Cancer journey … and beyond …
In Memory
Sam’s service was held on Nov. 23rd, 2024 at Westwood Church in Prince George. It was a beautiful service with an incredible amount of support from people in-person and online.
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Oct. 8, 2024. Our most loved mighty warrior has gone to be with Jesus.
Today, in the early morning
Tina and I sat with Sam.
Despite his body being
racked with disease
and his near inability to communicate,
We had a beautiful time of sharing with him.
We expressed our love,
our pride,
the joy of life that we had with him.
In that time
We gave him the freedom
to let go,
to move on.
Tina and I saw it.
The precise moment, 7:10am, that
He moved beyond our reach.
without fear
without pain or suffering.
Courageously he let go of us.
And jumped into the eternal
Love of God.
Loved and mighty warrior.
2008-11-25 – 2024-10-08
Post: Integrity, Loss and Restoration
April 14, 2025
Integrity has always been one of my/our core values. That what I do and say aligns with what I think and believe. Yet as I reflect on my current state of life I am left to wonder if I have fallen into a dual-life: One life of loss; the other life of finding a new way of living. These lives don’t seem to align and this incongruent-living can lead to feelings of guilt. I think I have this sorted out better now … the thoughts below were part of doing that.
Why is it that all these months later that the pain of loss seems to grow. This is likely a wave. The emotional waves remain strong rising to the same highs and lows… though the violence of the transitions are not always as sharp.
Over the last month there have been many days that I need to spend time crying before I continue on with the rest of my day. There is no right way to cry. My cries are quiet as tears escape my eyes. In contrast, Tina’s cries can be wails. Our individual responses to grief are consistent with who we are and though we grieve individually, we also grieve together.
Despite these grief-pains we continue to push on – to try to live life. Tina continues to volunteer at Sam’s school. She has loved connecting with the staff, other parents, and especially with Sam’s classmates during their lunch break once a week. This lunch-club is a highlight for her as well as the students. Tina remains Tina – pouring out love to people.
In general, I have been able to enjoy my work – now at ~3/4 time. I have a great team, and we take on interesting and challenging problems. Earlier this week we had a day filled with meetings with other organizations. I could not help but enjoy them, all the different conversations and the ideas exchanged. I know Sam would have been proud to hear about it – he was always proud of his working-Dad. To have a day like that can result in an emotional backlash and by the end of the day I faced an emotion that has been more and more common.
I felt guilt. Guilt when I enjoy my work. Guilt when I I find joy in life. Guilt when my grief-pains fail to hold me back from living. Reflecting on my day filled with meetings, unless people knew our story, I expect no one would have been able to tell that anything was wrong. But Sam is gone and therefore everything is wrong.
Two spheres
Do you see it? The dual-living?
One life where we learn to have joys, find satisfaction in tasks, where we seem to live well without Sam. The other life with our loss is near-all-consumingly-present and to which I now add feelings of guilt. It has been hard to accept the conflict/ dissonance of these two ways of living. It seems like I am not being true – that I lack some level of integrity.
I discussed these ideas with my counselor, and that was a really freeing session. In their practice they have a model of grief that lines up incredibly well with what I have been experiencing. Their model of grief presents the need to live in two spheres: one sphere of loss, and the other is the sphere of restoration (i.e. restoring/rebuilding life-without). As we work through our grief it is neither possible or healthy to live in one or the other. Rather we must discover the freedom to move between these spheres.
I had been mistaken, the integrity of living is not in living in one sphere or the other (loss or restoration). Rather living with integrity is in allowing ourselves the freedom to move between our grief and the life we are rebuilding now.
As I reflect on our journey since losing Sam, I see the early times when our time was dominated by loss and only with extreme effort and guarding of our hearts was it possible to exit that sphere for simply a few hours.
These days, I am finding it easier to move between these spheres of loss and restoration. It is not possible to remain in loss – for to do so would be to deny living. Yet it is not possible to live without the loss. We must find more of a freedom to move between our lives-now and the grief of losing Sam and our life with him.
In our early grief it was not possible to live outside of the sphere of loss. Now I find I can also have hours in a sphere of living now. Though there are times when the pain of loss remains undeniable we are learning to move between the loss of our life that was, and restoring our new life in the here and now. I am learning that it is possible to visit loss and return to my now-life more on my own terms.
Victories and Heart Aches
Thankful that we are finding space for joys in the sadness.
We remain in the waves on a daily basis but we are also engaging in the world. We are cared for. We are having great days – Oh yeah.
Our hearts remain tender. It remains easy to get taken down by grief-pains.
We are thankful for the extraordinary effort of friends and family to gather around us to care for us.
We are thankful for many messages of care and solidarity with us as we grieve.
We are thankful for many special messages reflecting what Sam has meant to people.
We are thankful for the simple precious moments we had with Sam.
We are mindful of friends and families – those that remain in the fight to see their children through incredible health challenges (cancer or other). We hope with you and we will continue to celebrate your wins!
We are mindful of friends and families – who have seen their children die. That they are in similar grief storms. We grieve with you. Our hearts break again for your loss.
Our hearts ache. We grieve. Yet Sam is free of disease.
Support
Sam’s life has been saved numerous times because people have donated blood or bone marrow. Consider becoming a donor. Perhaps you can save someone’s life!
Financial Support
Here we include options to provide financial support including: cancer research at the BC Children’s Hospital, the Ronald McDonald House, Friends of Children (support for families from Northern BC), or to support us directly. We have been blown away by the generosity of so many. We also love the support provided in words of encouragement. Please feel free to send us notes of encouragement. It is impossible to thank you all enough.
