It has taken me a while to bring myself to write this. It hurts too much too often, and I wish it was not true. My mother passed away August 12th, 2015. It was in the evening. My wife and I, my younger brother and his wife, my sister and my father were all in the room when she went. My older brother had stopped by earlier that day to say goodbye. She was 67 years old.
It was the hardest thing I think I have ever experienced. I wept.
...Well, we had her funeral out of state. She wanted to be buried next to her parents in Idaho Falls, ID. With the proper permits acquired, my father had her loaded into her casket and into the back of a Uhaul truck. The smallest kind that has the enclosed back. We drove her across state lines. I thought about editing down what I said at her funeral. I would have done to hide religious beliefs because I don't like to put it all out there for others to see. But I think I will leave it as I said it. It was honest and heart felt. I would not want anyone to think any different.
I am driving through the high plateau of Eastern Oregon and Idaho with my parents. I have always loved the patchwork landscape of farm country. Seeing the gold of dry wheat, cattle, irrigation canals and massive sprinkler systems. There is something heartwarming about it to me. It brings peace to me. There are a lot of family memories in these long drives. Not that we ever really stopped or did things along the way, but every summer we would drive to Idaho Falls, as a family, to visit grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. The long drive through farmland was all part of the experience. That's probably why it is pleasant for me. This drive reminds me of childhood innocence and excitement. It was such a different life.
My dad is calculating our speed in miles per minute then per second and who knows what else in his head to keep himself entertained. Outside of a small town called Weiser, I see the Snake River. Every time we saw the Snake, Mom would tell us that it always made her feeling like she was going home. None of us minded that we heard it every year. She always said it with a little child like glee that she never tried hide.
This time is different. This time Dad and I are driving a sarcophagus on wheels with my mother in her casket in the back. This time, when I see the Snake run alongside the highway, I have mixed emotion. I smile with the thought of my mother, always so excited to see her parents. It was contagious. Now even with the fond and happy memories of my mother's excitement, there is pain. At times overwhelming. Mom's passing has brought every one of us to tears.
A few weeks before my mom passed, my family had the opportunity to spend a day playing at the beach in California. I spent hours in the shore break. As I stood chest deep in the water facing the ocean, I felt hope. I knew my mom did not have long. She was deteriorating too quickly. But I found solace in the rise and fall of the waves. I knew she would die. Like the ocean, I would feel sorrow crashing down on me. But we would rally together to be buoyed up. We would feel the powerful influence my mother had on our lives, and we would come together to lift each other from what at times feels like we are drowning. That is what my mom would try to do. She always tried to help people when she saw the need. When she saw hurt or heartache, she tried to help.
She often told me of a lesson she had at church one Sunday in Relief Society. In a group of women, the one leading the class passed out note paper. Every woman was to write something on the paper that they were struggling with. Anything. The things that came back were powerful. One woman was suffering with the loss of a child. Another a spouse. Others with abusive relationships. The trials went on. My mom was astounded at the lesson that everyone struggles with something. No matter the face we put on for others to see, we struggle. She made it a point to remind me that we are not alone in our suffering. And we need not shut ourselves off from the hands that are outstretched, begging to help us in our times of need.
When I was a kid, I decided I needed to run away. With the forethought of a child, my backpack contained maybe a change of clothes, a few toys and no food or water. Feeling unwanted, I told my mother I was leaving. She said go. I walked out of our split level house in Seattle, turned and hid under the upstairs overhang. I wept. I could not run away. I was heart broken that my mother called my bluff. After a while, I collected myself and went back inside. Mom was waiting with open arms. She had been watching from the windows above, waiting for me. She wrapped me up in a hug and I sobbed into her shoulder. I have thought about this a lot over my life, wondering what that experience taught me. What should I have learned? I see this over and over in my life as a pattern my mother would let me learn for myself. She loved me enough to let me learn the hard way.
