Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (26 page)

The song was listed as “Tell My Father,” which neither of us had heard before. You not only sang in tune, but with a conviction and emotion that was foreign to me until that moment.

“Tell my father that his son didn’t run … or surrender.”

My eyes burst with tears as I tried to catch my breath. You sang on, telling us all that he had carried his family name with honor, knowing that we are all judged by what we do … “while passing through.” The rest of the choir joined you, and the words continued to strip me bare to the bone. The song was a ballad
about an American Civil War soldier, telling an unknown messenger to tell his father that he wore his blue uniform—the same dress uniform I wear today—with pride, that he bore the necessary sacrifice, that he had become a man, and that his father should not cry for him.
^*

I could see you belting out the words with great emotion as you glanced at us periodically out of the corner of your eye.

Did you really understand the full meaning behind the song?

Your solo contained words and ideas you had heard from me on countless occasions, particularly since my diagnosis—to be strong and courageous in the face of the unknown, and that you are judged by your actions in this life. And of course you knew my passion for soldiering, but did you also remember my intense interest in the American Civil War? Or was the theme just coincidental? You were always quiet with us about your emotions and thoughts, particularly with the cancer, and I desperately wanted to believe you were communicating directly to me through this song.

Then you sang a song about how we would meet again one day, but as men, and with honor, and again I felt the air pulled from my lungs.

It was the last song of the concert. I didn’t know what to expect from you as you quietly approached me with a stoic look on your face. I tried to keep it together as I reached out to you, without saying a word, and quickly pulled you tight into my chest as the tears uncontrollably filled my eyes again. I felt your body softly jostle a bit in my arms as you gently cried, squeezed me just a little tighter, and said, “I love you, Dad.”

I chuckled out of embarrassment. I rarely heard those words and had never heard them spoken with such emotion. They made my throat tighten more. I tried to lighten the moment, for both
our sakes. “My God, it sounded like you were singing to me, buddy.”

“I was, Dad,” you said.

Countless readers of my online journal have apologized for laughing while they’ve had tears in their eyes over the past two years. But I think this is actually the sweet spot MacArthur was talking about
.

I propose to you that there is a time and a place for crying and laughing. And figuring out how to cry and laugh at hardship or death is a skill worth honing into a fine art when you’re young
.

Have you ever noticed how laughing babies never fail to bring us a smile and a warm feeling, no matter how we feel? Endorphins don’t just happen; you have to find a laughter trigger
.

Do you boys remember the times I got you to laugh when you were sad or mad? I’d get you to crack, but you tried like hell to keep that smile or laugh from coming through. You refused it
.

We all seem to find it much easier to let ourselves cry. See what happens when you let yourself laugh
.

Many times in a good life, you’ll laugh until you cry. And many other times, you’ll cry until you laugh. In the end, laughing and crying are more like cousins than strangers. They’re how honest human beings respond to a life they allow themselves to love, and my hope is that you have plenty of tears in your lives—of all kinds
.

 … 
TO DISCOVER THE SENSE OF WONDER, THE UNFAILING HOPE OF WHAT IS NEXT, AND THE JOY AND INSPIRATION OF LIFE.

August 2012 (two years after diagnosis)

NOVEMBER 2010

Just three months after my original diagnosis and life-altering surgery, I was honored at a Minnesota Vikings football game in front of sixty-four thousand fans. I stood on that field in my army dress uniform, looking fairly pathetic—and feeling even worse.

Under my uniform, I was a train wreck. I was barely able to stand in my emaciated 130-pound frame.

What on earth was I doing at this grand-scale pity party?

The announcer briefly outlined my service in the army and said I was being honored as their Hometown Hero. Scattered applause followed.

Then he explained that I had been preparing for another combat tour that summer, handpicked by General Petraeus to serve with him in Afghanistan, but within weeks had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. The crowd went silent.

He went on to describe my perseverance and attitude since being diagnosed, introduced my wife and children, and then announced my name as if he were introducing a gladiator in the Roman Colosseum.

Those sixty-four thousand fans jumped to their feet and exploded with applause. I could clearly see the faces of men and women wiping tears from their eyes in front of me. The announcer then had to yell over the crowd that they were going to promote me to lieutenant colonel.

In the video of the event, the applause was so deafening that the announcer just stopped speaking.
^*

Noah, you were then ten years old, and when the game was over you commented, “Dad, you looked like you were going to cry the whole time. Why were you so sad?”

“Because having cancer doesn’t make me a hero, and I just wouldn’t be standing out there without it.”

It was Chaplain John Morris, our state chaplain and a good friend, who helped convince me I needed to change my thinking about the Vikings game and what my story meant to other people. He helped me realize that the tribute wasn’t much different than fourth down in a clutch situation in a big football game.

The passion of the crowd wasn’t necessarily focused on what I had achieved, but in the unfailing hope—their unfailing hope—of what was still possible to overcome.

The message from the crowd during that “fourth-down play,” as I have come to interpret it, wasn’t pity or sorrow, but hope—and love of another human being: “That,” they were saying, “is a guy I want to see fight and win!”

