On My Mind: My friend 'Paddy'

On My Mind: My friend 'Paddy'
By Rick Spruill/Special to the Independent-Mail
March 28, 2008

Patrick Thompson crammed a lot of living into 33 years.

He was a brother, a son, husband and a father. He was an artist, a sculptor, an athlete, a salesman, a minister, a motivational speaker, a camp counselor and a businessman. He ran with the Olympic torch through downtown Dallas, and served sandwiches to shut-ins. He played college football, pledged a fraternity and graduated from Baylor University.

And he did all those things with a body riddled with cancer. For 23 years, he battled the disease with courage, determination and an insurmountable will to live a normal life, in spite of the obstacles.

“Paddy” laughed through it all. Through the stress of watching money disappear in an avalanche of medical bills. Through thousands of hours of tests and operations and sleepless, pain-filled nights. Through the searing pain of living with tumors in his kidney, brain, intestines, lungs and jaw, eye, liver, bones and finally his spinal cord. And through it all, Patrick never stopped. He never closed down, never lost faith.

I met Patrick in the spring of my sophomore year in a Texas high school, on the baseball field. He was a year younger. Our first exchange involved a good bit of trash-talking while our coach, a man who used a fungo the way some men use a rifle, fired ground balls, short hops and line drives toward us, one after another. I was the starting second baseman on the varsity team. Patrick, a freshman, was my back-up. I did not like him. I wanted to make sure he knew that I was the starter and he was the benchwarmer. Looking back, I wish I had been a little less competitive, a little more gracious. Because what I didn’t know then was that Patrick, always quick with a verbal quip, was simply sizing me up.

Over the next 20 years, I came to see that there was absolutely nothing about Patrick that belonged on the bench. He was first string, through and through.

When we went off to college, Patrick and I lost touch. Through mutual friends, I would hear about Paddy and how he was faring. His mom and mine got together to pray and swap stories, on a regular basis. So I heard about things as they happened. The shattered fibula he suffered while playing intramural football, the bone made brittle by an unseen tumor. The night he blacked out after a football game, blood pouring from his nose. And how, at the hospital a few days later, the doctors told him that full-contact football was potentially fatal, that the tumors in his jaw and face would not sustain a direct hit. But Paddy, ever the go-getter, told the trainers to build a custom face mask to protect his jaw, while he taught himself — a lineman for his first three seasons — how to kick field goals.

Most people, when faced with death, would be quick to walk away from something as small as school football. Not Patrick. Some would call it foolhardy. Perhaps it was. Either way, I know why Patrick did it. As a matter of fact, I know why Patrick did most things — including living into his 30s, when the prognosis had been that he wouldn’t make it much beyond 12.
He kicked ugly, clumsy field goals and wore a goofy-looking facemask, simply to stay on the team. He did it because someone, or something, said he could not. With a spirit that would have made Winston Churchill proud, he was never, ever, ever, ever going to quit.

As life took its normal twists and turns, and the sunny slopes of collegiate life gave way to the searing glare of responsibilities and career choices, I found myself, once again, sharing a little bit of life with my old friend Patrick. We attended the same church, and frequently bumped into one another there. Other times we would kick back a couple of adult beverages together at any number of watering holes around town. But eventually, it was spiritual pursuits that brought Patrick and me closer together. As we grew a bit older, and the lure of bar-crawling lost its luster, Paddy and I came to be a part of a small group of guys who met regularly to pray, study the scriptures and, for the most part, spur one another on.
It was in this environment that a different relationship was born. We started thinking in terms of tomorrow, instead of the moment. Our desire to sample German beer gave way to weekends spent dove and deer hunting.

Patrick was famous for his ability to hit a grapefruit-sized dove flying 45 mph, 75 feet directly overhead, while sitting down and firing from the hip — and yet, he could miss a deer the size of a small cow standing stone-still 20 yards away, with a clear line of sight and all the time in the world to take the shot. As a result, he left many a shirttail tacked to the wall of the hunting cabin commemorating each miss, and many a laugh lingering in the rooms.

Through all of those times, and thousands more just like them, Patrick moved in and out of hospital rooms and operating tables. His life was marked by periods of extreme sickness and pain, each one an omen of the next. And yet, in spite of it all, Patrick was unflappably Patrick. Never fully reverent, he was, without a doubt, one of the funniest men I have ever known.

His ability to get into, and then out of, trouble was legendary. His practical jokes bordered on the sublime. He was a natural leader, with a friendly nature. He was a man’s man, and a wonderful dichotomy. Full of laughter, yet at times wracked with pain. Brimming with a zest for life while standing, quite literally, in the shadow of death. He was so alive, and yet so sick. So full of hope — and heartache.
I was proud to have him stand with me on a hill overlooking Hartwell Lake, at my wedding. For the most part, I am simply proud of Patrick. Not so much for how he died, but more for how he lived. For 33 years, he pulled the marrow out of every moment he was given, and he shared it with the rest of us.
I was not there during his last few weeks, as Patrick went through those final shudders, his spirit shaking free of its cancerous prison. I remember the phone call from Texas, and the voice of an old friend, and the words I knew were going to come. And I could not say what I felt as I buried my head in my wife’s shoulder, and wept.
It has been a little over a year and a half since Patrick passed away. But he is always near in thought, or a fleeting memory. He still laughs in the photos on my desk, or in stories swapped among old friends. I miss my friend, and wish it did not have to end so soon. Youth is such a hard thing to bury. It is an amputation of life. Abrupt and unnatural. And yet, I know I will see my friend again. The power to resurrect is, after all, the power to reunite. And I still carry a lot of Patrick with me.
Because of him, I worry less and try to laugh more. Having seen him there, the I.V. lines tracing their paths in and among his veins, getting tangled among the hospital sheets, I realized that some things do not, and should not matter as much as we think, or hope, they do. Patrick understood this, and he acted on it.
I can remember watching him go from room to room of the children’s wing of the hospital, dispensing “Paddy-Grams” to the kids who, like him, were fighting for their lives.
“Just thought they’d like a piece of candy from a real clown,” he’d say.

I remember that awful, wheezing Bronco, belching bruise-colored toxicity from a poorly-tuned engine, and I realize that the make and model of my car doesn’t matter. What matters is how frequently I dispense a hug, or lighten a load. I think of Paddy’s hospital bills, and his dismal debt-to-income ratio, and I realize that I should work harder at being a successful dad than I do at gaining the approval of my boss.

I’m reminded that having the right address in the right neighborhood doesn’t amount, in the end, to a plugged nickel, in comparison to the value of a good name. What really matters is how often I tell my wife how much I love her, and that I cherish our life together. I suspect that if Patrick were here, what he’d want to know is how well I’m living the vows he heard me say on my wedding day. I doubt we’d spend much time discussing retirement plans or property values.

As time passes, I have come to realize that Patrick’s eulogy didn’t end when they lowered his casket into the ground and replaced the sod over it. On the contrary: That’s when it truly began. I see now that Patrick’s eulogy is my life, and the lives of thousands of others he touched and changed. And how I live my life is, in part, a reflection of him.
So, as you read this, please honor that thought, and then act on it. Especially if there is a Patrick, living or gone, in your life.

Rick Spruill, a 36-year-old Texas transplant married to a Carolina girl, lives in Anderson. Every week he waxes lyrical on his blog, “Take it Like a Man,” which you can find at www.independentmail.com. His friend, Patrick Sammons Thompson, will always be one of his greatest heroes.