While she lay in her hospital bed at home, I told her, “Mom I want you to stay. But it's okay for you to go.” It was a moment that helped me understand that lesson she taught me when I tried to run away. At some point, you have to be willing to love someone enough to let them go. This is how we learn. And I have to let her go now. She can't stay anymore. For whatever reason, she needs to go, and learn. And I can't do it for her.
My dad said this was/is harder that he thought it would be.
I know.
You can tell yourself all you want, it will be okay, I will get through it. But when it comes time to have her go, it is much harder than you thought it would be to say goodbye.
You weep so completely that every muscle in your body tries to choke the life out of you. Constricting until you gasp for breath, erupting from one wave of sorrow only to be thrown asunder again. An eternal struggle, life versus death, crushing sorrow with life strung from each desperate breath to the next. With time, the waves of sorrow come less frequently. I hope they are easier to bare. This is not to say I wish them to go. I want to always think about my Mom and remember how much I love her. Some of that only comes with the outpouring of tears.
Regardless of personal or religious beliefs, the passing of a loved one from this life to whatever comes next leaves those of us here gripped in sorrow. And that is okay. To grieve, to mourn, to feel the we have been shattered into a million pieces is part of what makes us human. I would not diminish it. I would not tell anyone to ignore that. It is a reminder that we are capable of such profound love that it cannot be contained by the bonds of mortality.
Maybe it sounds mean, but I always loved to tease her. I loved to make her grossed out. It was fun for us to talk about anything medical. A broken bone, intestines, weird anomalies, whatever. Especially at the dinner table. The dinner table seemed to be almost a sacred place, a tradition handed down from her father. Which of course made it that much more fun for me as a punk kid to choose that as the place to discuss the human heart that had been passed around the room in my biology class that day. In high school, I would often sneak down the stairs if she was in the kitchen. I would wait until her back was toward me then I would creep in and scream while I grabbed her arms. I loved to see her jump, then turn to see the exasperated look on her face, sometimes turning into a grin as she would take a halfhearted kick towards me.
Mom would make a cookie sheet of brownies and cut a square out of the middle. Her half heart-ed excuse was that she needed to check to make sure they were done. I liked to beat her to it. From the other room, I would hear her yell, “Hey! Who took my brownie??”
Teasing Mom was my way of playing. It was my way of telling her I loved her. Now, as I write these memories, I go through such a torrent of emotion. I still laugh at those childish teasings. Then I break down sobbing that she is gone. No longer do I get to jump out and scare her. I think if she chooses now as her time to get even, she would have the last laugh.
Children are a source of both limitless love and infinite frustration. Often at the same time. I will admit to having caused more than my fair share of frustration. I can only hope that during her lifetime, I earned even a portion of love she freely gave me.
A little over a month before she died, my parents asked me to come out their house to give a blessing to both my mom and dad. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I did not give her the blessing I wanted to give. I wanted to tell her to be healed. Instead, I told her there were angels around her, watching over her, waiting for her. They were so excited to see her again. I did not tell her that while there were many around, I distinctly saw my grandmother, with her big smile, twinkling eyes and pinky raised as she always did, just waiting, waiting, ready and eager to wrap my mom in a hug and tell her she loves her. Standing just behind Grandma, as stoic as ever I knew him, my grandfather stood waiting for his daughter, letting Grandma gush over with emotion.
I do not have all the answers or to know everything. But I cannot shake that experience. My mother passed surrounded by her family, both in this world and the next. It was time for her to go. Minutes before she passed. I hugged her, pressed my face to the side of her head, I whispered while crying into her shoulder again, "I love you Mom. Please go. Be free of this. I love you."
I have struggled a lot. We all have. I missed her instantly. One of the many ways of coping for me is a song I have listened to on repeat. It is called Move Pen Move, by Shayne Koyczan. Edited down a little, it says:
“Stay.
That's what mothers say when their sons and daughters go away, they say stay. My mother said go...
...So we just sat there. Our heads bent towards each other like flowers in the small hours of the morning, while light wandered in like a warning that time is passing and you right along with it, Bit by bit every day.
