I Wrote My Will at 26

"And my collection of geographically accurate boogers goes to..."

I wrote my will at the age of 26.  It's infused with comedic zingers, and is in no way legal -- but hey, it's a will, nonetheless.

During the period leading up to my second surgery, after I was diagnosed with cancer at 25, I wrote what would become a symbolic offering of what little I had in those days.  I wanted to have something in writing that would tie up all the loose ends in my young life.  Turns out, having lived only a quarter of a century, there weren't very many loose ends to worry about.  Though I'd heard that it's better to have something in writing than to check out without making any kind of arrangements.  Turns out that isn't entirely accurate, but I didn't know that at the time.  So I drafted this letter.  No one knows that I did this, not even my family.

At the time, I was doing a lot of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself.  I laid on the couch at my parents' townhouse, watching TV, curled up under a snuggie, slowly losing the ability to cope with my evolving circumstances.  Mostly though, I was feeling sorry that I had to leave my family, and that I had nothing to offer that would soften the blow.  The thought of dying so early, loved ones gathered around to bury me, their faces twisted in mourning, was too much to bear.  It spawned thoughts of my parents splitting up, my sister's new marriage falling apart, and all three of them slipping further into the depths of grief, never to return.  And all that would be my fault.  I would be the cause of so much suffering for the people I cared about most.

My parents were getting older, and money was getting tighter and tighter.  My sister had gotten married during the summer, two months before I was diagnosed with cancer.  Mom and Dad paid for the majority of the wedding.  Shortly after, they'd sold my childhood home and bought a townhouse an hour up the road in State College, PA.  In doing so, they signed on to another mortgage, late in life, against their better judgment.  None of this would've been a problem, had I not shattered the illusion of youthful permanence and gotten myself all genetically mutated.

"There's a pen growing out of your brain, just like this."
Source: National Cancer Institute

The day of my first surgery was the day my parents closed on the new townhouse.  I sat in the office with them, that morning, listening to small talk thrown out by the lawyer and the real estate agent, all the while doing my best to remember that life hadn't stopped for them as it had for me, and they didn't have any idea that directly following this appointment I was hopping in the car with my family and traveling three hours to Pittsburgh to go under the knife for the first time in my life.

I also knew that this was cancer, and that it could very well be terminal.  That thought never left my mind.  I wanted to reach over to the console and hit the reset button like I'd done so many times as a child, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV in the basement, controller and princess-saving aspirations in hand.  But there was no reset button in my case.  I would be forced to deal with whatever came next, no matter how horrible.

Now that I think of it, Kirby kinda looks like a tumor...
Source: Andrew Evans

The possibility that I wouldn't make it loomed over the car on our drive to Pittsburgh like a dark cloud, hovering like a silent threat.  For a long while, I was able to stare right back into its core, challenging its authority over me.  Clouds like that cut through to your soul, and wear down your courage over time, until you begin to see the world, and the possible end of yours, in a more practical light.  "Well," you eventually say, stealing a glance at the blackening sky, "Maybe now it's time to prepare for the worst."

I wanted to provide for my family, but at the age of 26, I had nothing to provide.  And I realized how sad it was that I had to write a will with no real "willing" involved at all.  The only thing of real value I could give away were the emotions I felt for the people who would read it after I was gone, and I spread them liberally throughout.  I needed to make sure they all knew how I felt.  And if I couldn't give them anything of material value, I would leave my family and friends with a message of undying love.  I didn't want to leave my family without giving them something in return.  They had given me so much already.  Thoughts of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ran through my mind, and the introductory scene where Harrison Ford is stealing a jewel and replacing it with a bag of sand to avoid setting off the trap.  My family had handed me a great jewel -- a lifetime of opportunities, love, and support, and I had only this crummy bag of sand to offer in return.  It didn't work in the movie, I thought, and it won't work now.

