A Birthday Post

August 14, 1970

Birthdays have always been markers of time. Another year older, another trip around the sun, some cake, a few candles, messages from people you haven't heard from in a while, and the inevitable reminder that the number keeps getting bigger whether you're ready for it or not.

This birthday feels different.

After everything that has happened over the last twenty months, getting older doesn't feel like something to complain about. It feels like a privilege.

There was a time during all of this when I couldn't look very far ahead. Life became measured in much smaller increments: the next appointment, the next blood draw, the next scan, the next treatment, the next set of numbers that would tell us whether we were moving forward, backward, or simply holding our ground. Looking months or years into the future seemed almost impossible when so much depended on what happened next.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how this experience has changed me, and I'm not sure I completely know the answer yet. Maybe I won't for a long time. I'm still figuring out who I am after some very difficult days. I do know that I'm more aware of time now and more appreciative of ordinary moments. Things I once thought were important don't seem nearly as important anymore.

I've also learned something else along the way.

Cancer happened to me, but it didn't happen only to me.

My family went through this too. They watched someone they love get sick and lived with the uncertainty right alongside me, even though their experience looked very different from mine. They rearranged schedules, changed plans, worried about things they probably didn't always tell me about, and learned a vocabulary of scans, treatments, blood counts, medications, hospitals, and doctors that none of us ever wanted to learn.

They carried their own fear while trying not to add to mine. There is a cost to loving someone who is sick, something I don't think I fully appreciated until I watched the people I love carry part of this weight with me.

My sons have had to watch their dad become vulnerable in ways I never expected them to see. As a father, you spend so much of your life wanting to be the strong one. You want to protect your children from the difficult parts of the world and convince them, at least for a little while, that Dad can handle just about anything.

Then life turns things around.

Suddenly they're checking on you, worrying about you, helping you, and discovering that Dad isn't indestructible after all. I've wondered whether there might be something valuable for all of us in that lesson. Maybe strength isn't convincing the people you love that nothing can hurt you. Maybe it's allowing them to see you hurt, scared, tired, and uncertain, yet still finding a way to move forward.

Watching my sons experience this has also made me think a lot about my own dad.

I've spent so much time looking at cancer through the eyes of a father that I sometimes forget I am still someone's son. No matter how old I get, I imagine there is still a part of my dad that sees the little boy he once wanted to protect from everything he could. Now he has had to watch his son face something he can't fix, take away, or carry for me.

I know how helpless I would feel watching one of my boys go through something like this. Realizing that has given me a different appreciation for what my dad has quietly carried through all of this. There is something humbling about seeing those generations come together. My dad watches his son struggle while I watch my sons watching their dad struggle. We are all learning something about strength, love, and what it means to let someone else carry you for a while.

I think about my sisters too, and what it must have been like for them to watch their brother go through this after already watching our mother fight cancer and eventually lose that fight. There is a history there that none of us can escape. I can only imagine what certain phone calls, setbacks, scans, and moments of uncertainty have brought back for them. My cancer is not our mother's cancer, and my story is not hers, but fear doesn't always care about those distinctions.

The same is true for the rest of my family and for those friends who stopped being simply friends a long time ago and became family. They have had to live with a possibility that remains difficult for me to even put into words: that I might not be here. While I was focused on treatments, appointments, blood counts, scans, and getting through the next day, the people who love me had to figure out how to live with that possibility.

Cancer may have taken up residence in my body, but its weight has never belonged to me alone.

I've seen that weight carried by people far beyond my own family.

I think about the other cancer patients I've met along the way. Some were brief encounters in waiting rooms, infusion centers, hospital hallways, or during one of the countless appointments that have filled my calendar. Others became familiar faces. Some shared pieces of their stories with me, and some didn't have to say much at all.

There is an understanding between cancer patients that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn't been there. You recognize the tired eyes. You understand why a seemingly small piece of good news can mean everything. You know the uncertainty of waiting for a scan or a number on a lab report. You recognize the fear that can sit quietly beneath a perfectly ordinary conversation.

Their stories have become part of how I understand my own.