And all I could say is if I could I would write you some way out of this, but my gift is useless. And you said no. Write me a poem to make me happy. So I write. Move pen move,
Write me a bedroom where cures make love to our cancers... But my mother just motions to a bottle full of answers and says "help me go".
And now I know something of how a piano must feel when it looks at the fireplace to see sheet music being used for kindling, Smoke signalling the end of some song that I thought it would take too long to learn. Now I just sit here watching you burn away all those notes I never had a chance to play, to hear the music of what you had to say.
I count out the pills just to see if I can do it. I can't even get halfway through it before I turn back into your son and say Stay.
I could hook up my heart to your ears, and let my tears be your morphine drip because maybe it's easier to let you slip away than it is to say goodbye. So I hold my breath.
Because in the count down to death the question of "why" melts into "when". How much time do we have left, because if I knew what I know now then... Move pen move, write me a mountain. Because headstones are not big enough. My mother says stop it,
Write me a poem to make me happy. So I write this.
“Stay.”
She smiles and says, "gotta go".
I know.
Goodbye.”
I love you Mom. Please go. Be free of this. I love you.
When the doctor tells you you have cancer, it does not seem real. I was shocked and in disbelief, not knowing what to think or how to feel. You look in the mirror. You force yourself to say the words, as if repetition makes it tangible, “...I have cancer.” …None of it makes any sense.
I am a cancer survivor. Well, I think... Hmm. I am a cancer... mitigator? Delayer of cancer? I am a cancer ...temporary reprieve-er.
I was diagnosed in April of 2010. Marginal zone, stage three, Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. Cancer. Too wide spread throughout my body to be cut out. After three and a half years of chemotherapy, my oncologist told me I am now in remission. Though mine is one that will come back. I will always worry about blood counts. I will always worry about other people being sick around me. So am I really "cured?" I do not have a good answer to that.
I do not like to dwell on my cancer. Not publicly anyway. Cancer is a downer. There is the nagging fear that I become a symbol of death and decay in people's eyes. I try to make people laugh. I like to help people feel empowered. To others it may seem I pretend my cancer does not exist. Good. I try. Maybe I do because others might think their problems are more manageable if they see me doing well. Maybe it's just because I do not like to acknowledge my mortality. I don't know why.
Shortly after I finished my first round of treatment I found the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. With my wife and family by my side, the LLS became my support group. They helped me through it all. It is not an easy thing to do, either. Just the emotional side of any diagnosis is brutal. The physical effects left me lying on the floor, unable to summon the energy to move, unable to even care. Sometimes even sobbing at the unknown and uncontrollable. That is EXACTLY what I want to spare others from. I hope that someday, this never happens. That cancer is forgotten. That modern medicine renders cancer not only completely treatable, but preventable. Cancer should be forgotten, a shadow of our past.
I have said before that if I could do any one thing in this life, I would like to hold people's hands to lift them when they have fallen. Encourage them. Remind them of the things in this world worth living for. That is the essence of what the LLS is for me. It champions taking action to end cancer. More than just cancer though, it is about helping others as it has helped me.
The Light The Night event is a night when literally thousands of people get together to do that. To rally together in support of all those ever touched by cancer. It is a night that helps us see that we are part of something great. A rising tide of human accomplishment fighting to end cancer. One of my personal heroes, Gordon Hinckley said, “I believe in the principle that I can make a difference in this world. It may be ever so small, but it will count for the greater good.”
I ask you to join with me. Help me fight cancer. Please make a donation to help fund the fight against cancer. Your support helps to fund groundbreaking research, patient support programs, education and awareness programs and more. Please give whatever you can to fight cancer. Use the tool on the right to make a donation. Or, because that donation tool does not show up on a mobilized version of this blog, you can go to my Light The Night page as well.
I thank you with all my heart.
Maybe I have tried to let go of cancer. As if distancing myself could lessing the fears and anxieties that crash upon the shoreline of my waking daily trudgery. Maybe… That imagery may be appropriate as the ocean smooths jagged rock, with undetected force lets the passing of time change the very shape of our world. Perhaps it just takes time to let go.