My 26th birthday was spent hobbling over to my sister's house for dinner, ice cream cake, and presents.  I was still healing from that first surgery, which was actually a two-fer that included separate procedures.  It was a combo situation like you find at family restaurants.

Me: "I'll have surgical combo A, please."
Waitress: "Would you like that with or without post-surgical bruising?"
Me: "Oh, I don't know.  What do you recommend?"
Waitress: "I recommend the bruising.  You won't be able to sit down practically anywhere, and you'll break the towel rack in your sister's house the first time you have to poop."
Me: "Interesting.  I guess I'll give it a go."
Waitress: "Excellent choice.  And how about a side of surgical drains?"
Me: "Hmm... I might pass on those this time."
Waitress: "Sounds good.  You make sure to try them next time."
Me: "Thanks, I'll keep the drains in mind."
Waitress: "I'll be right back with your IV and a pre-op syringe.  You'll be seeing pelicans and singing obnoxiously in the key of F in no time."
Me: "Can't wait."

"I'd like to avoid the anal leakage, if possible."
Source: Alan Light

I was uber sensitive to the situation in which I found myself.  I had just gotten through my first set of procedures to remove lethal cancer from my body.  I was just 26.  Though I'd dated a lot, I'd only had a few real adult relationships, I'd only had one real job of any import, I'd never made a splash, and at this point it was possible that I never would.  I had nothing to leave behind; I had no legacy.  My whole life, I'd wanted to be a writer.  I hadn't done much to pursue that goal, but I began to write a memoir about my experience with cancer.  And then I wrote a will.  I decided that I could write at least that much.  It was possible that I'd be dead, and the memoir would never be finished.  This will, or letter, would be my legacy.

And so I wrote the letter that would become my will, in the hopes that someone would take pity on me and see that my family survived the worst case scenario.  Because, at the age of 26, without any real prospects, pity was all I had.  Which lead me to thinking, "What should I have had at this point?"

I'll be answering that question in a series of posts that I hope will help shed some light on how easy it is to be prepared for life's worst case scenarios.  In Part 2, we'll talk about the legal issues associated with end-of-life situations, as well as what the average, healthy person should have in place.

The Wilderness Within

Sometimes you need the wilderness, other times you need to emerge from it.

I have been wandering around with such an awful resolve and sense of purpose for so long, that embracing new realities is something I'm very exited about, but it's also something scary.  Until recently, I have been braced against horrible things, and that's been my normal mode of operation.  Since 2011, there was a constant struggle in my heart and mind to return to the way things used to be; I struggled for a sense of normalcy, that slice of contentment we dream of obtaining and take for granted when we find it.  Recently, I picked up my trembling hands and I shook the sky, the covering that held in my self-limiting reality, and I took back my sense of ownership over my life.  From that sprung several things for which I can be thankful, and potentially much more.  Part of it was luck, and part of it was my decision to stop living like I had been, constantly subjugated and controlled by my developed fears and weaknesses, paralyzed by my dwindling hopes for the future and anything I'd once considered a possible outcome in my life.

I'm not sure what my message is this time.  Because I'm not sure what I'm taking from this just yet.  I think I'm starting to understand the miraculous people in the world who live through terrible things and yet still remain fully equipped to lead a fulfilling life, filled with joy and love.  Although I fundamentally needed the time I took to commit to pursuits related to my diagnosis and treatment, and solidify my plans for the foreseeable future, and I'm extremely proud of what I accomplished during that time, all of it served a particular purpose during a particular period.  The hardest part of that is letting it fuse naturally into the fibers of my heart, so that it mingles with my soul and so that I will always remember.  And then being able to let it go.  So that I retain control of myself and my direction, as opposed to following a prescribed direction based on my circumstances.  I am writing my own prescriptions now.  Certain people help, and certain events, too, but the signature at the bottom is my own.  I could fail, or be forcefully torn from my direction once again, but I refuse to let negativity define how I forge on.

I hope that everyone is as lucky as I am.  And that you all experience the revelation that you're the only qualified guide to the wilderness within you.

