Cancer took my friend

I needed an assistant, essentially someone to be my right-hand with a good knowledge of the music industry, as I was running a compact disc mail-order company in France that I had founded in 1987.

When he arrived and came into my office, the first thing he said was, “Wow, that’s a great bike!” as he looked at my MTB next to my desk. I had cycled to work on my GT Xizang titanium mountain bike, a rare bike in those days, especially in France.

The job interview lasted about 30 minutes, and then we talked about biking; like me, he was an avid mountain biker and an avid music lover.

Obviously, I gave him the job

Yoyo, like me, was more than just a keen music lover, though we had completely different tastes — me, English music, mostly from the 70s onwards: Bowie, U2, Floyd, Genesis, pop. He, French rock and reggae, Bob Marley, etc. So we were never on the same page about music. But we enjoyed discussing it together, either at work or over a beer.

Politics between us was like the music. He was leftish and very much into ecology; I'm definitely to the right and only a little into ecology. Strangely, in France, you seem to have to be left-wing to be an ecologist. Why do you have to be left to be an ecologist?

We rode together often, meeting in the mornings on the way to work and leaving together as we both lived in the same direction.

Often on Sundays, we’d meet with other biking friends, and even a couple of times we did the Roc d’Azur or other organised MTB rides, such as the Gamel Trophy, again together and with other friends.

I remember :
We were riding, and I was slightly ahead of him. He was going to take a quicker entry to a path when I saw a barbed wire stretched across it.
“Stop, Yoyo!” I yelled.
He didn’t think and slammed on his brakes, stopping just at the wire, going over the bars and wire, a perfect OTB, luckily landing on his feet. Brilliant… almost funny.

I remember :
Every year, I organised for all my employees and their wives or husbands, a weekend away, always in a different country.
Spain: “Mucho facilo l’Espainilo,” Yoyo would say.
Ireland: in the pub, “Oh yeah!” says he, completely drunk and trying to speak English.

Many, many good times and great memories

 
He worked for me for about fifteen years, until my company closed down after thirty years in 2017.

I was lucky, as I was able to take my retirement straight away, being bang on 60 years old. And a little lucky too, as almost one year later, I broke my ankle and totally lost my hearing due to that accident.

Around the same time, Yoyo announced that he had pancreatic cancer. He’d had a couple of stomach problems years earlier, and cancer ran in his family. He’d lost his father to it as well.

Holy shit, what bad news. I'm now deaf, and he with cancer, and with a cancer that one rarely beats.

Almost a year went by. Sadly, I didn’t see him much. I was in and out of the hospital, having tests and finally getting a cochlear implant in my right ear.

Eventually, I learned that he’d been moved into a palliative care ward, which means you don’t come out alive.

I finally picked up the courage to go and see him. It’s so hard to do that. This, for me, is the worst part of my story, and why I felt the need to write it down.

I knew his room number, so after knocking on the door, I entered, only to see an old man I didn’t recognise in bed. I excused myself and left. A nurse asked who I was looking for, and I answered, “Yoyo.”
“That’s his room,” she said. So back in I went.

He had changed so much. He was about 52 years old but looked 95. I made a stupid joke, saying, “You’ve cut your hair — sorry, I didn’t recognise you.” I was so ashamed.

We spent maybe ten minutes talking, and then his doctor came, so I left, saying I’d come again soon.
 
I regret so much that day, not seeing him more and earlier, and seeing him like that.

He was my employee. 
He was a great biking partner — him on my old GT Xizang, as he had bought it from me. Me on a Rocky Mountain. 
He was a great music lover like me, and we always enjoyed talking about music, even seeing some concerts together, especially when we were at the MIDEM together
Above all, he was a very good friend.

I’ve written this six years later. I have had a few friends die, and some of cancer.
But Yoyo, I miss. I still ride my MTB, very often on the same paths and routes that we rode together, which reminds me of him and us together.
 
He was a good friend whom I find difficult to forget