In health, my twin sister’s
husband, Mat, was 6’5” and 210 lbs. In 2006 he was diagnosed as having
pancreatic cancer. He lived five more very courageous years of life, through an
organ transplant, and numerous rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. By mid
2010 Mat was 6’5” but weighed 125 lbs. It hurt for him to walk because his
bones and joints were covered with tumors that would grind together when he
moved. To walk he relied heavily on a cane. In spite of this, he would go along
with Kimberly and his boys to the beach where it would literally take him a
painful 30 minutes to walk the 200 yards from their handicap parking space to
the shore where he would sit in a chair and watch his boys. And he would go to
his son’s baseball games where it would be the top of the third inning by the
time he made it to the third-base line.
I never heard him complain. I
spent a week with him at his home in Boston several months before he died. Over
lunch at his favorite Mexican restaurant I finally asked him, “How do you do
it, Mat? How have you lived so well through all of this hell?”
Mat said a few different
things in reply. First, he said, “I have lived a very blessed life. I am
married to my dream woman and I have two awesome boys. And I have had a great
career.”
“I also have a pretty good
sense of my place in the bigger picture.” He went on to relate an experience.
“On one business trip to China in Hangzhou, I went for a walk and I took a
wrong turn and ended up in a very poor part of the city. Anyway, as I was
walking along I walked past an alley. In that dimly lit alley I saw a woman,
probably about 30, squatting over a little gas burner boiling water. In that
boiling water was the head of a cat she was going to eat for dinner. That has
stayed with me.”
“So, I’ve lived a blessed
life and I’ve never eaten the head of a cat for dinner. Besides, in the span of
mankind, 40 years old is a very long life. And hey, I know that I will be
together with Kimberly and my boys again.”
Mat lived another eight
months. Funny thing is, during his sickness and until the very moment of his
death he gave peace and happiness and courage, perhaps the greatest legacy he
could give to his wife, his boys, and all who knew him.
