Grief in the Company of Men with Cancer

I don’t know what to do with a T-shirt I bought.

It was a gift for my best friend, Ryan. I bought it when Sarah and I were on holiday in the Florida keys last November.

Ryan Vieth (left) and MUTC’s Fundraising Director, Michael Holtz (right).
Ryan won his battle with cancer on December 22nd, 2024.

Ryan died before I could give it to him, so the T-shirt remains ownerless. I can’t wear it because it’s a men’s medium and I wear a XXXL. I’ve moved the shirt from the nightstand to the bench to the shelf and back to the nightstand. One day I’ll know what to do with it. 

This is not that day.

Giving gifts is one of my love languages and I sent Ryan gifts regularly, often from my travels for work or cancer advocacy. Sending a little something in the mail — a wooden pen from Mount Vernon, a T-shirt from NASA — was a way to let him know I was thinking about him, especially when his cancer journey was hard.

In the short time that I knew him (835 days), Ryan experienced a brain metastasis that resulted in a gnarly surgery, two bouts with sepsis, a prolapsed stoma, and shitty chemo side effects. Then chemo stopped working. He was enrolled in a clinical trial that caused the lung infection that ultimately led to his death on December 22, 2024. 

Ryan and I met because of cancer, but the disease did not define our friendship. Love did.

While we lived 1,200 miles apart we were as close as two friends could be. We shared everything with each other, communicating by text, phone or regular video chats. Aside from my wife, no one knew more about me than Ryan.

When we had the opportunity to spend time together in person, we were practically inseparable. I have amazing memories of our time spent together at the Fight CRC Ambassador Weekend in 2022, the 2023 Gathering of Wolves, twice at Call on Congress, the Cologuard Classic, and Climb for a Cure in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Great conversations, lots of laughs, uncountable hugs, and copious drinking of bourbon Old Fashioneds.

I had planned to fly out to see Ryan in mid-December. We missed each other and wanted to spend time together after the respiratory infection that led to his hospitalization in November cleared up. 

Ryan was looking forward to my visit. In our last text exchange, he thanked me for the daily voice memos I had sent him over the previous two weeks. Ryan couldn’t speak but his wife, Emily, told me he needed to hear my voice, so I spoke to him. Nothing major. “Hey Sunshine,…” and I’d tell him about my day and how everyone was pulling for him. Ryan told me those messages brought him comfort, and he would have time to record some for me before I got out to Denver.

Neither of us expected he would be intubated the next day.

I flew out the day after intubation to be at Ryan’s bedside, hoping and praying he would improve and be brought out of the medically induced coma. I held his hand. I talked to him. Told him about all of the people who were thinking about and praying for him. I prayed God would give him some of my life force. He had a wife, sons and a grandson who needed him. I would have done anything for Ryan. 

I shared what was happening in The Howling Place, and the guys of Man Up to Cancer saw it. They saw us. They prayed and sent good vibes for Ryan to be sure, and this community cared for me too. 

Our friendship was important to us, and a lot of guys could see that. I got texts, calls and Facebook messages checking on me. The guys from the Colorado Chapter — especially Ken Ford, John Bradley, Brandon Martin and Jesse Dillon — checked on me or sat with Ryan. John and I cried together at the hospital, and he played a couple of voice memos I recorded for Ryan after I returned home, including the one where I said goodbye to my best friend. 

Since Ryan’s passing, the Wolfpack has been and continues to be amazingly supportive. I got to introduce a huge contingent of the Colorado Chapter to Ryan’s mom at his celebration of life, and we mourned and bonded over beers afterward.

Guys in the pack regularly check in on me (there are many but I’m especially grateful to my Canadian brothers Don Helgeson and David Keown, and to Trevor Maxwell, Joe Bullock and Charlie Henricks). Guys I know and a few I don’t have offered to give me time and space to talk about Ryan and to cry if I need it. Thanks to Charlie I got to hang out by video chat with the guys at GOFLOW retreat recently. 

We are all walking each other home, and grief is part of the journey.

I miss Ryan every day. Our friendship may have been short-lived in the construct of time, but it burned brightly. I loved him deeply and still do.

It’s customary in our culture to want to dispense with grief, to completely avoid it, or push past it, or process it as quickly as possible.

I don’t want to do that.

Man Up to Cancer is already changing the way men go through cancer— and life — by creating opportunities for emotional and social support from other men. In a culture where men are supposed to be stoic and heroic, MUTC is upending social norms.

I see the same thing is happening as we grieve the friends we lose in our group. I’m not the first member of the Wolfpack to lose his best friend, and I know I won’t be the last. 

I will be the guy talking about Ryan at the Fire of Remembrance during next year’s Gathering of Wolves.

Thing is, I love talking about Ryan. I did when he was alive too, and I’ve learned he always talked about me to his family. I don’t want to not talk about him. To paraphrase actor Andrew Garfield, “If I cry, it’s only a beautiful thing. It’s all the unexpressed love. So I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all the unexpressed love I didn’t get to tell [him].”

Like that T-shirt floating around my bedroom, I don’t always know what to do with my grief, but I know there is a safe place with safe people to whom I can express it.

I will be grateful to this community of men for that. 

Written by Michael Holtz for Man Up to Cancer.