What is Good About Cancer?

Mom, me, and Dad: Summer '13

You don't think about your dad passing away when you're 20 years old and engaged to be married.

I had always imagined dancing with him to a daddy-daughter song at my reception. I had imagined him playing with my kids and being their grandpa, giving them all the advice he's given me.

Life has a way of being unexpected.

What's Good About Cancer?

What’s good about cancer? I’ll tell you.

‘Tis something together we beat.

Though death comes to all and we never know when,

to conquer lung cancer’s a feat!

This sickness has brought us much closer.

Together we conquered the foe.

No matter what happens hereafter

this trophy forever will glow.

The struggle has helped prepare for the day

when gathered to fathers we’ll be

when we finish this race of mortality

more ready, courageous, and free."

My dad wrote this poem last fall when he heard that we had beat his lung cancer. Three months later, in December, his cancer was back, this time Stage 4, and incurable.