I told the following story before a live audience on Monday, June 6, 2022, as part of the Knox News Storytellers Project. I’m grateful to the team at Knox News for helping make it possible.
A few weeks ago I was inducted into my high school’s Hall of Fame as a member of the William Horlick High School Distinguished Graduates Class of 2022. My high school is in Racine, a city on the shores of Lake Michigan in Southeastern Wisconsin.
When the ceremony was over and people began taking photos in front of the step-and-repeat with the school logo splashed across it, there was one person I wanted to get a photo with, one very important person in that room: my mom.
A photo with my mom was a small gesture of gratitude for the life I’ve lived. Without her I wouldn’t be alive, of course, but I also wouldn’t be standing here on a stage in front of a live audience in Knoxville, Tennessee. Without her, I might be assembling tractor parts in the machine shop of Case International Harvester, where my dad and grandpa had worked.
My mom knew that wasn’t the life for me. Although born with a football player’s body, I had neither the interest nor the skill for sports. I was academically minded. Because of my mom’s encouragement and a children’s book subscription, I was reading before I went to kindergarten. I played musical instruments – first the trombone, then the tuba. I was the first male in my family to graduate high school. I received awards and scholarships for my writing skills. I won a competition to deliver my high school graduation address. I was the first person in my family to go to and graduate from college. When I got the opportunity to go to graduate school at the University of Tennessee, my mom gave me the green light.
I was 22. My dad passed away from a massive heart attack two years earlier while I was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As the oldest child and the oldest son to boot, I felt the responsibility to take care of my family after I graduated from college. At the same time, I had been accepted to graduate school in the UT College of Communications. The dean at the time had been one of my professors and a mentor at UWM. I wanted to go to HIS grad school.
I was torn. Stay in Wisconsin to take care of my family or chase my goal of getting a master’s degree. That’s where mom stepped in.
“You have to go,” she said. “I’ve got this. There is nothing for you here.”
Truth is, she’d been preparing me for this moment since childhood. We had family chores on Saturdays. For as far back as I can remember it was my job to clean the bathrooms. Me, a can of Comet, a rag and all the porcelain and tile I could scrub. In my teenage years my mom went to work at the local mall, and it was my responsibility to make sure the house was straightened up and dinner was on the table for our family of six by the time my dad got home from work. I learned to vacuum, dust, sweep, wash dishes, cook, sew on a button, mend a hem, iron a shirt, do laundry and all manner of household chores.
While I bristled at the thought of those daily chores, my mom made me self-sufficient. She knew I could go out and take on the world, she also knew I had to be able to take care of myself. Self-sufficiency is a gift I appreciate every day of my life.
So it was that at 2 a.m. on a mid-August day in 1992, I packed everything I owned into my 1978 Buick LeSabre and hit the road for Knoxville. This car was a land yacht. A behemoth on wheels. Six gallons to the mile. A hoop-tee, to use the vernacular of the day. The trunk could carry three bodies with seating for six available in the back seat. All my stuff fit in it with room to spare.
This wasn’t the first time I wanted to leave home. In 1987 I was accepted by my dream school, my first choice, the University of Minnesota, to go to journalism school. I was editor of my high school newspaper, The Horlick Herald, and fell in love with telling stories. After I finished college I wanted to be the editor of a community newspaper.
I didn’t go to my dream school, though. See, despite our very contentious relationship, my dad asked me not to go. He had never taken an interest in my scholastic life before, but his request was so earnest and so sincere. How could I refuse?
In retrospect, I’m grateful I didn’t go to the University of Minnesota. I would not have been there when my dad died. At home. 17 days before Christmas in 1990. My sister and I were the last to see him alive. I would not have been the one to wake my grandparents at midnight to tell them their only son was dead. I would not have been there to comfort my brothers and my sister.
And I would not have been there to support my mom those first two years after my dad died.
As a 43-year-old widow with four kids, my mom was the epitome of resilience. While she always wore the pants in our family, she quickly became the breadwinner in addition to dealing with all of the after-death administrivia that comes with a spouse’s passing.
I watched my mom handle life head-on and with an upbeat and positive demeanor that belied any heartbreak that was lying beneath the surface. I know she was heartbroken. She lost the love of her life. But mom believes life is too short to let our hearts be ruled by negative emotions like anguish, anger or fear.
It was mom’s example of resilience that I leaned into when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2012.
Eleven months of treatment sucked, to be honest, and there are side effects that are still making themselves known all these years later, but from the outset I was determined to be optimistic about my outcome and to have a positive but not polly-annaish attitude about everything that came at Sarah and me.
Ten years on I can say we made it through thanks to our love for each other, the support of our family and friends, my amazing medical team, and our faith in God.
Cancer made me a gratitude evangelist. I’ve seen the power of gratitude firsthand as a patient in treatment and in my life since cancer. One of the statistics I love to share is this one: expressing gratitude can make you up to 25 percent happier. Who couldn’t use more happiness?
I keep a gratitude journal. Every night before I go to bed I spend about five minutes writing down three things for which I am grateful. Almost always, what I’m grateful for are people or experiences. Dinner with friends, great conversations over bourbon or coffee, laughter or tears. The small things that are actually the big things.
Because of cancer, I am fierce advocate, sharing my story with anyone who will listen about ways to make life better for cancer patients, survivors and their families. It is for this work that I was invited to stand on that stage in Racine, Wisconsin, a few weeks ago.
My mom laid the foundation for the life I have. From letting me chase my dreams to being an example of resilience, I am grateful for all she gave me. It’s worth far more than standing on stage for a photo op, but it’s a start.
Thank you for the privilege of your time.
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