Family Ties

On January 8th I returned home from Hawaii tanned, rested and a week into following through with my first New Year's resolution: run three times a week, 3 to 4 miles. I was feeling good. So good in fact that when I went to my Buddhist toso (weekly meeting where we chant, study and inspire each other) the next morning I said aloud to my group: I really want this year to be about serenity and tranquility. I want my family to truly achieve peace and unity. I want us to be supremely happy.

My friends understood that what might otherwise seem like a familiar plea, commonplace, not out of the ordinary, what most people yearn for was not coming from me. There was another layer to my determination. The summer before my brother was the miraculous recipient of a double transplant -- a liver and a kidney at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. How we made it to the finish line and crossed over victoriously was harrowing. But his success was like a cleaning out of my family's closet full of skeletons. Everyone emerged almost surgically altered by the experience even if David was the only one who bore the scars. We were made better, more whole by an event that nearly took my brother's life. We were a Lifetime movie in the making with a big happy ending and I'm thrilled to say that David is today the poster child for transplant recipients. Healthy, energetic and optimistic even if his pharmaceutical protocol should come with an assistant to help administer.

So you see I really meant it. I wanted us to start the year in the same warm and cozy place we left 2008 as a result of seeing the very best emerge from the very worst circumstances. We we living proof that you must never ever give up. No matter what. We were the grateful benefactors of this profound philosophy. From that experience forward nothing could shake this foundation. Or so I thought.

As I drove home I thought a great deal about what peace and consistency would mean to me -- how much writing I could get done, how much Italian I would learn, what a better friend I would be, the various volunteer positions I had signed up for -- all this great benefit was just waiting for me at the end of the drive and into my home.

Once inside, I checked my voicemail and my father had called. He sounded grave. He said something about a doctor's appointment and a CT scan. I called him immediately. He was actually at the doctor's office with my step-mom. He explained that his diabetic protocol (more on that later) was not giving him any relief and that he had requested a CT scan to find out what in the world was really wrong with him. He said that a mass had appeared on the scan and that he was meeting with the doctor to discuss. We only spoke for a few minutes and he promised to call me as soon as he left the doctor's office. I hung up and thought: well this could be anything but it's not. My father had over the last few months dropped an inexplicable and alarming 26 lbs. When he went to see his MD, he was diagnosed with diabetes -- another unusual twist because my father has never followed a diet prone to diabetes. In fact, during his recent checkup his recent checkup his cardiologist told him that he would live to a hundred.

Why I didn't speak up then I don't know. I trusted his doctor and more importantly I respected his trust in his doctor.

I sat for two hours waiting for the phone to ring. When it did my father spoke calmly and lovingly and he said "I wish I was there to put my arms around you when I tell you this, but I have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer." I heard the words. I understood what they meant. But I coudn't figure out how they had anything to do with the plea I had invoked an hour earlier for my family's serenity and tranquility.