Movember 2021
To all my friends and family. I am doing Movember again this year, yes this is a bit of a begging letter, but please take the time to read this post to the very end as the beg may be different than what you are thinking of at present.

Last year I did Movember to get involved in a charity after Erryn passed away, as a way to give a little back to the community. Erryn had Cholangiocarcinoma which is a rare cancer and as such didn’t have a community organisation raising funds to support research etc, so growing a Moustache seemed like a fun way to raise funds for a good cause. Movember organisation raises funds in support of Testicular and Prostate cancer, Men’s Mental Health and for the prevention of Suicides.

In New Zealand, 3 out of 4 suicides are men. Across the world, prostate cancer has the largest number of men living with the disease. And testicular cancer is the most common cancer among young men. That’s why I’m doing Movember this year: they’re hell-bent on changing the face of men’s health and so am I. The money I raise this Movember will help fund life-changing mental health programs, groundbreaking research and scientific breakthroughs for cancer treatments.

I don’t believe that I can do anything major in the prevention of Prostate or Testicular cancer, but I do believe that as a community it is all our responsibility to do as much as we can to prevent the alarming rate of suicides that are happening in our world.

One of the biggest regrets that I have in my life is not speaking with my mate Bruce Miller one last time. Bruce was my best mate in my late teens and early twenties, Bruce had the gift of the gab, he pushed me to do things that were outside of what I would normally do, we sung at the top of our lungs in public, danced the pogo on empty dance floors at discos, we complemented each other, he pushed me and I was his hand brake when his hair brained ideas were too over the top. We grew apart after he got married.

The last time I saw Bruce, Erryn her mum and I were driving down Pages road when we passed Bruce walking along the road, Erryn recognised him first and suggested that we go back and pick him up and drive him to where he was going. By the time we turned around, Bruce had turned up a side street, I should have guessed he was heading to his parents house and gone after him, but that was too much trouble. I heard from a mutual friend not long after this time that Bruce had committed suicide. I don’t know if talking to Bruce would have made a difference in his life but I am positive that it would have made a difference in mine. I am sure that he would have greeted me in one of two ways, the first a warm genuine smile or with a smart comment followed by a cheeky grin, he probably would have thrown in a hug as well, all would have been welcomed.