Letter to the Editor: Stu Story #4, Live Like You Were Dying

[Wandering Eyes]

Over 20 years ago, when my wife Jacqueline and I first started dating, she gave me Tim McGraw's new CD, “Live Like You Were Dying.” In my mid-forties then, I wasn't able to wrap my mind around or put my heart into that concept. I'd not been around anyone who lived like they were dying, when they were dying. Now I have.

Stuart Angus never allowed cancer to come between him and his life. If you didn't know Stuart had Stage Four cancer for the past five years, you wouldn't have known he was even sick, period. Stu was more apt to have such a good time while being diagnosed and treated that he would bring some level of joy into the medical community.

Josie Mattmiller had taken Stu one early morning to St. Joseph East for a biopsy procedure. As planned, I went to spell Josie while the procedure was going on and wait just in case they released Stu. Well, they didn't before Josie returned and we waited together, for several hours. We were told that the procedure caused Stu a great deal of discomfort and that he was doing well and to proceed to a staging area before he would be released.

We did as we were told and turned right after going through a second set of doors, we heard Stuart chatting away! Josie and I were standing in the middle of six to eight beds separated by curtains and we knew which room Stu was in from the chatter. He heard the two of us, pulled the curtain back, while still in the bed, and whispered loudly, “JoJo, Finny! What's going on!?!”

“Just checking on you, are you OK?”

“Yeah, I'm good! Hey Finn, do you have a hundred on you!?!”

“I've got some money; not sure I've got a hundred,” I said with a smile.

“I'd like to give it to the nurse!”

We whispered, “Stuey, you're in a hospital, not a bar!”

“I know! She's just taken such good care of me,” he quipped with that twinkle in his eye.

I was blessed to have looked at countless horses with Stu, to go to all the races we could go to with each other–Rob, Josie and others. We worked the same horse sales, ate meals together (and if I wasn't eating with Stu, he was sending me pictures and videos of the food he was eating, oftentimes at his son Drew's with his wife Alexa, and then their first foster child, Stuart's pride and joy), and had some very beautiful conversations. Drew recently emailed many of his dad's friends and within the email wrote that his dad was “off to sit with The Lord.” Based on some of my conversations with Stu, I know that to be true.

The Sunday before the Wednesday Stuart Angus completed his stay here, I stopped by his home to visit. We were watching the Saratoga card and Stu asked, “Do you want some soup?”

“Well, if you want some, let's get some,” I replied.

“What kinda soup is around here?” Stu asked, and then I knew he had something in mind. He continued, “Brewster's has good chicken noodle soup but I don't want chicken noodle soup,” I shrugged, he continued, “I wonder what kinda soup they have at J Al's?” I looked at him. And with that twinkle in his eye, Stu said, “They've got really good potato soup at Shamrocks, and we can watch the races, too!” Like Napoleon went onto Elba Island, I followed Stu over to and into Shamrock's, where he was greeted and treated like the great man he was.

Last Friday night, a little after 7:00, I finished going through Keeneland's Book 4 and walked out of my second-story Midway office onto its back porch. A slight circular breeze began and quietly blew around me and it continued. I got goose bumps and could almost see that twinkle in Stuart Angus's eye. My Brother, the horseman, who showed me how to Live Like You Were Dying.

Editor's note: Stuart Angus, a Senior Thoroughbred Advisor for Taylor Made, passed away Aug. 28 at the age of 60. His friends are encouraging those he touched to submit `Stu stories' to the TDN. Please email suefinley@thetdn.com if you have a story to share. 

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