Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (23 page)

We had lived together, eaten together, mourned together, and traveled together. I knew them, and I felt they knew me as much as any American soldiers I had ever met.

*   *   *

Meekness
is another word for humility. But in MacArthur’s context it means “gentleness” of true strength, and he clarifies it elsewhere when he says, “to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall.”

When my cancer battle started in 2010, I assumed everyone I knew would be willing and able to mirror my strength and attitude back to me. I thought they would appreciate and—from the way I received the news of the diagnosis—understand my decision to return to work despite the cancer still growing inside me and support my plan to manage my pain without medication.

Nearly everyone said they admired it, but few said they could comprehend how it was possible, let alone advisable.

The medical professionals questioned me often on my ability to tackle such a crushing change to my life and routine, which was pronounced in light of my profession as a soldier. Doctors and nurses repeatedly reassured me there was no shame in taking antidepressants, as if I might be holding back a bit about how I was
really
doing.

“What you’ve experienced is really as serious and as nasty as it gets,” my surgeon told me. He didn’t know many people who could take it the way I seemed to be taking it.

Far from being flattered, I was frustrated. I didn’t like being singled out, and it still bugs me when I am, because the implication is that I’m not normal—a message that, if delivered often enough, makes me feel isolated, not exceptional.

Examples of my “abnormality”? I packed my own wounds. I insisted on giving my fevers time to indicate their course before running to the ER or asking for antibiotics. And when pain or fear or sadness struck, I sought out not drugs but perspective to help me laugh or find the blessings around me to help balance the scales. I nicknamed my two interventional radiologists Oscar and Felix (from the TV show
The Odd Couple
) and joked with them or offered advice—under sedation—during my procedures. I reflected on the fact that twelve years ago there was no treatment at all for what I had and I could be dead already. And I often refused pain medication in favor of a clear head.

Of course, being so involved and self-reliant was sometimes hard work, and it didn’t always give me hope about improved health. But I didn’t think it was all that difficult when I considered the fact that every bad thing I was experiencing was going to happen whether I was involved or not.

Being involved made me feel more in control.

In time, I came to realize I needed to be gentler and more
compassionate about how I addressed people who said they were inspired by or in disbelief about my choices.

One way I tried to turn my frustration into encouragement was to help others absorb what I considered to be a truth about hardship: “Someone always has it worse than you do.”

I explained to family and friends how an eleven-year-old girl up the street from us burned herself with a curling iron and contracted strep A. She was dead in a week. That same week—Thanksgiving week—a man was driving up a county road just a few miles from our house when a deer stepped out in front of his car, went through the windshield, and killed him instantly. No goodbyes. No reflections. Gone.

These two stories were from just one week in time and within a half mile from where I lived. And there were just as many examples of people who didn’t die, but lived in a pain and misery that seemed much worse than mine.

You don’t have to speak in the abstract about the blessings of life when we’re surrounded by such examples. When you remember how many others have it worse—or suffer the same pain you do—you just can’t help but feel blessed or encouraged as you contend with the Bufords in your own life.

*   *   *

Few subjects tickle your soul and your sense of humility like faith, religion, the meaning of life, and the thought of what will come when we die. In August 2010, while I was lying in my hospital bed like a cut-open deer carcass, comments and questions about these subjects came more frequently than they had in all my life, and they haven’t slowed up since.

The vast majority of people were social, as in, “I’ll pray for your family” or “God be with you and your family.”

But a good number of well-wishers sought to provide something
more than social. No matter which religion these people practiced, the theme of the sentiment, whether explicit or implicit, was, “I want to make sure you get into heaven.”

I’m certain that love and good intentions fueled their efforts, but there was nothing humble, open-minded, or meek about it. There was a specific prescription, and I needed to recite the magic words, or I was not going to be “saved.”

In my experience, even in combat, most discussions about the afterlife were little more than coded talk about who might go to hell and who might get to heaven. Now there was nothing coded about it. Fear, not hope, led these discussions.

Noah once overheard me patiently responding to a persistent stranger on the topic and asked, “Why didn’t you just hang up, Dad?” That’s a tough question to answer in one sentence, but I answered honestly, “Because I learn a little about myself when I have such conversations.”

And that’s what I find myself reflecting upon here as I read MacArthur’s words: to focus less on how, why, and what others will say or do and focus more on how, why, and what you will say or do.

It’s tempting to read MacArthur’s words and see three separate proposals: to seek humility, to find true wisdom with an open mind, and to discover the meekness of true strength. But really he is making only one proposal—that you should be humble and recognize what you don’t know or understand. In that context, you’ll find and appreciate the other two
.

When MacArthur spoke to that room of cadets in 1962, he warned there was no way he could communicate all that his words fully meant. In my view, there is no other subject where that idea is truer than with religion. It is in that spirit that I propose to be a bit more direct in passing along what my experiences have taught me
.

