"Nick understands more than anyone else. He's in the same situation as me - 17 years old, in high school, he lost a parent … where do you go from here?

"I build on Nick as he builds on me to kind of make it through every day."

- Horlick basketball player Jamil Wilson on teammate Nick Stark

There was at least time to say goodbye before Carolyn Wilson finally lost her battle with cancer last March 31 at the way-to-young age of 43. As that sorrowful day drew ever closer, her only son, Jamil, was left to contemplate carrying on without his "best bud," however numbing that impending reality was.

There were no such goodbyes for the Stark family. Four days after Carolyn Wilson's passing, 42-year-old Greg Stark went to bed in a hotel during a business trip to Madison and didn't wake up the following morning. Stark, who suffered from sleep apnea, had died of respiratory failure during the night.

"Jamil knew the day would come when he would lose his mom and mine was just out of the blue," Nick Stark said.

You cry and you curse and you ask why as a marathon blues concert mournfully reverberates within your shaken and stirred mind. And then you cry some more until your tear ducts simply have nothing left to give.

But there is no release. Only the captivation of a loss that looms as ominously as Seattle cloud cover.

Lose a loved one and when you go home at night, the clanking of pots and pans from the kitchen has been silenced. A familiar voice has been replaced by the sound of heat from

ventilators warming the dead air. A chair at the head of the dinner table stands empty.

And there's really nothing anyone can say to you beyond the well-intentioned, yet meaningless, "Just hang in there."

Wilson understands what that feels like. So does Stark. And through these last 11 months, a casual bond between Wilson and Stark has solidified to what may just turn out to be a lifetime connection to each other. Through their respective losses, two quite different high school juniors have formed a togetherness that is mirrored in the cohesiveness of the 18-3 Horlick basketball team.

"There's obviously a situation now where they're commonly tied because of the loss," Horlick coach Jason Treutelaar said. "There's something there, but it's really hard to put a finger on it."

The 6-foot-7 Wilson, one of the most heavily recruited players in the nation, is an outgoing city kid with a penchant for smiling. The 6-5 Stark, a workmanlike forward for the Rebels who is a part-time starter, is a reserved, sensitive young man who lives near a farm in the country.

They really had very little in common until last April 4, when Nick Stark was called out of class at Horlick, told to pick up his brother at Jerstad-Agerholm and to go home immediately. When they arrived home, a cousin was waiting in the front with the devastating news.

Wilson attended Greg Stark's funeral a few days later, just as Stark was on hand for Carolyn Wilson's services. Afterward, one of the first phone calls Stark received was from Wilson, who himself was trying to come to terms with burying a beloved mother who could talk to him about anything from school to girls.

Before, they had been volleyball and basketball teammates at Horlick. But they were about to become brothers.

"The first thing I did was call him and tell him anything he needed I was there for him because I've been through it and I know what he's going through," Wilson said. "It brought us closer as friends where now I see Nick on a different level than just, 'Oh, that's Nick Stark.'

"I look at Nick now and I think 'That's a part of my family.' I know his mom real well. I call her 'mom' like she's my mom and I'm her son.

"I look at the Stark family as an extension of our family."

That means digging into a batch of cookies baked by Denise Stark, Nick's mother. That means having Denise Stark sew Wilson's torn volleyball jersey. That means dropping in at the Stark's home, just as Stark has dropped in on the Wilsons. And that means reading each other's moods and then coming to each other's emotional rescue during times of vulnerability.

"I try not to let other people know what I'm feeling when I'm having a bad day," Stark said. "But Jamil is just a nice guy. Even if he doesn't try to help me, when he knows that I'm down, he does anyway."

That favor is always returned.

"I can tell when he's down," Wilson said. "He doesn't really talk a lot. When he has his bad days, he's down and I try to get him up. I'll try to tell someone a joke and hope he hears it to make him feel better."

At no time was their relationship more evident than last Nov. 30, when the Rebels traveled to Oak Creek for their first road game of the season. One year earlier, a declining Carolyn Wilson sat in her wheelchair in Oak Creek's bleachers to watch her son play.

But when Jamil Wilson looked in the same direction as where his mother sat a year earlier, he saw another woman in a wheelchair. And something snapped within him.

A distressed Wilson started acting out, getting feisty when someone pushed him during a dunk attempt and punching a wall just after fouling someone.

"It was very hard on me," Wilson said. "Everyone thought I had an attitude and they didn't understand that that affected me a lot in that game. Just looking up and seeing the wheels and hoping it was her and then you look up and she's not there."

Stark was the first to understand what was going on.

"He was really emotional," Stark said. "I remember after he fouled somebody, he ran over and punched the wall. I could tell."

At just the right time, Stark consoled Wilson with the game hanging very much in the balance. And Wilson went on to help the Rebels to a 53-51 overtime victory, setting the stage for season that has flowered into one with all kinds of possibilities.

"Nick came to me during the game and he said, 'What's wrong? You need to calm down because these refs are aiming at you,' " Wilson said. "I told him what was bothering me and he said, 'Maybe that's a sign. Maybe she is there. Maybe someone's there in disguise.'

"During overtime, I took that to heart and it calmed me down a lot. We played as a team, we played great defense and we came out with a win. After the game, I told Nick, 'thank you' because little did he know that his words of encouragement helped me out a massive amount."

This could be just the beginning. Because while both Wilson and Stark have lost so much during the last year, they each gained a unique understanding of the true value of friendship.

"You meet friends, you lose friends, but your true friends are always going to be there in the end," Wilson said.

And Stark's take?

"A true friend is somebody who knows where you're coming from, who is always there for you and who won't let you down," he said. "They're just there for life."

Peter Jackel is a reporter for The Journal Times. You can reach him by calling (262) 634-3322, Ext. 323 or by e-mailing him at: peter.jackel@lee.net.