Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (2 page)

I committed the speech to memory and have recited it with the same passion during countless retirement ceremonies and military holidays over the past twenty years. You three were all just babies when the army recognized me as one of the best company-grade officers of the more than thirty thousand in the army. The honor? The General MacArthur Leadership Award
.

The truth is, I’m not a big fan of Douglas MacArthur and never have been. I attended a military high school and have been in an army uniform since age fourteen, so I knew who MacArthur was when I first heard his
words. He always seemed more movie character than actual man, and it struck me then that if you want to be a real-life man, you have to learn from real-life men
.

But his speech to those young men is about being a real man. It’s about life as a struggle and our need to embrace it, about the contradictions and complexity and confusion, about the courage and search for wisdom required to get through it all, and about coming to it all as honestly as a man can reasonably do
.

So when it came time to share with you what I’ve learned about life, I knew I had to draw on that speech just one more time—with the three of you as my aspiring young “cadets,” and each chapter framed in a moral from that speech
.

Matthew, when you were twelve, I tried to offer you some advice after a brief discussion on some mundane subject, and you interrupted me. “Dad,” you said with an elevated tone to get my attention, “I’ll figure it out.” You were right then, and you’re still right. You had asked the question, gained some context, and then set out on your own course. With such understanding, I have faith that the three of you will indeed figure it out
.

And so these pages reflect observations and perspective rather than advice or instruction. Though I’ll speak with my usual conviction and passion, I know I gained those attributes over a long period of time and in the same manner Matthew expressed. My stories are not examples of the way to live your life; my stories are just examples of an infinite number of paths
.

Which one should you take?

With the help of many other people you’ll meet in your life, you’ll figure it out
.

Along the way, I hope you’ll consult these pages as often and as casually as you would if I were still here and you could pick up the phone. I hope you’ll ask this book different questions at different times in your lives. And I hope you’ll find answers or perspectives to match
.

I hate writing this letter, but I would hate not writing it even more. Nothing can replace the long talks I hoped to have while fishing or driving
to some far-off adventure with you, just as I got to do with my dad. But, thankfully, I’ve been blessed with enough time to pass along the most compelling experiences of my life. As sad as the reasons are for writing any of this, let’s see if we can squeeze some joy out of it before I have to leave
.

Love
,

Dad

Epilogue: “How Are You Doing?”

Dedication

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

 … 
TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO KNOW WHEN YOU ARE WEAK, BRAVE ENOUGH TO FACE YOURSELF WHEN YOU ARE AFRAID
.

1993, Minnesota State University ROTC
ROTC

JUNE 2010

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and General David Petraeus has just assumed command of all operations in Afghanistan following a very public dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal. The last time a president sacked a general for poor conduct was when Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur over disagreement on war strategy in Korea.

Most of the senior army leaders in the Minnesota National Guard knew Petraeus had selected me for an assignment to Iraq in 2005–2006, when I was a major and still in the U.S. Regular Army. Many also knew I had maintained a loose relationship with him since then and that he had recently accepted an invitation to come visit Minnesota. My comrades half joked I would get a call.

There was no call from Petraeus, but there was an email, and in it he proposed I join his team in Afghanistan on a special mission with the most senior levels of the Afghan parliament.

Petraeus reached out to one of his two subordinate general officers, and twelve hours later, I received an unexpected call on my cellphone while sitting in morning rush-hour traffic on I-35E.

“Mark, this is Lieutenant General Caldwell”—that’s three stars—“calling from Afghanistan … Do you have time to talk?” We had never met, but he spoke in a tone and language that experience taught me was reserved for personal staff and a mature relationship. He told me an endorsement from Petraeus was as good as it got, “so let’s get to it.”

He asked what I had done to earn such high praise and how I had maintained such a long-term relationship with senior Iraqi leaders—specifically, General Babakir Zibari, the Iraqi chief of defense, to whom I was assigned during my deployment. My explanation sounded modest, but it was the truth—lots of energy, simple social graces, and learning Kurdish, the Iraqi general’s native language. Caldwell didn’t seem to believe it was that simple, but commented, “Well, we want and need that kind of talent.”

I lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, my mind cluttered with mixed emotions. I’d have to leave you all immediately for a yearlong absence in a war zone, which made me sad and anxious. On the other hand, combat is why soldiers exist, it had been five years since I last deployed, and this kind of assignment was an exceptional professional affirmation for a soldier of any rank.