A Free Life

"I was supposed to die, and I just didn't.  And it kinda felt like I had a free life, an extra life."
        - Bukowski

I watched a documentary about Charles Bukowski recently.  I've always been interested in the man's words.  Although tortured and hard-earned, his views and expressions are primal, unrelenting, and pure.  He exhibits a fascinating reality, one that is unfamiliar to me in most regards, which probably accounts for my fascination.  However, I did not expect to hear him say those words, and it opened up an entirely new perspective on his life.

Because this is how I feel.  So I understand more fully where he came from now.  Obviously, this is one chunk of the man's personality, and while I identify with certain aspects of his character, I don't claim to understand the rest.  I, too, should have died, and I didn't.

There is no cure for what I have.

Typing those words is one of the hardest things I've ever done.  I literally had to take a minute to brace myself.  What else could possibly be worth worrying about?  Well, turns out, a lot of things.  Because we are not as isolated as we would like to think.  Those pesky people, all of the rest of them that live here with us -- they always get in the way of our plans.  No matter how hard we try, with our five-year plans and our ten-year plans, there are always things that derail us.  Organic, living, loving things.

For a long time I thought I was alone.  A very, very long time.  I had resigned myself to several things, none of which I'm ready to publicly admit.  But there is a strange power in hardening your resolve, and preparing yourself for a certain future that you have planned for, absurdly, without any thought as to how easily you might be swayed from it.  The reason this power is strange, is because it isn't real.  Because you don't have any power over your future.  It will happen 100% without you, if it has to.  Ride with it, or deny yourself the experience.  But there is no in-between.

My point was that worst of these concerns, the ones that cause us the most grief, are for the first life.  The free life is for remembering how absurd it is to obsess over these things, and to let yourself be caught up in the winds of fate, and taken wherever you will yourself to go, and some places that you don't.  Some people never have cause to own their free life.  Others go back and forth between the two.  For my own life, I hope there's a balance to be found between the two; between caring about the day-to-day, and remembering how superfluous most things are.  There is no question that I must remember the wisdom I etched into my heart the day I was diagnosed.  But as much as I'd like to have my effervescent transformation solidify and hold for the rest of my days, I'm only human, and the wisdom of the free life fades.

I'd like to delve deeper into the free life and what it means to me at another time.  For now, though, I believe 2 a.m. is threatening to swallow me whole and resurrect me into another day.

And Stone by Stone, We Craft the Temples of our Hearts

My first unadulterated thought when I was diagnosed with cancer -- "My God, I've wasted so much time."  There are many facets or interpretations of this thought, but it's no mystery to say that this is my greatest sin: Time management.  In fact, the Grand Architect has seen fit to bestow upon me many talents.  Some of them practical, some of them a burden.  By the time I was in High School, I was involved in dozens of things.  And I was naturally better than everyone else at all of them.  I had a disastrous case of big-fish-in-a-little-pond syndrome in those days.  All of it was easy for me back then.  All of it except for basketball, which I hopelessly sucked at.  I wanted to play basketball in the worst kind of way when I was younger.  And I was awful.  I did it because I couldn't do it, and I persisted in joining the team every year because I thought it's what my father wanted.  Of course, that turned out to be false.  It didn't matter anyway because I quit the team sometime in middle school.  I quit because I was written off, for the first time in my life.  And it hurt.  Pain like that was foreign to me until then.  I was so naturally talented at anything else I picked up, and I had received so much praise in my life, that I couldn't deal with the fact that I might actually have to try hard to succeed at something.

I made a habit of quitting when things became overwhelming, or when I finally had to try.  I could easily have gone to school on a scholarship for multiple things (in fact, I did get a full ride for theater that I turned down, and I would have for music if I'd decided to audition).  Maybe it was out of fear that I didn't pursue any of them.  I didn't want my activities to get to the point where they'd be work, because then I'd have to be tested, and I'd have to work hard.  So I scrapped them all, and I just winged it.  Maybe I'd find something else, I thought.  Something at which I'd be even more talented, and something I'd never have to work at as long as I lived.  I would get by on my talents, and the world would recognize me for my intrinsic value.

