Joe

Come Sail Away (Live, 1996) - Styx (mp3)

Joe turned 20 in December. He will never turn 21. His four-year fight with cancer included momentary victories and at one point or another impacted half of his body. Scars on his chest, on his back, on his knee. Poison also known as chemotherapy surged through every vein and artery in his body. Below are the words I spoke at his funeral service, held at our school on Thursday, January 14, 2010.

At one point in his journey, Joe dreamt of getting into a boat and sailing into the wide blue yonder. Mostly he dreamt of going alone. Once in a while, he might find a port and allow his beloved younger brothers to hop aboard for a few days. Maybe the occasional visit from his parents. And, less frequently, he would even consider allowing one of his great friends to experience the open water with him, but it wouldn't be a regular thing.

He went so far as to spend time searching for the right boat, reading books and arranging for lessons to learn how to sail properly, hoping to make this dream come true. Eventually Joe acknowledged that this dream was beyond his grasp, and instead he "settled" for an amazing trip through Europe. He was so very grateful to his parents for giving him that trip. He even liked France except for all the French people. Although it wasn't sailing on the ocean, it was time away from everything and everyone familiar. Time alone to explore and contemplate and just be.

We are all, as humans, entangled in difficult-to-explain contradictions. Alongside this intense desire for separation and solitude existed Joe's intense love for his family and friends. He saw the kind of loyalty and love his trevails had inspired. But I think being at the center of that, and seeing it from his perspective, put a lot of strain on Joe, pressure to be or do or symbolize something big when his dreams and hopes were so very different before this all started.

O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

Joe didn't want this role. He despised it, in fact. I can't even recall how many times he spoke to me, often in the midnight hours in my kitchen, openly angry about his lot in life, an anger he earned but held in check more often than not. In our last conversation before he started UPenn, the single thing that excited him most was getting away from his cancer, making new friends who could like him for him. Not for osteosarcoma, not for the tragedy of his situation. Just because he was clever or cute or a sharp dresser any of those little things that draws one typical freshman to another typical freshman.

Part of what I think Joe hated about his illness was that it felt like he was cheating. I think he worried that his illness gave him an unfair advantage on the loyalty and love and support of friends and strangers, and Joe was most decidedly someone who felt like things had to be earned and deserved. Of course, Joe wasn't cheating at all. Joe drew people to him in ways that none of us, in a similar circumstance, quite could have. Seeing the rows of blue blazers, more than two dozen of his loyal and loving classmates and friends, sitting in that Charlotte church on Tuesday both broke my heart and lifted me in ways I can't express. I think it did the same for almost every grieving person in that sanctuary.

O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

I don't mean to give anyone here the impression that Joe was a Christ figure -- Joe would certainly haunt me with expletive-ridden screams if I did -- but anyone trapped into knowing their days are numbered must have a similar experience.

Jesus found himself incredibly impatient with his friends. He felt lonely a lot, because all these people who loved him simply couldn't appreciate what was going on. All they could do was try to sympathize, and even that sympathy stilted the way a more natural relationship should have worked. In this way, Joe's frustrations and challenges with relationships were quite similar. Conversations sometimes felt more stilted, because people just didn't know quite what to say to him. Not all the time, but enough that everyone knew that the cancer thing was in the room with them.

Joe had no choice but to carry the burden of his illness, to bear the weight of altered friendship dynamics, to be Joe Cancer. As much as he hoped UPenn would be a place where he could begin life on his own merits, fair and square, eventually even his friends there discovered the truth he hoped to hide.

The Road wasn't Joe's favorite Cormac McCarthy novel. He preferred All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian. But in The Road, a boy and his father -- another man who must wrestle with his own imminent demise -- walk a desolate and dying world where few if any can be trusted. Theirs is a horrific odyssey.

We're going to be okay, arent we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That's right.
Because we're carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.

The father, struggling with his health, convinces the boy that they are keep the fire -- the best parts of humanity -- alight, and they cannot die, because they cannot allow the fire to die.

Whether Joe wanted this burden, whether he enjoyed it, is actually irrelevant. What all of us sitting in this Chapel know is that Joe carried that fire. He carried it in his quiet, understated, sarcastic, critical, pensive, brilliant way. He carried the fire in a way that somehow managed to inspire all of us to want to or need to carry it with him.

And carry it you have. And will. Dozens of guys and parents returning for last year's Bone Cancer Awareness Walk. Those who returned to this Chapel for Joe's talk just a few months ago. Going in carefully-measured droves to Charlotte and invading his family's household to show your love and support for him. And a family, wrapped around Joe almost like a blanket these last few months, offering every ounce of themselves day and night to him.

We carry Joe's fire. This is his final gift to us, a gift that's both a blessing and a vital responsibility. He gave us a kind of fire we never had before we became witnesses to his journey. It continues to burn brightly in our hearts.

Joe, meanwhile, finally gets his dream. He captains his sailboat into a vast ocean of beauty and wonder and mystery, free of his illness and pain, free from the restraints of time or responsibility. On occasion, he will stop at a port in our hearts and minds, and he will let us visit him for a while. And then he will insist on continuing his journey but will promise to keep in touch, as he always did. As he always will.