I wondered whether the request would ruffle feathers with Minnesota’s army leadership, who would have to replace me, knowing there were other army officers qualified for such an assignment. The anxiety was misplaced. Major General Larry Shellito, the adjutant general of Minnesota, shared Caldwell’s email with me when it arrived:

General Shellito immediately approved the courtesy request. In fact, within a week, he approved my immediate promotion to lieutenant colonel.

At home, there was a peace and serenity unusual for a deployment. Kristin (she may be Mom to you, but she’ll be Kristin to me throughout this story) accepted the news with quiet resolve. She wasn’t excited about it, but she was completely unshaken. She was used to disruptive military life, but this time—for the first time in my career—she was right where she wanted to be during a deployment.

She was home in Minnesota.

Her sister and parents lived two and fifteen miles away, respectively. Both of our families were within an hour’s drive. She also knew that when I returned from the deployment, she wouldn’t need to worry about being moved to a new assignment and a new home, as we had after previous deployments.

I was being delivered to a promotion and a dream assignment with implications on an international scale. Kristin was as content as she had ever been with the chaos that is army life. You boys were getting to know your extended family in ways you never could before.

It might have been the happiest moment of my life.

The only remaining hurdle was self-imposed. Though already medically cleared to deploy, I wanted a more thorough look. Three years ago, I had been diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer, and this was no ordinary ulcer. Twice I had experienced a massive hemorrhage in my small intestine, and the first one nearly killed me.

Perhaps you remember eating Thanksgiving dinner without me in 2007 while I was in the hospital seven states away, or when
my chair sat empty just after Matthew’s thirteenth birthday in 2009 while I was in the hospital. The ulcer slowly bled over the next eighteen months.

History told me I was due for another episode. It didn’t take much imagination to guess how things would end up if I hemorrhaged during a mission to some remote corner of Afghanistan.

As alarming as these incidents sound, I was tempted to blow them off. Two civilian gastrointestinal specialists said I had a non-life-threatening condition thousands of people learn to live with. Each one dismissed the idea that the trouble could be anything other than an ulcer, and I had no reason to doubt them. I had just moved about sixteen yards of mulch into our backyard (yes, with your help, Matthew), and I was running two miles three times a week. I did feel tired, but it didn’t seem abnormal. I was convinced I had an undiagnosed bacterial infection or a small aneurism near the intestinal wall.

It took a week to see my third GI specialist in as many years—Dr. Jake Matlock. He said the ulcer diagnoses from past doctors weren’t exactly wrong, but my symptoms demanded a closer look with the use of an endoscopy (a lighted scope lowered down the throat and into the stomach). I’d had this procedure twice before, so I knew what to expect.

After the procedure, Dr. Matlock came into my room wearing a bit of a poker face. He said he had found a fist-size lesion in my duodenum (small intestine just past the stomach). It was about ten times bigger than the ulcer’s description from the year prior. He also told me normal scores on a test measuring stores of iron in the blood run from 100 to 300. Mine was 2.

I didn’t need any translation on those numbers, but I still didn’t think I had anything a blood transfusion, antibiotics, and some cauterization wouldn’t fix. He ordered a CT scan.

Kristin and I returned the next day to discuss the results of the scan. We nervously chatted with each other as we waited. My mind was mostly elsewhere: my deployment clock was ticking
loudly in my head, and I was focused on the new Afghan minister.

Dr. Matlock entered the room and quickly took a seat. His face was expressionless, and he wasted no time delivering his message. He spoke with a soft and compassionate voice: “Mark, I’m afraid the news is bad … really bad. The ‘ulcer’ is not an ulcer. You have cancer.”

The words seemed to come out of his mouth in slow motion. The scene didn’t seem real. It was more like the set of a movie, with me playing a character. I tried to discount the significance of the news, but the CT images wouldn’t let me.

“This entire area here, where the stomach connects to the intestine”—he pointed to the duodenum, pancreas, associated ducts, and the surrounding lymph nodes—“is simply indistinguishable from the surrounding tissue.” The mass extended up into roughly 75 percent of my liver—about fifteen tumors of all sizes. The tumors in the left lobe of the liver were the size of golf balls, and those in the right lobe were the size of dimes and nickels.