My Dad's birthday and how life moves on

Two weeks ago I received a call Wednesday morning from the wife of a patient we have been helping. I talked about them at our Run Daddy Run event because they made a certain impression on me. They would stay at Fox Chase Cancer Center for one week at a time each month and we would help them pay for their food because they had trouble affording it while being away from home. So as I answer the call, I notice that it is the main number from Fox Chase and I thought it was going to be one of the social workers - but it wasn't. It was this patient's wife and she says, "Mike, this is (going to leave name out for privacy) and he (her husband) is not doing well. The chemo stopped working, he is too weak from the pneumonia he had, and they are trying to look for a place near our home to send him to hospice." I could tell that she was distraught. Phone calls like this always force me to sit down because I still have yet to figure out how I can help her - what can I do for her emotionally? I don't know if I will ever be able to figure that one out. I think I am still trying to figure it out for myself.

So when she calms down a bit, she says to me that they are out of food (they have about $150 left that we said we would help with) and she asked if I can get her another grocery card. I said, "well, I am going to be at Fox Chase on Friday - can you wait until then?" She says, "no Mike, is there anyway you can get it to us today?" I said, "Well I won't be able to get up there today because I have some appointments later in the day, can you wait until tomorrow?" She says, "no, is there anyone else you can send up to drop it off." I said to her, "hmmm, let me try to figure this out in the next hour and I will call you back."

I call her back in about 45 minutes (after I figure out that if I leave right now, I would have enough time to do it) and tell her I will be up at Fox Chase in about an hour and 15 minutes. When I get there, she is sitting quietly on the bench outside the cafe and as I get closer to her, she stands up, says my name and gives me a hug. We both sit back down on the bench and talk for about 25 minutes. We talk about life, death, children, grandchildren - and how life moves on. As you can see, this family continues to resonate with me....

And I continually ponder - how does life move on when we lose someone who has touched our life? Today is my Dad's birthday and I'm writing this as my thoughts come to me about how my life has moved on since. He would be 58, which means he was alive for 30 years and has been dead for 28. It gets tougher each year to say that. Soon he will be dead longer than he was alive. One thing that occurred to me about a month ago and I'm still trying to rationalize it into a good thing - when my Dad was 29 he spent the next year of his life dying of cancer. He spent that year incredibly sick, losing weight, wasting away, and I'd like to think he was wondering what kind of life my Mom, brother and I would have without him. Or maybe to make it positive - he was thinking about the life we would have with each other as we grow up. And now I'm about to be 29, spending the majority of my time trying to help families overcome their cancer. I never imagined I would have gotten myself in this position. It just kind of happened and it is too ironic when you compare me to my Dad. Same age, similar perspective, same purpose.

I remember when I was in elementary school they had us fill out those emergency cards with our parents info - I would always fill in my Mom's info and write my Dad's name but put the word deceased next to it. Most years when I had a new teacher, it would come up some time when they would ask me what happened or how old he was. And every time they would say, "wow, he was so young." When I was that young, 30 years old seemed old so his age didn't bother me! But now that I am about to turn 29, I get more perspective and really understand how young it is. Although I can't focus on the 30 years he was alive (probably because I wasn't there), I tend to focus on the other 28 and just sit and ponder....as my life moves on.

We are in the midst of helping an elderly patient pay for her chemo and when the wonderful social worker told her about HCM Foundation and the story how it started, the patient says to her daughter sitting next to her, "That is what you do when you die - you leave a legacy behind to help other people." When the social worker emailed me and told me that - I sat there and thought quietly to myself, 'that is one of the coolest things ever - it is like she is talking about my Dad as if he was still alive - alive in a sense of legacy. Legacy that has touched and helped her in a time of need.'

Maybe I am looking for anything to understand the situation and I'm stretching the rubber band too much on this one as my life moves on. I have never given my Dad a present for his birthday - I was only alive for one of them. But this year is different. My gift to him this year is not one you can buy. It's not really one you can explain. But you can definitely feel it - it is the gift of legacy that has been learned through helping others.

I still think it is crazy how much you can miss someone you never remember - and I would do absolutely anything I could to gain just one real memory - whether it would be good or bad and only if it was for a short period of time. But it will never happen.


Above I have uploaded a photo that was taken the summer my Dad died - he was 30, I was about to turn 1 and my brother was 5. I am going to go out on a limb here and say my Dad is smiling, looking down at me in this photo and thinking to himself, 'somehow one day this kid is going to learn from what I'm going through right now and figure out how to help people get through it - he'll figure out how to keep alive what little hope I have left - and grow it as it helps others.'