This experience has also made me think differently about the friends and family members I have watched face cancer over the years, whether they were the patient or the person standing beside someone they loved. I thought I understood what they were going through at the time. I cared. I worried. I tried to be there.

Now I realize there were parts of their experience I simply couldn't understand until I found myself here.

Cancer creates a community no one asks to join. It includes the person sitting in the infusion chair, but it reaches far beyond them. It includes spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, caregivers, and the people anxiously waiting for a text after a scan. It includes those celebrating remission and those grieving someone who didn't get the ending everyone prayed for. One person may receive the diagnosis, but an entire circle of people learns to live with it.

Then there is Maria.

I don't know that I'll ever find the right words for what she has done for me or what she means to me.

People often describe cancer as a journey, although I've never particularly liked that description. Journeys are usually things we choose. Nobody chooses this. Whatever we decide to call this part of our lives, Maria has walked every mile of it beside me.

She has been there through treatments and appointments, long drives and hotel rooms, hospital rooms and waiting rooms, good news and bad news, exhaustion and uncertainty. She has also been there through all the ordinary moments between the big ones. She has seen me at my weakest and somehow reminded me that I still had strength left. When I couldn't carry everything myself, she carried what I couldn't.

There were days when I was tired of fighting. Maria gave me reasons to keep fighting.

She is my motivation, my partner, and my hero.

We like to say that not all heroes wear capes. I know it sounds a little cliché, but I've learned how true it can be. Sometimes heroes sit beside you in an infusion room. Sometimes they drive hundreds of miles for another appointment or make sure you've eaten when food is the last thing you want. They remember details when your brain is exhausted. They celebrate the smallest victories because they know how hard you worked for them. Sometimes they simply sit quietly beside you because there isn't anything left to say.

Sometimes your hero is the person who made a promise years ago to walk through life with you, then shows you exactly what those words meant when life becomes unimaginably difficult.

I owe Maria more than I could ever repay, although I've started to think love isn't supposed to be a debt we settle. Maybe the best way I can honor everything she has done for me is to make something worthwhile out of the time we've fought so hard to have together.

Maybe that's the biggest way this experience has changed me.

I don't want to simply be alive. I want to be present for my life.

I want dinners around the table and conversations that go on too long. I want road trips with no particular urgency to get somewhere, time outside, laughter, adventures with Maria, and the chance to watch our sons continue building lives of their own. I want more opportunities to simply be a husband, father, son, brother, and friend. I want to spend less time worrying about things that don't matter and more time making sure the people who do matter know exactly how much I love them.

Cancer has taken things from me. There is no reason to pretend otherwise. It has taken time, strength, certainty, and pieces of the person I was before all of this began. I wouldn't choose what happened to me, and I certainly wouldn't choose the price the people I love have paid alongside me.

Still, somewhere in all of this, I gained perspective.

Life is fragile. I've always known that intellectually, but knowing something and living it are very different things. I've discovered just how beautiful life can be when you slow down long enough to notice it. A meal with family. A conversation with an old friend. Sunlight coming through a hospital window. A walk outside. Waking up beside the person you love. Things that once seemed completely ordinary can suddenly feel extraordinary when you've had reason to wonder whether you would experience them again.

That's what I'm thinking about on this birthday. Not the number of candles.

This birthday isn't just another trip around the sun. It's another year I get to love my family. Another year to watch my sons find their own way in this world. Another year with friends who have walked beside me. Another year with the woman who refused to let me walk through any of this alone.

There was a time when I couldn't see much farther than the next appointment.

Today, I can look toward tomorrow again.

After everything we've been through, I can't think of a better birthday gift than that.

One last thing. If you'd like to help me celebrate this birthday, I've set up a Facebook fundraiser for Blood Cancer United. This disease has introduced me to far too many people and families carrying their own version of this story. If you feel inclined to give, I would be grateful. More importantly, your donation can help support people fighting blood cancers today and the research that may change what these diagnoses mean tomorrow.

Maybe together we can make sure more people get the chance to look toward tomorrow, too.