The Warnings We Don’t Get to Ignore

The Warnings We Don’t Get to Ignore

By Jim Turner

 There are some lessons this life teaches you gently.

Others it teaches with a knife.

My father died from metastatic melanoma four years ago.

 By the time they found it, the fight was already lost. No heroics. No second chances. Just the slow realization that something quiet had been working its way through him while life went on as usual.

I wish I could say I learned the lesson then.

Instead, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade under exam lights myself. Basal cell. Squamous cell. Enough skin cancers removed that the number stopped surprising me. Four MOHS surgeries. More blue lights and scalpels than I ever planned on earning.

No melanoma, for now. I know how lucky that makes me.

This isn’t a confession. And it isn’t a plea for sympathy.

It’s a warning.

Because offshore culture has always had blind spots.

Ron Hamlin used to talk about one of them. He said he wanted to sit down with young captains and mates and talk honestly about the dangers of drink and drugs in this business. About the way excess hides behind long days and the myth that toughness makes you immune.

He died before he got the chance.

Warnings don’t disappear when the men who carry them are gone. They wait.

Sun exposure is another blind spot. A quiet one.

We live in it. We work in it. We measure good days by how much of it we get. Long runs. Open bridges. Towers. Decks that bake from sunup to sundown. You tell yourself it’s just part of the job. Part of the life.

 Later is where cancer lives.

This business rewards endurance. It celebrates the man who stays out longer, runs harder, pushes through. That mindset builds great captains. It can also bury them if nobody ever tells them where the real danger is.

This isn’t fear. It’s respect.

Respect for the men who didn’t get another season.

Respect for the fathers who didn’t get to grow old.

Respect for your own future self.

Wear sunscreen. Wear a hat. Cover up when you can. Get checked regularly. Not when something hurts. Not when it’s convenient. Before it’s too late.

Toughness isn’t ignoring risk.

Toughness is acknowledging it and staying alive anyway.

Ron wanted to give that warning.

My father never got the chance.

So this one’s on me.

Take care of yourselves.

The Brotherhood needs you here.