MAY 2012

Eighteen months after standing on that football field, I was much worse for wear but able and willing to acknowledge an incredible
sense of wonder at still being alive and an unexpected discovery of joy and inspiration for life.

My feeding tube had been removed, I had just finished penning a first-ever strategic communication plan for the Minnesota National Guard, and all my garden’s flowers were in full bloom.

I still had a visible “bullet hole” in my abdomen and a catheter running through my ribs and liver, but the pain and nuisance had long become tolerable. I even got used to the idea of putting up with one or two bouts of sepsis per month, as my body seemed capable of fighting back so effectively in the thirty episodes I had experienced so far.

Then on Memorial Day, some trouble with the bullet hole prompted me to visit the hospital. Dr. Ehrenwald ran a quick X-ray to gain some perspective on the size of the hole, and then we retired to his office to check it out.

When the image of my abdomen appeared on the screen, my internal organs were as immediately familiar to me as the features on my own face. Forget the bullet hole. What I noticed instead was that the biggest tumor in my liver—the one that had been as large as a silver dollar—was now twice as big. And two of the other fifteen tumors were clearly “awake” again.

Some people get ten years; others get less than one
, I remembered. The news felt as devastating as my initial diagnosis.

I immediately started a new chemo treatment, but it crashed on takeoff. My skin and eyes turned yellow, my body started itching, my urine turned tea colored, I was frequently short of breath, and I felt tired all the time—all telltale signs of a liver in severe distress. They even had to stick a catheter through my back and drain a liter of fluid off my right lung again.

I envisioned my entire fighting position being overrun and surrounded, just as it had been in the fall of 2010. Gone was the desire to boldly declare war. As in real combat, the harsh reality of battle had tempered my approach.

At work, I decided to permanently hand off my proverbial
saber and guidon to my relief.
Soldiers and officers come and go
, we say;
the army lives on
. Leaving the army is a day that comes for every soldier; I just selfishly wished it were on my terms.

Was this quitting? I’ll let you in on a little secret: the army doesn’t quit or retreat, ever. We’ve come up with our own language to cheat the system a bit. We “consolidate,” we “reorganize,” we “conduct retrograde operations,” but we never “quit” or “retreat.” So what’s the difference between retrograde operations and retreating? Attitude. Or as I like to call it, the middle finger.

I think if there had been an army battalion aboard the
Titanic
, I would have been fully and unapologetically engaged in ordering the deck chairs to be rearranged when all other options ran out. That’s not denial, and it’s not positive thinking. I know the ship is going down, and my attitude might actually be crappy. I would just rather do something, because the truth is, I no longer know how to do nothing.

JUNE 2012

Boys, my failing health did not bring you to my side for a heart-to-heart chat now any more than it had at the beginning. In fact, you were all fairly dismissive about the news. Kristin and I shared a brief moment of tears, but she was just as quick to declare that I was so stubborn, I would probably be the first human to live without a liver. And you all seemed to share her contempt for the idea that anything could bring me down.

But it will
.

We hadn’t talked about the what-ifs in any serious detail since the fall of 2010. Now the time had come, and you were all resistant. Matthew, because you were older, you were my primary focus, and I searched for a way to get at the subject.

When the army put me on full medical leave June 1, I had already been slated to speak at the Minnesota History Center in celebration of the Army’s 237th birthday on June 14. I searched for army themes I could carry. Sacrifice? Honor? Determination? Humility?

With the thought of Matthew stirring in my mind, I reflected on the sacrifice and service of soldiers throughout history—proud and true through unimaginable hardships, but none more paradoxical than the American Civil War.

A duet.

The idea hit me so fast and hard, I was crying over my keyboard before I could complete the thought. Music. This was one of the ways you communicated, Matthew, and the words of your solo the year prior suddenly seemed to serve both our needs.

Fighting and surviving a civil war. Dying. The army blue dress uniform. Carrying an important message. Never quitting. Love
. Nearly every word of that song spoke to me, to you, to all of us in this terrible moment in our lives. And a perfect tribute to the army, to boot. What was more, it was Father’s Day.

When you enthusiastically agreed to sing this emotionally explosive song with your dying father in front of an audience of strangers, I knew at the very least we shared the “crazy” gene.
^†

When that performance was done, the idea for
Tell My Sons
was born. As difficult as it was for us to talk about life now, I believed you would be curious in the future, and this book would be the next best thing to my side of the conversation.

JULY 2012

I started my fourth chemo trial—a kidney cancer treatment—in mid-July. I received a call from General Dempsey’s office that same week, which just happened to be the same week he and I had received our respective cancer diagnoses two years prior. Dempsey had not only beaten his throat cancer but had since been elevated to the most senior position in the U.S. Army, and within months of that promotion had been selected by President Obama to serve as the most senior officer in the entire U.S. Armed Forces as the eighteenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

If his travel plans allowed it, he and his wife, Deanie, wanted to come to Minnesota to honor me and Kristin for our service in the army. By the time August 16 rolled around, General Jack Vessey, the tenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had decided to join us.

Hearing Dempsey speak about our work together and his personal assessment of my character in front of 350 of my friends and family made me feel as if I were witnessing my own eulogy.