I've not posted anything in almost a year. It's been weird. Cancer becomes such an encompassing majority of your everyday. Even when I am remission and it seems to fade in my mind, I cannot get away from it. My mother recently gave us all a scare. Thrown into that wonder of uncertainty again, this time I wondered if it was her time. With it comes not knowing how to react. What to do or not do. How to feel. Or should I try to burry it all and not feel.
If these are to be her final hours, can I put aside my own ego and focus on her? Before too long she could go, leaving my father. My father. A man from whom I learn emotion is the opposite of weakness. As much as I feel the need to put aside my own insecurities for my mother, I need to do the same for my father. A man who may be lost without my mother.
I love them both. Neither should have to suffer, either in death or in struggling to live afterwards.
I have never said this enough. I love you. And if I could take a few more years of that hell called chemo dripped into our veins, just to take it from you, to give you a few more years, years without that same hell, a few more healthy years with Dad, with my kids as they grow, with me, …I would.
But it doesn't work that way. I can't make it work that way. And I am sorry.
My mother once asked me, as she felt she was doing well while her friend was losing her battle, how to treat that friend. How do I sit there [in chemo] and look at her knowing she will not make it and I will? How do I treat her? My answer is vastly different now. Though I feel my advice was sound, I lack my conviction and fortitude of only a couple years ago. Because now it is my mother who may not reach the finish for which we all hope.
Mom, what do I say when I look you in the face, knowing I made it and you will not?
…I don't know.
At the urging of a teammate, I am making this available for purchase. This was a "self portrait" I did for the first time I was an Honored Teammate for Team In Training. The original was poster board sized (18x24-ish) which is not economical to print.
What I am offering is two products.
- A single poster print, 11x17 sized, for $40 dollars.
- A set of 10 postcards, 5.5x8 -ish, whatever the standard large postcard size is, for $20.
The back of the postcards have this printed small on the bottom,
"W. Ryan Hatch was diagnosed with Stage 3, Marginal Zone Non Hodgkins
Lymphoma in 2010.He started running with Team In Training to help fight
cancer while going through treatment. Three and a half years later, he reached
remission. Now he runs with Team In Training to fight cancer for everyone.
GO TEAM!!"
You may order as many of each as you like though be aware of the logistics of printing. I pre-ordered a limited number of postcards and can re-order if they sell out and there is still enough demand. The posters will be ordered when I get enough orders to print at the same time.
If you would like to order, do the math for how many you want and donate to my Team In Training site using the donation tool on the right. For example, 3 posters (=$120) + 2 sets of postcards (=$40) would equal $160. Click on the donation tool, enter the total dollar amount and enter the number of posters and postcards in the memo. Make sure you add you email address in the donation process so I can contact you for the address to which you want them mailed.
So your memo might say "3 posters, 2 postcards. And you rock!" I will laugh at your comment, then send 3 posters and 20 postcards to the address after we email. Simple!
As always, I sincerely thank you all for your support in my fight, and helping me fight cancer for others as well.
...And you ROCK!
"How do you deal with the horrible guilt of knowing you are going to make it and someone else isn't?" was a question posed to me in the last few months. To be honest, there are very few people with whom I have been close that have gone through chemo. Well not that I know of. The closest of those I do know is my mother, who began her chemotherapy as I was ending mine. Only my Team In Training (TNT) teammate Lisa did not make it. As I thought about my answer, I thought of Lisa. I advised the person asking to find a common interest shared between the two and do that for the friend that will not make it. For Lisa, my teammate, I ran. In frustration I ran because that is what we shared. Both participants and fundraisers for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) while going through treatment, we connected through running and our TNT friends.
Now, six months after Lisa passed, I reconsider my response. April 21st 2014, I got my port removed. It was a very emotional day. At times I was elated. So happy that I could be done with that part of my life. Worried that it was all a delusion. That I would wake up still six months from being told I was in remission, and still not knowing if that day would ever come. Time seems to become an irregularity rather than a constant while going through chemo. Some days are blurry and you are not sure they really happen. Some days are fine.
