The Man Up to Cancer community is mourning the loss of two wolves this week.
We talk regularly about walking each other home, but I don’t think any of us who attended the annual Gathering of Wolves in Pennsylvania last weekend expected to be gut punched twice within the week after GOW ended.
Jose died in his sleep after getting home from GOW Sunday night. Tom died peacefully on Thursday night.
I had just hugged Jose goodbye on Sunday. We stood arm in arm together for the annual “topless” ostomates group photo on Saturday.
150 guys had just spent the weekend with them both.
Now they’re gone.
Cancer sucks.
I’m glad I got to know Jose. I wish I’d spent more time with Tom.
I hurt for Jose’s best friend, Steven, who loved Jose like a brother. I hurt for Tom’s friend Noah. They were making plans for an adventure before Tom got pneumonia, a deadly condition for a guy with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
We hurt as a pack.
“The strength of the pack is the wolf, the strength of the wolf is the pack.”
A wolf has died.
Those of us at Poconos Springs Camp were part of walking Jose and Tom home, although we didn’t know it at the time.
Other men will pass away between now and the next Gathering of Wolves. That’s a hard fact of dedicating time to cancer advocacy.
There is an evening dedicated to remembering and sharing stories of the fallen. The Fire of Remembrance.
That fire was too much for me this year.
My mother-in-law was laid to rest the day before I flew to GOW. We’d spent the previous week in a bubble of grieving and family togetherness.
Hearing the names and stories of all the men who died in the last year – there were more than 100 – I couldn’t do it. Even for the ones I knew.
I hung in there for about 30 minutes and then I had to step away.
It hurt too much.
Every one of those men meant something to someone.
The sorrow we felt for losing them is part of the joy of knowing and loving them in the first place.
That’s the power of connection.
That was the theme of my keynote address to all GOW attendees on Saturday. I called my address the Lee Silverstein Memorial Keynote. Lee died on Valentine’s Day this year of complications from colorectal cancer. He attended GOW last year and was changed by the experience.
I got to meet Lee for the first time last year, although we had been connected through social media since shortly after my diagnosis in 2012.
I was on his podcast, We Have Cancer, twice.
Lee called his best friend, Zach, from the plane after last year’s event to tell him how powerful the event was.
Life-changing.
Guys with cancer connecting.
Pouring into each other.
Telling each other “I love you.”
Hugging like their lives depended on it.
For some of them it does.
I opened my speech with an anecdote about an email I sent back in May to Trevor Maxwell, one of my closest friends who also happens to be MUTC’s CEO.
The American Cancer Society had just published research on the impact of loneliness on the mental health and clinical outcomes of cancer patients. According to the ACS, about 28% of survivors reported severe loneliness and another 24% reported some loneliness. Those reporting severe loneliness were 68% more likely to die from their disease.
What we’re doing here really is making a difference, I said.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, and others have written extensively about the loneliness epidemic in our country, driven by social media, divisive politics, the dopamine hit of constant screen time, etc.
Men are impacted by loneliness most especially. Most men have few if any close friends, and most are hard-pressed to identify anyone as a best friend.
I fit this stereotype for much of my life. Because I have worked in public relations in the healthcare and non-profit sectors for most of my career, most of my co-workers have been women. As often happens, my closest friends were also my co-workers.
I was 53 before I had a male best friend, or an inner circle of guys I’d lay down my life for and who would do the same for me.
That they’re all part of Man Up to Cancer isn’t surprising since we have a common purpose and all that.
My wife, the lovely Sarah, wondered a while back whether it was a good idea for my own mental health to be close friendships with guys who are deep in the shit. Guys I talk about all the time.
Then she met my dudes Ryan, Trevor, Joe, Don and all the others at the Cologuard Classic in March. She stopped wondering. She got it.
Love knows no cancer stage.
Friendship transcends illness.
And, when the time comes, we walk each other home.
Wherever we are on our cancer journeys, we are all stronger together.
And Man Up to Cancer is saving lives.
Those of us on the leadership team and the board of directors hear anecdotal evidence of that fact all the time.
“Man Up to Cancer saved my life.”
The impact of this group extends beyond each of us individually. A video played at the start of the Fire of Remembrance included the voices of women whose partner’s lives were changed by this organization.
In about a year we will have data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the peer-to-peer support provided by Man Up to Cancer on the mental health, quality of life a clinical outcomes of men facing cancer thanks to a research project being funded by my company. BTW, I am not the principal investigator on the study. That would invite some serious bias!
This was my second Gathering of Wolves.
I missed hanging with my best friend, Ryan. He was unable to attend because he was preparing for a clinical trial.
While I missed him, as did many of the other guys who know Ryan, I am thrilled for him and the possibilities the trial presents.
Still, we texted every day. We would have anyway.
The power of connection.
Zach, Lee’s best friend, lives about 45 minutes from where we held camp. He stopped by for a visit. It was great to see him.
When my keynote was over, one of the guys came up to me in tears.
“Did you mean what you said about not having a best friend until you were 53?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Me too,” he said.
We hugged for a long time while he cried on my shoulder. Two men who found great friendships late in life. On the one hand celebrating, on the other hand mourning that it took so long to get there.
Another friend, in a text chat today, said he was moved by my keynote. He too was brought to tears, he said. Three of his best friends are part of Man Up to Cancer.
“Life changing community,” he wrote.
Men wear so many masks in public, at work, for their families.
We are supposed to be tough. Gut through it. Be like John Wayne. Put some dirt on it and keep walking.
It’s not healthy.
Men are lonely. We need connection.
As we broke camp on Sunday, I hugged as many guys as I could. In every case, we spoke three words to each other: “I love you.”
It sucks hard that it took cancer for men to find a place where they belong. Where they can find connection. Even find their best friends.
Thank God for Man Up to Cancer.
No Comments