Goodbye Friend

Sad news was delivered Saturday when I found that my fraternity brother and college suite-mate had late stage lung cancer and after showing improvement in November had taken a turn for the worst. By that evening, I received an email that he had passed away.

Shady Kanfi, a Canadian, was a lifelong Montreal Canadians fan. Together with me, as a Bruins fan, we had a fun rivalry. Shady was smart and quick witted. He entered Babson a year after I did, but was part of my graduating class, finishing in three years.

My junior year, we (and two others) traveled on Spring Break to California. All we had were plane tickets and a rent-a-car. We traveled between Los Angeles and San Diego (and a quick jaunt to Tijuana) staying at local chapters of our fraternity. We housed at UCLA, Cal State Long Beach and San Diego State University. It was a terrific trip. By senior year, Shady had enough credits to be considered a Senior and with four other fraternity brothers we secured one of the coveted on-campus suites. It was an excellent year.

After college, Shady went back to Canada, and I to New York. After a couple of years, his email changed, and without things such as Facebook and Blogs, most of us lost touch with him.

In 2005, I had a blog that gave updates from some of our college fraternity brothers. I made this post:

See kids, watching a lot of TV can be useful:

Although Shady has failed to provide me his own update, I feel I know quite a bit more about him now. My wife, who is addicted to home make0ver shows, was watching TLC's Trading Spaces and I the Red Sox game on the nearby computer. Finally, after listening to babble of which colors to pick and what fabric matches, I finally get a glimpse of the "contestants" or
"home-owners." I lean over to my wife, and ask, "what is that guy's name?"

"Doug?" she replies citing one of the hosts. "No, the guy standing next to him..."

"Shady."

"Holy s***. I know him."

So, needless to say, I watched the rest of the show.

Shady, at the time of the show's taping, had been married for about 1 1/2 years to a woman he met through a friend at a New Year's Eve party. They had, again at the time of the taping whenever the hell that was, recently bought their first house (5 weeks prior).

The little Cannuck looks about the same, but for some hair moving from his head to his face.

Check your local listings....

I received the following reply comment:

Frankly I think you're being a little harsh on Shady. I think it shows great consideration on his part to have gone through the trouble of getting on American TV in order to update his friends in the US about what he's been up to lately.

Given that Shady has missed watching the Bruins lose to their Northern neighbours for quite some time, it is only reasonable to expect that he might have been a little too upset to stay in touch using regular means.

By the way, I caught the show in question and found your friend from college and his wife to be quite witty and charming. And what a wonderful house they have! Surely they must be leading a charmed and wonderful life.

- A completely unrelated and anonymous person

With the emergence of Facebook, we were able to trade jabs about the Bruins and Canadians yet again.

He went silent of late, and I often wondered why. I got news Saturday during dinner that, Shady "was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in May of this year. He initially responded amazing well to an experimental drug, but that only lasted a few months. Around late summer he began to feel worse, and his oncologist switched him to another medication. Shady wrote that he began to feel better in early November, but has now taken a very serious turn for the worse." Our friend, Dan, was on his way to his hospital bedside. However, Dan didn't make it there in time. "I'm sorry to say that Shady passed away shortly before we arrived in Montreal this evening."

Shady was a great person. I don't know anyone that wasn't taken by his wit and charm. He was no dummy. I mentioned he graduated Babson in 3 years. He went on to get a Masters in International Relations from John Hopkins. If that wasn't enough, he was in the middle of getting his Ph.D. from McGill University, which expected to complete in 2012. He was truly leading a "a charmed and wonderful life." Unfortunately, this terrible disease ended it far too quickly - 8 days prior to his 40th birthday. Shady leaves a wife and two children, including a daughter that was born only months ago. Very sad.

I'll miss you buddy. Rest in peace. Go Habs.