Thomas G. Souza, 67.

The three amigos -- from left, Tom Souza, Mark Farinella, Alex Salachi.

I lost a friend this week. And even though I have spent the last half-century or so expressing myself through the written word, it's difficult to find the precise language to express how I feel.

After all, there is a certain inevitability to death. We all die. The time and place are rarely of our own choosing, nor are the circumstances, but the realization of its finality may be the hardest thing of all to accept. And so it is that I cannot believe that I will never see Tom Souza again.

Thomas G. Souza.

Thomas Gerard Souza was a little more than month younger than I, having been born on Feb. 22, 1954. We became friends sometime in our early teens, brought together by mutual friend Alex Salachi as we ate 99-cent pizzas from the Gloria Colombo Hall and sang our own version of karaoke -- before there really was such a thing -- to the music of the Beach Boys.

It was a merging of Mansfield cultures -- Tom lived on Pratt Street to the east, I lived on Dean Street to the west, and Alex smack dab in the middle of town on Pleasant Street. Alex and I attended different schools than Tom in our youth, but he knew Tom from his participation in youth sports, and it was only natural that the Three Amigos would be united at some point.

From those humble beginnings were forged a bond that would last a lifetime. And while adulthood, family responsibilities and careers may have extended that bond to its limits at times, it never broke -- until last week.

Cancer took Tom's life after a lengthy battle in which he truly fought the good fight. He endured multiple surgeries and rehabilitation stays, and gradually, the disease robbed him of the vitality that was the hallmark of his 67 years on this earth. But it never robbed him of his spirit. 

The last time I saw Tom, we were both undergoing physical therapy at the Foxboro facility of Brigham and Women's Hospital at Patriot Place. His challenge was far more daunting than mine; he was trying to restore his ability to walk after yet another resurgence of his cancer, while I was trying to get my balky left knee to work again after surgery performed last August. Indeed, that was to have been my last visit while it was Tom's first, brought to the facility by his oldest brother, Jack.

After our sessions were over, we chatted in the waiting area. It had been a grueling session for Tom, who, in seemingly another life, had been the quarterback of the Mansfield High School football team and then a defensive back for Dartmouth College. But the light in his eyes was still shining. His sense of humor and his wit were still intact. The confidence that made him a leader in the travel industry and then successful in television sports production later in life was still present. 

The '71 Hornets. Tom is No. 24.

It was a good day. I was lucky to have shared one of them with him.

In high school, Tom, Alex and I were thick as thieves. Alex was "The Fox." I was "The Hawk," And Tom? Well, he was known by many simply as "T" -- a one-letter brand that was synonymous with a larger-than-life personality.

T was the quarterback. Alex was the basketball star. And I was the clumsy oaf that tried and failed to keep up with my friends' athletic accomplishments, so I turned to scorekeeping and later to sports journalism to be part of the group. But it didn't matter -- my friends never ostracized me for my lack of skill between the lines.

Besides, there was an element of humility involved. We had the misfortune of donning the Green and White of Mansfield High at its lowest ebb in its athletic history, when the school was the smallest in enrollment among the members of the Hockomock League and others took great pleasure in taking us to task for past drubbings dealt by previous Hornet squads. Tom's three years as Mansfield's quarterback resulted in statistics that place him highly among others in school history, yet the one statistic that seems to matter more than it should to those that judge Tom's place in that history still stands out like a sore thumb -- no wins, 24 losses, three ties over that three-year span.

That's what happens when you're playing behind an offensive line in which the weights of three of its five members don't equal the number that Patriots' tackle Trent Brown sees when he steps on the scale.

Tom and Alex on Martha's Vineyard.

But that didn't affect the friendship. Not in the slightest. Alex, Tom and I had countless adventures in our youth, all of which provided our older selves with hours of laughter when we'd get together and tell the tales. There were midnight rides to the Cape and the sweet smell of peppermint schnapps emanating from the back seat of my '68 Plymouth Fury (which Tom had to drive), hi-jinks and escapades galore in the bars and nightclubs of Pawtucket as we searched for female companionship (only to have the ladies naturally gravitate to Tom because he was the smoothest operator of the group), and even memorable "beer runs" to Montreal. And all of these adventures ended with Tom in search of "a good cup of coffee."

But it wasn't always just mindless fun and games. 