First, the only thing I am 100 percent certain about with faith, the meaning of life, and the concept of the afterlife is that sooner or later, they
are subjects you will face. Please trust me when I tell you it is best to consider your spirituality throughout your life—that’s what it’s for, after all—rather than late in life or under duress
.

Second, try to imagine faith as a dog with religion as its tail. Religion is what you use to practice your faith, not the other way around. At least consider that we’re all praying to and finding inspiration from the same creator, regardless of our chosen prophet or practice. I think this thinking takes as much or more faith than does grimly holding on to the notion that only one can be correct
.

Above all, discussion of religion should never involve criticizing others about theirs; rather, it should be about reflecting on your own religion and being humble in how you treat yourself and others
.

You know my religion, and religion is vitally important, but I want to leave you with an explicit example I hope will reward you the way it has me—not only with knowledge and wisdom, but with a love and understanding that has truly made life worth living
.
^‡

One day with Babakir in Iraq, I was expressing frustration over something someone did during a recent trip and I made a familiar exclamation, “My God, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Babakir stopped what he was doing, grabbed my arm, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Mark, why you always say ‘my God’? Not your God. Our God.”

 … 
TO BE SERIOUS, YET NEVER TO TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY; TO CRY, BUT ALSO TO LAUGH.

July 2010 (one week before diagnosis)
Allison Lea Photography

JANUARY 2012

Buford’s abscess continued to persist as it had the previous four months, and I spent Christmas Eve in the hospital following the failure of a fourth experiment in as many months. What was once only a bile leak now involved mashed food escaping from my intestine. The hole was getting bigger.

The excruciating pain was bad enough, but what I found far worse was the necessary routine involved in each hospital visit with doctors and nurses. It didn’t matter how well I knew my own case; they were often obliged to follow their protocols. And I rejected protocols for their own sake.

What’s that shot? Heprin? No, thank you. I stay active, so blood clotting is not an issue
.

What’s with the Protonix? I take Aciphex, and I brought it with me. What do you mean I can’t take it because it wasn’t prescribed here?

Why are you taking blood again? Routine? Unless you’re checking something specific, no
.

Why are we doing a CT scan? If my treatment will remain unchanged [and it usually did], no, we’re not doing a CT scan
.

If a test or procedure didn’t make sense or couldn’t be explained as being applicable to any symptom or condition I was experiencing, I refused it.

The second day in the hospital, my surgeon instructed my nurses to take me off my chemo. My weight was down to 137 pounds, I was on my second day without food, and they already
had me on a bowel cleanse for a fifth experiment they wanted to perform.

What does it hurt for me to continue taking the medication that’s keeping the cancer asleep?

In short, their answer was nothing more than “protocol.”

“You know, a few days off the chemo probably won’t matter anyway.”

Probably won’t matter? Really?! Well, if you’re that certain, then how can an idiot like me possibly argue with that logic?

I lost it.

When the nurse retreated from the room and I was alone with my thoughts, I felt a wave of emotion sweep over me, as if months of pain, misery, and helplessness came pouring into my mind all at once—great anger, and then an uncertainty and fear that seized my throat in a vise. I felt as if I were being treated like a five-year-old, and I suddenly felt like one. I burst into tears and punched the bed with both fists. Rather than argue with the tears, I let the emotion flow.

After taking an emotional knee for a few minutes, it seemed easier to turn my focus back to what needed to be done. I was polite, but I peppered my feedback to the medical team with “effenheimers” to impress upon them that I was and would continue to be a part of the team. I understood if other people didn’t make a fuss, but
I
was not them. (I had Kristin bring my chemo from home, and I took it without their permission.)

They sent me home a few days later with my latest Buford appliance—a drainage tube with a small balloon that was inflated inside the intestine. The intent was to stop up the hole, which I now affectionately referred to as the “bullet hole.”

Less than a week later, I flew to Saint Louis to deliver a motivational speech to about thirty veterans of the armed forces as they began their fellowships with The Mission Continues, a nonprofit organization established by former Navy SEAL Eric
Greitens. (The idea: challenge post-9/11 veterans to serve and inspire others in communities across America and help them find the same sense of purpose they had when they were in uniform.)

The night before the speech, the laws of physics somehow forced that balloon to tear through the intestine and lodge itself in my abdominal muscle.

I gritted my teeth the next morning, delivered my remarks, and then flew home and checked myself into the hospital, which turned into a week-long stay.

When doctors told me a feeding tube was now unavoidable, I again waited until I was left with my own thoughts, took a knee, and just let the tears flow. The idea of not being able to eat food—to be denied something so fundamentally joyful and social and
normal
—was overwhelming.

Since I was a little boy, I couldn’t remember crying as often as I had in that past year. As a young man, maybe I’d cried a dozen times in fifteen years, with great sorrow at the funerals of my grandparents and with joy at my wedding and the births of you boys.