by Amy Newmark
I woke up this morning, living with this cancer. I am not “battling” cancer, for to do so would be a fight with myself. I am learning what it means to love deeply without conditions. And how to receive the love of family and friends in a way I had never experienced before. Thinking about imminent death has shown me that I am living the life I am meant to live. And that death is not about me but the people I’ll leave behind. What can I give them that will live on? It cannot be found in things or treasures. It is, quite simply, love — a love that they can hold on to and treasure and pass on to others.
I woke up this morning knowing that each day is a good day no matter the challenge or unknown future. Each day is a gift. The question is how we can use this precious time to help others — the way that the elderly valet-parking attendant helped me that day with his simple and sincere words.
I woke up this morning, thankful that I am receiving the best possible treatment at a world-class cancer center. After my fifty-fifth chemotherapy treatment more than two years ago, my cancer is stable. Less than one percent of patients with stage IV cancer survive after five years. My doctors have no medical explanation for my good fortune. In fact, my oncologist asked me recently, “What do you tell people when they ask you how you are doing?”
I tell them simply, “I feel great, and I am grateful for each day.”
I have been able to stretch my initial prognosis of five months to five years. As I write this, I am planning the ninth vacation trip with my children and grandchildren since my diagnosis.
I woke up this morning, excited, because each day is a miracle in the making.
— Frederick Loomis —
Darkness & Light
Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.
~John Webster
My boys giggled and splashed in the crowded pool, taking refuge from the bright August sun. Their latest pool games involved squirters and cannonballs. The carefree vibrant scene was a stark contrast to the dark and crippling words echoing through my cell phone.
“The CT scan showed a mass on your father’s pancreas,” my mom said as she struggled to get out the words. My tall, strong fifty-nine-year-old father had suddenly started losing one to two pounds per day. Of all the possible causes I’d read about, this was the worst imaginable scenario. The deadliest of all major cancers, the pancreatic-cancer prognosis was horribly grim. Most patients don’t live a year beyond diagnosis, with many taken in just three to six months.
After marrying young and working hard their entire lives, my parents were looking forward to retiring, traveling and spending time with their grandchildren: my sons, Kyle and Tyler, ages eight and four, and my brother’s daughters, Kaitlyn and Audrey, ages nine and six.
It was a devastating diagnosis.
The first oncology appointment was on my boys’ first day of school. Second grade and preschool were to be exciting school years that their beloved Pop wanted so desperately to see. Every year on each grandchild’s birthday, he’d make a video highlight reel of the past year, and he was already hard at work planning a baseball theme. My dad and my boys shared a passion for baseball. Kyle earned a spot on the travel baseball team and would be starting in the spring. Tyler knew all the names and stats of Pop’s beloved Philadelphia Phillies.
My dad asked his oncologist if he would make it to Christmas. After reviewing the scans showing an inoperable tumor, the doctor pursed his lips and said with deeply apologetic eyes, “I’m sorry, Fred. Probably not.”
Since my mom was a teacher, with limited time off, I often accompanied my dad to chemotherapy. My brother, Mark, met us during his lunch break. We marveled as Dad sat there, hooked up to the IVs, chatting with the nurses. As a college professor, my dad loved hearing about their educational backgrounds, and they adored his pleasant demeanor. He made it easy to forget the grave reason we were there.
After the initial infusion at the hospital, he remained on chemo-therapy for forty-eight hours in the form of a backpack with tubes hooked up to his chest port. We’d visit him at home, armed with movies and board games so he could relax. But before long, we’d find him in the driveway with the kids, pitching and chasing fly balls while wearing his chemo backpack!
During one infusion at the hospital, he decided that instead of fearing the Christmas holiday he might not live to see, he would plan to celebrate it in the biggest way possible. Forty years prior, during Christmas week, my parents had honeymooned in Disney World. In honor of this anniversary, he wanted to take all of us there to celebrate Christmas. Traveling posed health risks to his immune-compromised body. I planned cautiously, packed secretly, and hoped. Knowing it was possible the trip wouldn’t happen, we all agreed not to tell the kids until we were sure. Days before Christmas they awoke thinking it was an ordinary school day. Instead, we all met at my parents’ house for the ultimate Christmas surprise.
Joyfully, my dad told his grandchildren that their suitcases were in the car and we were heading to the airport.
A family friend and former Disney employee arranged to have our room at the Pop Century Resort decorated with anniversary greetings and instructed us to view the parade in a particular spot.
We rode rides and laughed with Disney characters in the beautiful Florida sun. My dad had no hair and limited energy, but he wore a Disney button that declared proudly, “I’m Celebrating LIFE.” The brightly lit park sparkled as pretend snow fell, and the kids danced around us, catching snowflakes on their tongues. At last, Santa concluded the parade in a spectacular sleigh. As he rode by, he shouted for the entire crowd to hear, “I want to wish a very special Merry Christmas to the very special Loomis family” as he called each one of us by name. It was a magical memory from a most magical trip.
