My Friend, Phil, Lost His Battle With Cancer

Where I am today, Phil always knew would happen. He saw what I couldn’t see.

Phil and his wife in December 2021

Days ago, I lost my friend to a tough battle with cancer. It was only weeks ago that he told me that, due to his age and the advancement, the doctors said there was nothing else they could do.

The last time I talked to him, I believe he knew it would be the last time we would speak.

I’ve heard lots of stories of people dying, and they just have a sense that it’s coming to an end. While he was a fighter, I think he knew the inevitability of his passing was coming even before the doctors told him.

I found out he passed away only hours after being on stage at a conference in Orlando this past Saturday. I received a video call while sitting in the audience from his account, which was unusual since we don’t video chat.

I called back, and it wasn’t him; it was his wife. She was distraught and told me that the man she’d been married to for over 30 years and her best friend, died two days ago. She said that he told her to reach out to me after he passed and tell me how much our friendship meant to him.

To honor his memory, I want to talk about my friend, Phil, and how we became unlikely friends.

I met Phil originally on a free speech platform shortly after the death of George Floyd. From my perspective, it seemed like our country had just flipped on its head, and new narratives were being formulated that at times made me question my sanity. Was I going crazy, or was everyone else insane?

On this forum, I would write intimately about my feelings and perspectives. Being there was a blessing for multiple reasons, but if it weren’t for that forum, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.

After a couple of long-form posts, I received several messages of encouragement stating that I should write more often: Phil was one of those people.

Our dialogue would switch from the forum to Facebook Messenger, where we would talk almost daily about anything. At first, our conversations were cultural and political banter, and then they shifted into deeper topics, like our childhoods.

I say we are unlikely friends because, on the surface, you wouldn’t think we’d ever be friends. He was in his 70s, a military veteran, and white; the complete opposite of myself. However, we not only had common viewpoints on politics, but we bonded over our childhood trauma.

We were both abandoned and lost boys, unsure of how to become strong men because we never had fathers to train us up. Phil never knew who his father was because no adult would ever tell him.

He admitted to me how he always felt less than other boys, and I knew exactly what he felt like. He stated that the only reason he joined the military was because he didn’t know what to do with his life and felt that the structure was helpful.

While the military was a positive part of his life, he would never shake that feeling of being lost in the world and lacking value. He didn’t really talk about it when he was younger. Instead, he drank alcohol to numb the pain.

At the beginning of our friendship, he would state how he had regret for his early adult years because of how alcohol messed up his relationships, especially with his children.

He knew he wasn’t a good father, and he hated that about himself. He had tremendous guilt about what he used to be and felt hopeless about what he could do to reunify with his children.

It was because of Phil that I gained empathy for flawed fathers filled with regret who lost hope due to their own internal strife. He didn’t have a father figure, a man to properly show him how to be a healthy father figure.

Instead, he was left alone to figure out how to handle his childhood wounds, and he did it the best way he knew how: through the bottle.

Despite him years later being able to stop drinking, the damage was done with his relationship with his children. The first time he told me about these intimate details, I told him that he should never give up on his children.

I explained to him that he needed to apologize for what he had done with all sincerity. I didn’t judge him because he had already done enough of that to himself. Instead, I empathized with him and restored hope in reunification.

This conversation happened in 2020, and earlier this year, when I inquired about how everything was with his children, he let me know that two of his children were back in his life.

From the very beginning, Phil always believed in me and encouraged me to keep writing and speaking the truth. Not many people know this, but when I wrote my first book, only a handful of people knew about it.

Phil was one of those people, as I would periodically send him pages of the book as I was writing it. He would be blown away and tell me how I needed to hurry and finish so the world could read my words.

He was so impactful for me during that time that I wrote about our friendship in my first book, “Black Victim To Black Victor.”

If I’m honest, I had no real expectations of the book going anywhere. I thought my Facebook friends, some family, and maybe 10 strangers who discovered it somewhere would be interested in reading my book out of pure curiosity.

Where I am today, Phil always knew would happen. He saw what I couldn’t see. Over the five years of knowing each other, Phil would periodically send me messages giving me congratulations and telling me how he was proud of me. He would see my television appearance or read an article in the New York Post and make it known that he knew I would be here.

As an abandoned kid, you grow up wondering if anyone cares about you. It’s the low self-esteem part of me that would question if I’m of value and if anyone believes in my capabilities.

So, it means a lot to me when people believe in me. Phil wanted nothing but the best for me, and I felt the same for him. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but he grew as a man after we became friends.

We met at a tumultuous time in American history, and he’s told me on a couple of occasions that I kept him from going down a more ideologically radical road. I loved him too much to let him fall down the rabbit hole.

Usually, I don’t expect to meet my online friends, but when he found out that I was giving a speech in a neighboring state, he drove down with his lovely wife of over 30 years to meet me in person for the first time.

I wish I had gotten to spend more time with him, but I feel blessed to have met him at all.

Since finding out about his passing, it’s been difficult. I am sad but happy that he’s no longer suffering because he’s with the Lord now. On my plane ride home, I stared out the window, looking at the clouds, and I couldn’t stop crying as I was thinking about him.

Whenever someone close to me passes, I always think about the totality of life. It realigns my purpose and makes me even more thankful for the time I have here with people that I care about.

Phil knew I would change the world even when I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to. And to change the world, all you have to do is impact at least one person, and that positivity will ripple throughout the world in ways you’ll never see.

While at this conference, I spoke with a young man who was hesitant about reunifying with his father, who was regretfully not in his life. I told him to give his father grace and start a new relationship with him because that’s what I would do if my father were alive.

The next day, the young man told me via social media that he agreed to meet with his father, which his father was extremely pleased to hear.

It was shortly after this conversation that I found out about Phil’s passing. I like to think that Phil was there with me while helping this young man come back together with his father.

I already know that I made him proud, and when times get difficult, I’ll remind myself of Phil’s words of encouragement in the darkest of times.

Rest in Peace, my dear friend, Phillip Bannister. May the Lord be with you.