I won't take the blame for all of it, though.  I was conditioned to avoid working hard for various reasons.  And I wanted everything I did to be fun.  I was a kid.  And kids should always have fun.  Regardless, I had never set limits for myself.  I allowed my wants and desires free reign over my life.  And I deliberately shied away from anything that would cause me any grief.  The real world was different, however.  And even though I grumbled about it, I never missed a day of work or even called in sick.  Ever.  I spent my last day of one manually labor job with an upper respiratory infection.  Even though I didn't like it, I acted very responsibly whenever I was employed in a "grown up" money job.  And that made my revelation even harder to stomach.

What had I been doing?  Working a "real" job these days is little less than indentured servitude.  There was a point, after I'd entered the workforce, where I let my "responsibilities" define my actions.  I worked 24/7 on a certain job, before my diagnosis.  In the morning, I woke up to multiple voicemails, and at night I'd fall asleep after solving the last crisis of the day.  I missed out, ruined relationships, lost touch with family, and halted progress on finding my real place in the world, all out of a misplaced sense of duty.  When I was diagnosed with cancer, I realized that it was never my duty to put my life on hold for the sake of an intangible ideal that had never been mine.  What I believe my duties are now is debatable, but right then I knew my sole responsibility was to do what I wanted without excuse.  And that's exactly what I set out to do.

My advice is clear -- find your greatest flaws, and fix them.  Discover what it is that you would admit to yourself if you were going to die.  You know what it is.  I did.  It whispered to me in the dark recesses of my subconscious long before I gave it a name.  Even when you find it, there is no easy fix.  Self-analysis is not a spectator sport.  My flaws took me unto the verge of death, and it was only through a terminal crisis that I willfully decided to deal with myself.  Maybe it's impossible to deal with ourselves otherwise.  Maybe it isn't.  My advice is to live as best you can.  That involves all of the intricacies of your soul that you call your own.  Find them, fix them, craft the temple of your heart, and carve out a place for the ones you'd like to bring along for the ride.

David Cancerfield

Hello there!  Kevin here.  I hope you're all doing well.  The plan for this post is to supply a little background.  I wanted to explain to you a bit about myself, do my due diligence and get the "David Copperfield kind of crap" out of the way.  A lot of you might already know who I am, but it never hurts to have a refresher.  Besides, a lot has happened in the past few years, and I hardly recognize myself these days, so I think it proper that I try to explain exactly how I got here.

I'll tell you in advance that I hate introductions, and I hate talking about my self.  Any time we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves, whether at school, work, or wherever, I always tried to make a joke out of it.  When it came to be my turn, I would dismiss the exercise by saying something humorous or outlandish.  I usually brought up a funny aspect of my life or an unusually entertaining interest.  It ended up making people laugh, or at the very least raised a few eyebrows, but it never was very informative.  Although, in my defense, you could easily make the argument that defining yourself as a vocation is much less informative than what I offered up.  A person could know a lot about me by the kind of answer I chose to give.  And I gave people direct insight into my character.  As if saying, "Hello, this is precisely who I am and what I can offer you.  If you aren't interested, I wish you well regardless."  

Or maybe that's an excuse, and I really just have issues talking about myself.  That's more likely than what I just said, isn't it?  Yes, it's true, I have trouble letting people in.  Well, unfortunately for me, in a story like mine, it helps to have some background.  In particular, we need a setting, a character history, and a plot synopsis.  That's a lot for one post, and a lot for me to divulge without breaking out into involuntary ticks, so I'll try to keep it brief.

