The Hawai'ian word for family is Ohana. It comes from the word ona which is the name of the edible root of the taro plant also called the "staff of life." Three years ago an amazing Ohana of many was born in honor of a very special boy who suffered greatly from what my deeply affected family to this day calls the Christmas Cancer.
A beautiful December day in the most awesome place I've ever spent a December, my family of three went through something so amazing that we would forever be changed. A Navy Shipmate of mine, Nick, called me up in tears from the Tripler Army Medical Center. Neil, his 6 year old son had to go to the Emergency Room in pain. By the end of that day which had started so beautiful, we learned that Neil would be spending Christmas in a hospital bed - a 5" rhabdomyosarcoma tumor had just been removed from behind his belly button.
This devastated everyone. Not just Neil and Nick's family but our entire unit. Nick was a true Shipmate with an amazing and selfless heart who everyone loved. What followed next far surpassed the impact of this horrible news and is now a part my family's core grain. My first son, John, Mommy and I visited Neil in the hospital a couple days later. Neil had all sorts of tubes and wires hooked up to him. John hadn’t been speaking long and so wouldn’t understand much of the situation in front of him if we tried to explain it to him. It didn’t matter. After a quiet pause absorbing the view in front of him something clicked that I would understand later meant he “got it”. Seeing another boy in front of him he charged right in wanting to play dinosaurs together. Neil and John didn’t miss a beat as various nurses and techs stopped by for various check-ups and adjustments. At one point Neil’s pain returned and Nick reminded him of his “magic” button that controlled the morphine drip. It made Neil cry and John sat next to him just being there.
After Christmas passed and Neil was home, Nick brought him and his family to John’s first birthday. Neil didn’t look good in his ball cap and face mask. More than a few parents and friends had to hide their tears. He did perk up when he saw kids playing in a bounce house. We were going to arrange for just him and his brother to have some gentle time in it when it rained and we had to shut it down. After the rain their hopes rose so I took what towels I had and tried to dry it out. I needed more towels so I stepped away. While I was gone Neil and his brother climbed in to try to help with some napkins they grabbed. They were laughing and running around drying up the puddles when I got back. So I just through all the towels in and tossed John in for good measure. The excitement and squealing that followed was amazing. They were bouncing around so much soaking up the water spots that Neil’s ball cap came off and so did a lot of what little hair he had left. He and John laughed so hard when they saw all the wet hairs on John’s clothes. I looked over to Neil’s mother and she was in tears seeing her son was getting to be a boy even for just a moment.
Sorrow, grieving, and misery are easy to come by at times like these and they even manage in their own way to provide some measure of comfort to the older friends and family members of children with cancer. It makes it easy to lose focus of what matters though. Not an ounce of that unhappiness, brings any benefit to the real victim, the child. Instead of spiraling inward in despair, Nick took the reins and charged outward to make something good come of this. He formed the first St. Baldrick’s team I participated in and I was proud to assist his efforts by reaching out across the island to other units for support and back to the mainland to include my friends and family back there. When all was said and done and the hair was being swept up, the event more than doubled its goal hitting six figures for research. More importantly however was the spirit of community and compassion that enveloped the lead up to and actual execution of the event. It plant a seed in every participant there that continues to pay it forward today. On that day my family of three became and Ohana of many.
Neil has since earned the Purple Heart for his Beads of Courage and the treatments are distant memory for him and his family. What remains is the story of how Nick led his family out of that tragedy by getting out of the way of a child’s natural spirit and desire for happiness. He instead channeled the vast expanse of love and compassion surrounding the incident into something far greater than any imagined could come from that very unfortunate Christmas.
With special thanks to Momma Rowles, tomorrow on my 40th birthday, John and I will be joined in our family tradition for the first time by my youngest son Jacob in getting all the hair we’ve been growing since Christmas shaved off. Please come and join us in celebration of the spirit of life Nick and Neil have gifted our great Ohana with.
Team JJ are proud to be part of the St. Baldrick's Foundation – a volunteer-driven charity that funds more in childhood cancer research grants than any organization in the world except the U.S. government – more than $14 million in 2010 alone. Join us and Let's CONQUER!
With head-shaving and other fundraising events, this volunteer-driven charity funds more in childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the U.S. government. Your gift will give hope to infants, children, teens and young adults fighting childhood cancers. So when I ask for your support, I'm really asking you to support these kids. Thank you! Click "Make a donation" to give online, or donate by phone or mail.
