Two weeks

Everyone remembers something different about him. I remember his beautiful long hair.

He was a good ol' boy. A man's man. The goodest of the good ol' boys.

His was the pickup you wanted to see if you were broke down beside the road.

He could fix any damn thing.

But he also had beautiful long hair.

I remember this because sometime around last Christmas or New Year's, we each had a drastic change in hair styles. His above the collar for probably the first time in a decade. Several people thought I shaved my head out of empathy or in honor of a cancer patient. I hadn't. But perhaps I knew intuitively what the year had in store for the folks around me.

We joked that we must've created a buzz that some corporate edict came down about hair styles.

My daddy worked in facilities and maintenance, as well. He instilled in me the need...no...the responsibility to treat everyone with respect, no matter their role, appearance, or place in life. You just never know.

I can think of no other person - no PhD, no manager, dean, chancellor, president - no one who had a more important place in our research than this formerly long-haired Southern boy.

And he knew the system. "You've gotta be in a profit-center, not a cost-center," he said with a financial analyst's sense seen rarely in biomedical PhDs. "You'll get crushed in a cost-center in this accounting structure. It's simply not sustainable."

I should've been more aggressive in making sure his leukemia was being treated at the right place, with the appropriate level of medical vigilance. Heck, we had time, right?

Two weeks later, we are standing in a cemetery barely 20 miles south of two NCI comprehensive cancer centers. Along the drive, small fields of brightleaf tobacco filled my rearview, the last choking gasps of an industry going the way of our friend.

The preacher spoke of our boy's love for God and queried where each of us stood with God today.

The footing is not too good today, Sir. No, not good at all.

The heat had backed off to 92 F since the weekend and a warm humid breeze relieved us under the live oaks across the street from the farm and the lake. A horse's whinny punctuated the preacher's reading from Corinthians.

Walking by his grave, I recognized for the first time that we shared a name. Funny the things you don't know about folks.

Back at the chapel, his wife and four kids welcomed the remaining folks for the homestyle reception in the church basement. Waiting in line to pay my respects, I watched the kids, teenagers and such, light up their smokes.

Could you tell them not to when their daddy, their uncle, was lost at 44 of a cancer that probably had little to do with the demon, tobacco?

No, kids: for today, smoke 'em while you got 'em.
................................

"Ma'am, you don't know me, but your husband kept our lab running for five years." A crushing wave of grief overcame me when I realized that he ran the carbon dioxide lines for my incubator where we grow leukemia cells from a seven-year-old girl with ALL in 1977...still growing thirty years later and we're still trying to kill them.

I held her close and tight.

"I've let you down, ma'am. We've let you down."

What do you say? What can you say? I had nothing. Nothing but what was in my heart.

"We work on leukemia sometimes, you know, but we couldn't save your husband."

She held me tighter. I was consumed by the deep, black darkness of her pain as I buried my face in her blonde hair.

"We've let you down, ma'am. We've let you and your family down. I am so sorry for all of you."

Then I held her for a very long time. Longer, perhaps, than I've held anyone in a long time.

Longer, perhaps, than she might be held for a very long time.

She was paralyzed with grief. Paralyzed and stunned, I guess, as she had been for the entire two weeks.

I just wanted to take it away. Take my part away and bring on the next person to take away their share. I could handle my share for her. If there were enough of us, perhaps we could take away enough such that she wouldn't hurt as much.

When the sunlight shined again between us, she looked up at me.

Just looked... for what seemed another long time.

"It's just that I am going to miss him so," she said.

So are we.

But nothing like you are, ma'am.

And tonight, is the abstract deadline for the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

We've got to do better...and take away our share.

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Creepy how I came across this post and wondered if anyone around here had seen it yet.

By justawriter (not verified) on 09 Aug 2006 #permalink

Beautiful post, Abel. Although I hope you realize cancer researchers are heros, and have nothing to apologize for when a patient succumbs. You let no one down---your brilliance and your friends' may save us all one day. Keep fighting the good fight. Condolences.

This brought tears to my eyes, both from sorrow and such an admirable tribute. I think that for some of us (I'm including myself in the general public, here) see cancer research as a distant, analytical process. It is so rare to see the personal side, the emotions of the researchers. No doubt, we all have a close proximity to cancer, whether we know someone who has fought it, or simply fear a diagnosis in our own future. It's comforting to see real emotions from someone searching for a cure. While this is such a sad post, it takes some of the coldness out of the way we look at research. Thanks for sharing it with us.