I have lived an incredibly fortunate life.  My youth was glorious, high school was even better, and college opened my eyes to the nature of the world, and the contents of my soul.  But I will save all of that for a later post.  Because it's young adulthood that really concerns us, as it's the backdrop to this story.  And New York City, is the setting.  It's the place where I came into my own and tightened, for the first time, a lot of the nuts and bolts of my character that until then had careened around artlessly in my head.  I squared the free stones of my nature, and built a new and exciting life for myself.  One to be envious of.

Let it be known that I despise braggarts, and openly narcissistic personalities.  Bragging reveals more about one's fears and inadequacies than it does about one's achievements.  In this case though, it's necessary to talk about certain accomplishments in order to uncover the disparity between my former life and the one I find myself leading at present.  Showcasing my life pre-diagnosis will hopefully serve to paint a more comprehensive picture and candidly reveal the broader circumstances surrounding my fight.

By the age of 25, I had worked on campaigns, managed a city-wide project and 130 employees, written for a celebrity client, been invited to join a secret society, attended VIP parties, had a fight scheduled by the producer of UFC, been in a music video, played live shows at music venues, hung out with celebrities, and more.  I had been a lover, a fighter, a world traveler, a rock star, a poet.  There were pool parties, expensive liquor, bars where everyone knew my name.  And there were the greatest of adventures.  I explored my environment relentlessly, with the finest company.  I was on top of the world, in the greatest city in the world.  New York was more than an oyster, it was a playground for the soul.  And I quenched my soul deeply and often, underneath its lights and between the five hearts of its boroughs.  The blackened canopy of lustful nights became as much a home to me as the house of my youth.  There were one-night stands, power struggles, and drunken arguments with cops.  It was, in fact, the life I'd always dreamed of.

My New York friends will laugh at this.  Especially the natives.  They grew up there, and they know it all -- the culture, the accessibility, the diversity.  They laugh at the starstruck tourists, the transplants, and the bridge and tunnel club.  I admired the ones who could navigate the intricacies of a complex machine that I had only until then dreamed of.  And a handful of them seemed to be in possession of certain secrets, or answers to questions I'd obsessed over all my life.  I attached myself eagerly to these few, for good or for ill. What no one will tell you is that New York is abuse, from the minute you wake up to the minute you pass out, drunkenly, in the apartment you can barely afford.  Surviving there is its own career.  And those who choose to try are either out of their minds or, like anyone else, simply conditioned to their environment.  But all of us dream of something more, and wherever we claim citizenship, it isn't fair to say that it's the most courageous of us who act upon that dream.  It could the most curious, the most ambitious, the most cold-hearted, or the most dreadful of us.

Of course, life in New York, as with anywhere else, is sometimes very simple.  Sometimes the most important thing is finding a place to pee on the way home from the bars.  Sometimes the most important thing is finding out if the eyes across the room are for you.  I had explored those things and plenty more.

My last few months in the city were some of the best months of my life.  And I know this because I don't remember much of them.  The number in my savings account warmed my heart, and I had no responsibilities.  I had just finished managing a project at Yankee Stadium, and I was doing what I wanted -- I was writing.  My friends and I began to embark on a series of adventures that would put Odysseus's journey to shame.  I wasn't afraid of anything.  Nothing in the world could scare me after I'd conquered the most intimidating location on the planet.  And then, after a few months of living like a prince, with friends that have come to be family, it all fell apart.  At the age of 25, I was diagnosed with cancer.

I'm not writing these words so that you'll feel sorry for me.  Mine is just a story.  Other people have stories too.  In fact, we all do.  Some of these stories are very similar to mine, some of them very different.  Each of us lives through a torrent of abuse in the time we are granted.  And we are all of us tested -- and not in any divine sense -- for the right to be warriors against insurmountable odds, for the right to exist.  Everyone fights, and everyone's battle is extreme in its own right.  As members of the same family, we should strive to try and make the battle as painless as possible, with all of life's benefits and opportunities as accessible to others as they are to ourselves.  Because we're all in this together.  And if we do have any God-given rights, the most important of them is, without a doubt, that we have the right to be nice to each other.