Early in 1975, I left Northwestern University for a vacation at home, but with an extremely heavy heart. Four years earlier, I had arrived in Evanston, Ill., with my high school sweetheart, Jackie Cross, thinking that college life was just going to be the last obstacle in our path toward a life together. That lasted about eight months; Jackie found someone else and broke up with me in May 1972, and though we occasionally rekindled our relationship for short and terribly confusing periods of time over the next two years, eventually it became clear that reconciliation was not in the cards.

I struggled mightily with the loss of the woman I loved, but I did not know the news that awaited me upon my arrival home on this particular trip -- that she had become pregnant and married her husband of the next 12 years (until her death of breast cancer at the age of 36) in a small ceremony at nearby Wheaton College. Someone was going to have to break the news to me, and that job fell to Alex and Tom -- who, knowing my emotional excesses of the time, feared the worst.

Tom, Linda and Alex upon my return home.

They, and my girlfriend of the time, Linda Sarazen, were waiting at my parents' home as I completed the 1,100-mile journey. As I pulled the Fury into the driveway, and saw their cars parked nearby, I quickly put two and two together and figured that this homecoming reception would not take place without bad news awaiting me. Thus, the gathering was not overly emotional. It was actually lighthearted at times. And it surely confirmed who my real friends were -- although to this day, I regret that Linda had to participate because she entered my life at a time in which I could not fully return the affection and commitment she was willing to offer me.

Life took the "three amigos" in different directions, although never too far away from each other. 

Alex became a teacher and coach, and today he is the head librarian at Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood -- as well as my basketball and volleyball broadcast partner for North TV's telecasts of King Philip Regional High School sports.

Tom, meanwhile, became an innovative executive in the travel industry, helping Collette Tours of Pawtucket become a player on the national and international level. One of my happiest memories of his time with Collette was when he hired Alex and me to serve as tour chaperones for a bus excursion of a group of senior citizens to Montreal for New Year's Eve. Once the old folks were put to bed, and fueled by several high-octane Canadian beers, I took a memorable dip in the pool on the rooftop of the Bonaventure Hotel, emerging from the heated indoor portion into the exposed-to-the-elements half, feeling my hair suddenly freeze in place in the sub-zero night air. 

Tom eventually struck out on his own, and later in life embraced an entirely different challenge when he founded his own television production company, USA World Media. His company would provide the production equipment and talent for telecasts of small-college sports and the Cape Cod Baseball League for various networks such as NESN, Fox College Sports, NBC Sports Network and ESPNU, among others. Tom was particularly proud of his work with the Cape League, and that the sideline reporter's position for those games helped jump-start the media careers of talented individuals such as NBC's Kathryn Tappen and Megan O'Brien, a fellow Northwestern Wildcat, who until recently was a familiar face on the Patriots' in-house media presentations and now works on WWE telecasts.

And of course, my career in sportswriting took me to nine Super Bowls and also involved coverage of a World Series, the NCAA men's and women's basketball championships and a whole lot more. Alex and Tom started families, while I adopted the athletes I covered for my newspaper as "children in sport" -- an acceptable substitute for something that had been ripped out of my heart years earlier.

Tom Souza in 2009.

As time passed, my interactions with Tom lessened. It was driven home to me how long it had been in a considerably embarrassing manner; I ran into him at a high school basketball game after several years of not seeing him, and because I was not aware that his brown hair had turned fully gray, I called him by his brother Bob's name. Imagine my chagrin when he graciously corrected my mistake!

In more recent years, fortunately, we saw each other more. Alex and I would make a point of checking in with him as he supervised a Cape League telecast. He continued to work even after his initial diagnosis, and it was at one of the more recent games that I realized what a toll it was taking on his physicality. But as stated before, the spirit was still as willing as ever -- just as it was when I saw him a few months ago, trying to exercise as a harness supported him on a treadmill.

My heart is with his family -- brothers Jack, Bob and Paul, all fondly remembered by many for their athletic prowess at Mansfield High, and sister Janet, and their families. Tom met his wife, Sylvie, in Montreal, and while I was not as present as others in the lives of her and her children, Kyle and Alexandra, I want them to know that Tom was as much a brother to me as if I had been blessed with one of my own. His spirit and the grace and dignity with which he faced his last challenge will be an inspiration to me for as long as I have left on this planet.

And I hope that Tom has finally found that good cup of coffee.