Fat (17 page)

     Postponing for more time in paradise is a terrific consolation.  Xander’s laissez-faire attitude about his diabetes is just giving Kate and I opportunity to stay in Maui longer.  Our guest list was shrinking with every delay, but no matter to us.  Xander was the reason we got to Maui in the first place.

     After Albert died, Kate got despondent.  Xander told me that she didn’t leave her bedroom for a month.  But somehow, he got her to leave the house by enticing her with golf, a game their whole family used to play together when he was a kid.  Xander’s golf days were long over, as he hasn’t been able to coil a golf club around his body since cracking four hundred pounds soon after our couple holes together at the club, but he started riding in a cart while Kate walked eighteen.  Kate’s mood started to lighten while walking fairways and greens.  And Xander started inviting me to join their twosome.  Eighteen holes once a week meant spending a few hours together once a week.  That soon became playing eighteen a few times a week, which became post-round dinners a few times a week, became dinner and a movie on weekends, and became spending nights in with just me and Kate.  That first night I spent overnight with Kate, Xander was there the next morning in the kitchen, dropping off a vase of fresh flowers for Kate’s dining room table, like he did every day since Albert died, and just quipped to me with a grin, “Hey, step-dad.”  And he was right; I asked Kate if I could become Xander’s step-dad a couple months later.

     The Maui wedding was all Xander too.  He was going to pay for our wedding and make it a five star affair.  Kate and I fought him on it – we were both well enough along to pay for it ourselves – but Xander insisted, and said it would be his wedding present to us.  So here we were in a Honeymoon Suite at the Four Seasons and Xander was putzing around in a 12x8 hospital room.  He didn’t seem to be doing much to change that situation, though.           

     The nurse started noticing Xander was getting overly winded when he got up to go to the bathroom.  Initially, no one thought anything of it – someone weighing four-fifty was not going to impress with physical endurance.  But, it started to get worse, where he started looking sweaty and pale, as if he just ran a marathon, after going to urinate.  The doctor eventually ordered an echocardiogram.  His heart was less squeezing than just jiggling in his chest.  Xander had heart failure.  He was struggling to pump out enough oxygen-rich blood to meet the demands of his mass and vital organs.  What he needed was an elephant heart pumping in his chest.

     His health had been going downhill for the past few years before this latest finding, especially in the last few months, but he hated going to the doctor and he hated taking medicine, so he just toughed out his fatigue and general malaise regardless of anyone’s urging to go take care of himself better.  That sentiment had been echoed by too many for so long that it was white noise to him.  He was a grown man, after all, able to decide for himself whether to take his insulin and Metformin everyday instead of spending every waking minute on the couch watching every season of
Lost
back-to-back whilst downing two entire XXL cheese pizzas in one sitting.  Now this grown man is stuck sickly on this island.

     Xander fast deteriorated.  His sugars got harder to control and the doctors were having a hard time finding the right cocktail of medications to get his heart pumping better.  Then he had a heart attack – a full coronary artery blowout at age forty-two.  He got intubated, which took the head of anesthesia ten attempts due to Xander’s obstructive neck fat.  Machines took over the basic human functions that define life and turned him into a mass whose only ability was to produce urine and stool. He even had to get fed through a central line, getting his vitamins and calories from a yellowish slurry one drip at a time.  This was how he was going to go, without even his greatest love.    

     The level of love Xander had for food was awesome.  He passed on women, happiness and health – passed on life – to be with food.  Food was the mistress that enticed him to lie and justify and cheat to the point of self-loathing.  Food was the selfish mistress that only wanted Xander to herself, so she slowly fashioned him a fat man suit so he would never get other real opportunities to find or attract other loves.  Xander stayed with food as his lover even though he knew that with his level of infatuation, food would also be his executioner.  Would I be with Kate if I knew that the more I loved her, the more likely it is that she would smother me in my sleep?  Food was crazier.  Food was never sated with Xander’s love, and stalked him at every turn, constantly sending him pangs of messages that he always needed to have more.  Xander will eventually have loved food to death.  I have never loved anything as much as Xander has loved food.  Not many have. 

     Not even close.                          

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