But the magic didn’t end there.
My dad survived six months post-diagnosis to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. We planned a surprise baseball-themed party and gathered friends from his childhood, college and career. Extended family traveled from around the country to be there. We told him to arrive in costume for “a baseball team fundraiser.” Dressed head to toe in his favorite Phillies pinstripe uniform, my dad was surprised by “Fred’s Fans” wearing baseball gear for an evening of his favorite ballpark food. At the end of the night, he stood up to quote baseball legend Lou Gehrig. He said that he might have been given a “bad break… Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
But we were the lucky ones because he continued to choose happiness.
That spring, he attended every one of Kyle’s baseball games with his chemo backpack. I thought it was going to disconnect when he jumped out of his seat to cheer as Kyle hit a walk-off single to win the district championship game!
The following year, he planned a Thanksgiving feast at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge to celebrate all that we had to be grateful for. The next trip was to an indoor waterpark for his sixty-second birthday, where he and all four grandchildren boarded raft after raft, screaming while soaring down the thrilling tube slides. The following year, we all shared a house in Ocean City, New Jersey, a favorite childhood destination. He’d start each morning with a bike ride down the boardwalk, each afternoon splashing in the waves with the kids, and each night on the boardwalk with ice-cream cones and laughter.
Despite fifty-five chemo treatments and five weeks of daily radiation over the course of two-and-a-half years, the pancreatic tumor never shrank, and it spread to his liver. He was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer, and the five best cancer hospitals on the East Coast all deemed his tumor inoperable. When the chemo side effects became severe, he made the difficult decision to stop treatment and choose quality of time over quantity.
And he planned another trip to Disney World. I sat beside him as we rode Snow White’s mine train, and he sang “Hi ho, hi ho” along with the dwarves as we soared through the tunnels with our hands in the air. We returned to ride Space Mountain at midnight just like we had when I was a child. Most nights, he
and I were the last adults still standing with the kids as the parks closed with spectacular fireworks.
It has now been an unbelievable five years since my dad’s diagnosis. Miraculously, he has been off treatment for the last two-and-a-half of them. His journey is known by many in the cancer community as a rare story of hope in a sea of heartbreaking ones. But it’s his incredibly positive attitude from the very beginning that continues to inspire everyone he meets.
This year, Tyler Frederick (named for my dad), now in second grade, started his first year of travel baseball, and Kyle, a sixth grader, began his last. My dad cheered wildly as Ty pitched his first game and Kyle made his “major league” plays. Kyle’s season will culminate this summer with the ultimate baseball experience at Cooperstown Dreams Park in New York. My dad most certainly plans to be there, and I no longer doubt that he will be. He and my mom have both retired and are busier than ever. The cancer remains. He still has scans every three months, and we never know what they will show. No doctor can medically explain how he is still living.
His latest big idea is for us all to go on a Disney cruise to Alaska, a dream destination of my mom’s. I’m sitting by the pool reading the list of excursions and watching the four kids — now eight, ten, twelve and thirteen — splashing in the bright sun with my dad. The pool games still involve squirters and cannonballs. I think about the devastating diagnosis that he didn’t let devastate us. In his very darkest time, he has chosen to live in the light.
— Jennifer Loomis Kennedy —
The Words That Changed My Life
On Roses and Life
Change always comes bearing gifts.
~Price Pritchett
I looked at the brochure for Ballston Spa High School. “I don’t want to go to this school,” I said. “In fact, I don’t even want to be here. Can’t we just go home to New Jersey? I hate it here. I have no friends, I have nothing to do, and I hate it.”
My mom and dad exchanged glances. It had been a week since we moved to New York. Sighing, my mom turned to me from the front seat of the car. “Can’t you try to look at the bright side? You used to love Saratoga when we came here on vacation.”
“It’s different living here. I want to go home. I don’t have any friends here.”
The car was silent for a moment. I watched the Pilot swivel into the shady path leading to Yaddo Gardens, and I worked to hold back my tears.
“We’re here!” my dad said, attempting enthusiasm.
We unloaded the car — baguettes, fresh tomatoes, mangoes, iced tea, everything for a perfect picnic — but it was soured by my imperfect mood.
We laid out the blanket, looking at the gardens that were just starting to bloom. A number of people vested in green shirts and garden gloves bent over the bushes, hard at work.
As we watched the workers, we wound up in conversation with a particularly chatty woman, Vera, who told us more about the history of Yaddo Gardens and the volunteers.
“We work every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning,” Vera said with a smile.
“Hey,” my dad nudged me, “maybe you should work here!”
I started to roll my eyes, but my dad, ever the talker, brought up the idea to Vera. Before I knew it, I was there bright and early on a Tuesday morning.
Entering my assigned garden, my hands struggled to carry a bucket, gloves, potato rake, petal rake, strainer, and knee protector. Vera introduced me to John, the head gardener of quadrant four. I was impressed by John’s spryness and energy; he was still hiking mountains at eighty-one. He bounded around the garden with ease, clipping, raking and pruning with more deftness than I could ever muster.
