Matt. I told her I didn’t know. “Numb” is the only way I can describe my feelings at the time.
Once in the air, we talked very little. We mostly held hands, and cried. I do remember talking about how good it was that Matt was in the arms of our church, with people who knew him. That was a tremendous comfort. We also read off and on from a little book we’d brought along, Now Is Eternity. We needed to hold on to something other than our fear.
Back at the hospital, Matt’s fever was spiking again. More blood was drawn, and additional morphine was administered, along with intravenous steroids. Matt mumbled, “Sure hope Dad and Mom don’t see me like this.” But a few minutes later they did. In Linda’s words:
Matt was in bed when we walked in, an IV pump in his arm. We hugged and cried and told him how glad we were to be there with him, and he said he was glad we’d come. There was little else to say. Later we went down the street to our motel room to try to get some rest. We couldn’t. Everywhere we looked, there were flowers, food, and greetings from church members and friends. We stayed up for two hours reading them, and the love they expressed overwhelmed us. But Matt’s situation kept tugging at us too. Why was this happening? We still couldn’t really believe it or take it in. Our son – our son – had cancer.
Gobbler
“Not Matt.” That was the most common reaction as the news spread. True, it might have been predictable – the word “cancer” has a way of stopping people in their tracks – but somehow, at least to those who knew him, Matt seemed an especially unlikely victim. When people thought of Matt, they thought easy-come, easy-go; they thought of his moves on the court, his loopy grin, his ability to catch every word of a song the first or second time he heard it on the radio. Hannah, a high school classmate, thought of his big mouth:
A lot of people called him Gauger, but to some of us he was always Gobbler. We called him that because he never stopped talking. He’d salivate as he talked, and wipe away the spit with his hand, and laugh, and go on blabbering. Whenever you were in a crowd, you’d always hear Matt above everybody else, talking his head off. And he was so animated. He had this crazy laugh that sent him lurching over double and slapping his knees.
Ben, another classmate, has similar memories:
I’ll never forget the time he and Zach tried to “kill” Chet and me with a blunted putty knife in the school woodshop. Or the time he locked me in the car wash and soaked me over and over. One time he even tried to wrestle our teacher. Matt fought like crazy, talked like crazy, laughed like crazy, and was a pain. He was a big, geeky kid.
He had these annoying one-liners, like: “Insert foot in mouth, then chew.” Or he’d clutch his throat with one hand and try to pull it off with the other. He had a way of walking that pushed you off the edge of the road. Yet in other ways he was the winningest.
Matt had a killer one-handed, no-arc jumper which ruled the basketball court. We called it the snakey, because his wrist kind of snapped when the ball left his hands. That fade-away jump shot from the right corner was all net all the time, and almost impossible to block. In softball, his long hard drives down the third base line were completely predictable, but damaging.
Matt made friends in high school long before most of us knew where the bathrooms were. Guys liked him because friendship was more important to him than grades. He’d spend all his time in homeroom goofing around and still pull tests in the upper 90s. If not? Well, there were things more important in life.
And the girls . . . all of them liked him. I remember thinking “Gosh, what a flirt!” But it wasn’t like he ever tried to come on to someone. He was just a people person. He couldn’t have cared less who he was talking to.
Matt had tremendous drive. One time in high school he was mowing this huge hay field, and a stray dog ate his lunch while he was on the tractor. He spent fourteen hours in the sun that day without food or water, and came home in the evening looking real pale. But he got the job done. I think he got that sense of responsibility from his parents.
Matt loved his parents, by the way. He never showed any signs of embarrassment over them, even when we teased him about his barn chores and the other things his dad made him do – like getting up early to muck out the stalls. He’d come on the bus smelling like manure. If you didn’t like it, tough cookies.
Matt wouldn’t take abuse from anyone, but he would also be the first to stand up when someone else was disrespected. I’ll never forget how he stood up for Maya – she was the only black student on our bus – on the way home from school one day. Someone was harassing her or something, and he got up in the aisle with his fists clenched. The driver had to pull over and stop the bus.
Matt’s brother, Nick, of course, has earlier memories:
Matt and I fought a lot, though I guess siblings are always like that, and it wasn’t like something separated us. But he was a good teaser; he knew what would make me upset.
When we were little we used to play with this kid named Brody, another guy, Matt’s age, called Reid, and a girl my age, named Amy. I would tease Brody, and then everyone else would tease me. Reid and Matt would trip me or something and I’d fall. Then I’d I throw huge temper tantrums. It wasn’t funny. I’d get so angry, I’d pick up a rock or a tree branch – something from the woods – and I’d just heave it at Matt!
Other times when I got fed up with their teasing I’d run over to our tree house, where I’d stockpiled some stones, and I’d climb up and throw them at Matt as hard as I could.
But those are good memories. Even though Matt would always send me off crying because I was hurt or because he’d teased me too much, when things got really serious he was always there for me. This continued even in high school. I think I must have made a good target for people to go after or pick on, but Matt would stand up to anyone for me.
Later, Matt’s main claim to fame was his knack for getting out of a scrape – the water fight that turned into a brawl, or the time he broke a rearview mirror in a moving car. No matter how sticky the situation, he seemed able to lawyer his way out of it or disarm his challenger with a guffaw. As Megan, another classmate, puts it, “Even if he was in a tight spot, he acted as if he was in control – which often helped him get out of it. Besides, he was always so likeable. . . .”
Despite this reputation, however (or perhaps because of it) no one who knew Matt will forget the time he was really in a pinch and didn’t try to wiggle out of it. Officially, Matt and a buddy were doing their job – nighttime security. In reality, they were drinking up a storm. By morning the empties were gone, the floor mopped. But the room still reeked of vomit, and there were other telltale signs.
Confronted, Matt owned up, not only to getting drunk but also to stealing the alcohol in question from his employer. Further, he apologized at a meeting
