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This should have been a happy moment for me but instead, I found myself struggling to hold back tears. Dad would’ve been so pleased if he could have seen what I’d done. He’d been my support and my source of strength, my guiding light. I was so shocked when he died.

You see, I’d always assumed I would die before my father.

Most people find talk of death unsettling, but I’ve lived with the threat of it for so long, it doesn’t have that effect on me. The possibility of death has been my reality for the last fourteen years, and I’m as comfortable talking about it as I am the weather.

My first bout with cancer came the summer I turned sixteen. I’d gone to pick up my driver’s license that day in August. I’d successfully passed both the written and the driving tests. My mother let me drive from the licensing office to the optometrist. It was supposed to be a routine appointment—I was having my eyes examined before the start of my junior year of high school. I had big plans for the day. As soon as I got home from the eye doctor’s, Becky and I were going to drive to the beach. It would be the first time I’d taken the car out by myself, and I was looking forward to driving without my mom or dad or my older sister.

I recall being upset that Mom had scheduled the eye appointment right after my driving test. I’d been having some problems with headaches and dizzy spells, and Dad thought I might need reading glasses. The idea of showing up at Lincoln High School wearing glasses bothered me. A lot. I was hoping Mom and Dad would agree to let me wear contact lenses. As it turned out, impaired vision was the least of my worries.

The optometrist, who was a friend of my parents, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time staring into the corner of my eye with this horribly bright light. He asked a lot of questions about my headaches. That was almost fifteen years ago, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on his face as he talked to my mother. He was so serious, so somber … so concerned.