“Dana, come here!” he called across the garden. He cupped a peppermint-striped flower in his hands, still on the vine, and showed it to me. “You see this flower?”
I nodded.
“Looks alive, but…” He brushed his finger on top of it. I watched the petals swirl and twirl down like rain. “It’s actually dead. This, on the other hand…” He pointed to a bush that looked stick-like and flowerless. “This one will bloom in a few days. Just wait.”
I smiled and returned to my task.
It was like that over the next several months. I’d come to the gardens on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, and John would always be there, smiling and ready to teach me a new lesson about roses and life.
I learned the secret to sinfully sweet rosehip jam, how to tell if a Japanese beetle is hiding inside a rose, and how to prevent deer from eating the flowers. During snack breaks, my new friend and I would chat and discuss everything from mountains to middle school, laughing and learning the joys of a friendship across generations.
One day, I opened up to him about my fears for the fall.
“I’m just not ready for school,” I said, biting my lip. “What if I have no friends?”
John said nothing, but took me instead to the terrace that overlooked the four-quadrant garden.
“Look, Dana. Do you see these two quadrants?”
I looked at them and nodded.
“Now look at the other two. What’s different?”
I squinted my eyes and looked back and forth. Then it clicked. “The two on the left are shorter!” I smiled with triumph.
“Exactly. This garden was styled after Italian Renaissance gardens. The point of the garden is for people who stand there,” he pointed to the wrought-iron gate on the left, “to see the garden beds as if they were all the same size.
“It’s called perspectivism,” he continued, “and I think it’s what you need. You can look at your new school as something scary, or you can look at it as an opportunity.” He shrugged. “The choice is yours.”
I don’t think I said much in response. I often didn’t. But three months later, after I had started high school, it was time for the Yaddo Gardens volunteer celebration. I saw John — my first friend in upstate New York — and gave him a hug.
“You were right,” I said. “I just needed a little perspective.”
— Dana Drosdick —
A Simple Change
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning, and you’ll start to see a big difference in your life.
~Yoko Ono
In my early thirties, I decided that my career in teaching was not what I dreamed it would be. I left the job and moved in with my parents for a year while I tested out a new career in the corporate world.
Living with my parents proved to be an even bigger challenge than my new job. Truth be told, it was probably harder for them than it was for me because I was a big jerk. I yelled at my mom for buying junk food and ignored my dad when he offered advice. I complained that my mom never did my laundry the way I wanted and my dad never let me choose what show to watch. Instead of being grateful for their hospitality, I was mean to them and most likely made them regret their offer.
“This is only for a year,” I would repeat to myself on a daily basis, sometimes hourly. Instead of living in the present, I would wish for the future and to have it all figured out. My life wasn’t what or where I wanted it to be. By this age, I expected to be firmly rooted on a career path with a huge circle of friends who liked to hang out. I did not expect to be living with my parents and starting over.
My attitude grew worse. One day when I was tearfully talking about something that was making my life miserable, my mother interrupted me. She nearly shouted, “Why don’t you just try smiling more?” I am pretty sure I laughed at her, but she went on to explain that sometimes things don’t work out the way we thought they would. “Don’t wait for things to get better,” she said. “Make them better.”
Angrily, I walked away, muttering words under my breath that one should never say to her mother. I cried myself to sleep that night, thinking about how unfair life was and how no one understood me.
In the morning, things felt different. I wasn’t suddenly all happy and smiley… I was just different. I decided I was going to show my mother just how wrong she was. I would follow her adv
ice and try smiling more.
Weeks passed, and somewhere along the way, I forgot about trying to smile more as it became a habit. I worked on approaching situations with a better perspective and slowly started to feel the weight on my shoulders lighten.
The second half of that year was better than the first. It was still a challenge to be living with my parents at age thirty-three. I was still ashamed and embarrassed that I had fallen so far from the path I had envisioned for myself. But it was definitely better.
At the end of my stay, I bought my own place and realized I had begun to love my job. I had made friends at work, and started to feel like I had purpose and drive. The days raced by, and I learned to love the silence. I started running again, and pushed light and joy into everything I did.
As cheesy as it sounds, I started noticing the birds singing and appreciating nature for what felt like the first time. Smiling had lifted the cloud that had hung over me for years. I even started dating again, although I continued to date the wrong type of guys. But at least I was out there.
Then I met someone. He was the first person I had ever met who made me feel light and happy. For the first few weeks of our relationship, I would tell him one or two great things about each day of the week. And if I forgot, or more likely thought he might be growing tired of all my positivity, he’d ask me, “What’s so great about Monday anyway?” And I would share some silly thing I had thought of to get me through a particularly rough Monday.
On one of our dates, I asked him what he first noticed about me. He said that I was always happy and smiling. At that moment, my mother’s suggestion rushed back to me: “Why don’t you just try smiling more?”