The reality of time has set in and my port is out. I keep feeling my collarbone where I used to be able to feel the tube running from the port to the vein. A slight and squishable bump under the skin but on top of my left collarbone. My chest is still too tender for me to poke and prod though the place where the prongs from my port used to stick up is now only a yellowing bruise around the healing incision line. I kind of feel that part of me is missing like a soldiers amputated limb. Obviously different as I do not want it back; I do not miss it. Still, a part of me seems missing.
Monday, while very emotional, was a very happy day. The next day, April 22nd, my mother started another round of chemo. This one should not be as hard for her as her last round. Even though it is going to be more manageable this time, I still feel for her. And I wondered about that guilt. Worse, that same day my wife and I found out another friend of ours who has been struggling with her own fight, had gotten much worse. She just found out that her cancer had spread to her brain, liver, and a number of other organs. The following day, the 23rd, she passed. Once the cancer spreads, especially to major organs, there is little chance to make it.
I have been racked with guilt since. That I am better, even if my oncologist told me it will come back, and she did not make it. What right do I have to be better? She was married and had children too. She leaves behind a tormented spouse. She was a wonderful person.
How is that fair?
...Knowing full well what it would feel like, I would gladly take a few more years of treatment and suffering if it could let her live.
And I know it wouldn't work. But if- if.
So what can I do, because I cannot allow myself to do nothing. I run. I raise money to fund the research to end cancer. I want to go one step further than curing the disease. I want to prevent it. Team In Training and all the other programs that are a part of the LLS are trying to do the same. But I found solace in TNT. My teammates lift me and inspire me when I am weak or when I want to give up. My shoes are worn out. It hurts to run. I cannot afford to buy new ones right now but I still put on my shoes and run.
I think it is the only way I feel I am paying penance for getting better. I am trying to help pay for my making it when others have not.
I would dearly love for you to help as well. Please take a minute and donate to the LLS to help end cancer. I try to make it as easy as possible for you to do so. There is a donation tool on the side of my page. Just click and donate.
Thank you.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cancer, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Cancer...
It is time to take up arms against cancer once more. I am not asking for crazy amounts of donations, though I won't turn them away ;), I am only asking that all that read this donate a minimal $10 to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team In Training. All you need to do is click on the donation thingy on the right, and donate $10.
It's that simple!!
If you donate only $10, I will surpass my goal for this season in raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). Money raised by the LLS funds research on groundbreaking new treatments for ALL cancers, it supports patients that need help paying bills, it funds outreach programs... It fights cancer! Please take a moment, donate $10, and feel GREAT because you are helping to fight cancer!
That what Team In Training is all about. Fighting cancer! Well, fighting cancer and being awesome! Those are the two things TNT is all about. Okay, fighting cancer, being awesome, and sweating like crazy as we run and run and run. Those are the three thing TNT is all about. ...but nothing else.
Thank you for all your support.
I want to tell a little story about Cheryl, one of the Pac Crest Tri teammates this season (Summer 2014) with Team In Training. In my last season with TNT, I was still going through chemo, and trying to run as best as I could. Some days were great and some days you just can't make yourself do it very well.
As a team, we were running around University of Portland and I was beat. I do not remember how far we had to run that day, maybe 9 miles or something, but I was giving up. I was walking along the route as Cheryl caught up to me. I turned to try cheering her on when without saying anything she grabbed me hand and held on as she kept running. She literally started dragging me along with her. I groaned. I laughed a half laugh half cry, and started running again. I finished the miles that day, thanks to Cheryl. I would have let myself give in, walking back to the aid station then stopping. Because my teammates kept me going, I found the strength and determination to continue.
You may not know it, but there is such strength in you. Both individually and as a team, Team In Training or not. Do not ever doubt your efforts' efficacy. By your presence alone, you give such strength to others. You lift those that are fallen, you strengthen each other, and you drag us along to victory. I cannot thank you enough for all that you do.
Go Team!
