Three days into my second clinical trial treatment and, once again, absolutely nothing interesting is happening.
Just like the first treatment, I really don’t have any symptoms to speak of. So when people ask me the question I get asked most often—“How are you doing?”—I don’t have much of an answer beyond, “Still good.” I understand why people ask, and I genuinely appreciate that they do. Unfortunately, I don’t have any new medical data to give you. I don’t know if the treatment is working. I don’t know how effective it is. I don’t know much of anything yet.
What I do know is that I still feel good. I’m exercising hard most days, usually outside, in the Texas heat, while doing my best not to die of heat stroke. The irony of dying of heat stroke before cancer would be, well… ironic.
I know I said in a previous post that I didn’t really want to talk about cancer all the time, but treatment is important, and I know it’s what most people want to know about. That and Tugboat. For those of you keeping score, Tugboat remains fat and happy.
My nephew came into town last weekend to stay with me, and Tugboat completely lost his mind with happiness. My nephew was considerably less interested in Tugboat than Tugboat was in him, but that didn’t seem to matter. Tugboat was thrilled just to have another human being around who might possibly be willing to pet him.
It was a good weekend. Even if kids are basically energy vampires.
Having him here got me thinking a lot about my own childhood and, specifically, my Uncle Marvin.
When my dad died of cancer, I was six years old. My older brother was eight, my sister was four, and my youngest brother Micah was two… I think. I honestly don’t remember the exact ages anymore.
What I do remember is spending the summer in a little country town outside of Houston called Manvel with my Uncle Marvin after my dad died. My mom had a lot to deal with. Four kids, a husband who had just died, and one of those kids being a six-year-old version of me was probably more than anyone should have had to handle at once.
So Uncle Marvin stepped in.
He spent far more time and effort than I could possibly have appreciated at six years old making sure my sister and I were happy, unburdened by the weight of a parent’s death, and loved unconditionally no matter what.
I remember the little things. He let us drive his truck down country roads. He took us to Astros games. He let us jump on his old, creaky trampoline. He drove us around his giant country yard on a three-wheeler, which was basically a death trap considering how easy those things were to tip over.
And here’s the thing I didn’t understand then: We didn’t think about any of it. We didn’t think about cancer. We didn’t think about death. We didn’t worry about what was happening to our family. We were just kids having fun.
Looking back now, I realize that summer was probably one of the darker periods my family ever went through. But that’s not how I remember it. I remember it as a good time. And I think that’s because Uncle Marvin made it one.
That realization stuck with me when my nephew came to visit. I found myself trying to give him the same thing Uncle Marvin had given me without ever realizing how valuable it was.
I wanted him to have a weekend where he didn’t have to think about my cancer. I didn’t want him worrying about me, asking whether I was okay, or wondering what was going to happen. I wanted him to just be my nephew and me to just be his uncle. A weekend where he could just be a kid.
I don’t think I succeeded quite as well as Uncle Marvin did, but I think the boy left happy. Hopefully with some good memories, too.
He wants to be a chef, so we did some cooking lessons. We made meatballs and homemade marinara sauce, along with crème brûlée. We played far more video games than we should have. We ate most of the junk food Trader Joe’s has to offer. And then, because apparently I am incapable of letting a child have a completely relaxing weekend, I took him to CrossFit on Sunday.
I’m not sure he loved that last part. He didn’t complain, though, so I’m fairly certain I still solidified myself as the fun uncle.
That is an important title for me to hold onto. Especially now.
Because the uncomfortable truth is that I don’t know how long I’m going to be around. I don’t know if I’ll be at his wedding. I don’t know if I’ll meet his kids. I don’t know if I’ll get to watch him become the chef he says he’s going to be.
Maybe I will.
I really hope I will.
But I don’t get to assume that anymore.
And that’s what made this weekend mean more to me than it probably would have before cancer entered my life.
I realized that I wanted to make sure that, when London gets to be my age, he can look back on this weekend—and hopefully a lot more weekends in the future—the same way I look back on my summers with Uncle Marvin.
I want him to remember the good times. The meatballs. The homemade marinara. The crème brûlée. The video games. The ridiculous amount of junk food. Maybe even the CrossFit workout.
I want him to remember that, even when things weren’t easy for me, I never made him carry that burden. I want him to remember that his uncle loved him and wanted him to be happy. I want him to have memories he can pull out of his head when he’s older, when life is hard, and think, “Man, those were good times.”
And maybe smile.
That got me thinking about something I’ve written about a couple of times before.
Legacy.
I’ve said a few times in this blog that I think legacy is mostly pointless. I’m starting to think I was wrong.
Not completely wrong.
I still don’t care how the world remembers me. I don’t need my name on a building. I don’t need a plaque. I don’t need some stupid statue of me that pigeons eventually shit on. I don’t need to accomplish something great on a grand scale.
But I would like to leave behind memories.
I’d like my nieces and nephews to remember me as the fun uncle. The guy who took them places, taught them things, fed them ridiculous amounts of food, played games with them, and occasionally made them exercise against their will.
I’d like them to have memories they can pull out when they’re older and think, “Those were good times.”
That feels like a legacy worth having.
And then I started wondering about Uncle Marvin.
I wonder if he ever thinks about his own legacy. I wonder if he realizes that it extends far beyond me.
Because the things he did for me when I was a little boy going through one of the hardest things a kid can possibly go through have now influenced how I treat my own nieces and nephews.
He probably never thought about it that way.
He wasn’t trying to build a legacy. He was just taking care of his sister’s kids. He was just trying to make a really shitty summer a little less shitty for a couple of kids.
But here I am, almost forty years later, trying to give my nephew the same kind of memories he gave me.
And maybe that’s what legacy actually is.
It’s not being remembered by everyone. It’s not changing the world. It’s not doing something important enough that people write about you after you’re gone.
Maybe it’s just doing something good for somebody that sticks with them long enough that, decades later, they do something good for someone else.
Maybe that’s the whole thing.
Maybe London will remember this weekend. Maybe he won’t. Kids forget a lot.
But I remember Uncle Marvin.
And because of him, I know what kind of uncle I want to be.
Maybe someday London will be the fun uncle. Maybe he’ll take his nieces and nephews somewhere they probably shouldn’t be driving a three-wheeler. Maybe he’ll teach them how to cook. Maybe he’ll feed them too much junk food and let them stay up too late.
And maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll look back on those moments the same way I look back on mine.
If that happens, then Uncle Marvin’s legacy will have reached a whole lot farther than he ever could have imagined.
It will have reached me. And then London. And maybe whoever comes after him.
I used to think legacy was about what people remember about you.
Now I think maybe it’s about what people carry forward because you were there.
Maybe legacy does matter after all.