Still on the Way: A Father’s Journey to Hope

By Hank Graeser

"Your son has cancer."
What can a parent do to live hopefully after hearing words which shatter dreams and turn the course of life in a moment? Hank Graeser had to learn the answer to this question through three long years of pain and dashed hopes and through the years beyond his son Bryan's death.
Like aliens who enter a completely unfamiliar world, Hank and his wife Peggy struggle to gain their footing and learn the landscape and language of cancer treatment. Hank begins to question his relationship with God, as carefully constructed certainties come unglued and Bryan fights for life.
The years after Bryan's death are a winding road in which mourning and grief permeate every area of life including work, marriage, relationships. Wise guides help him feel the pain, grieve well, and view the whole experience as an opportunity for transformation to a new kind of living.
He and Peggy are led to reach out to other parents who have lost children. And it becomes clear that even in the darkest times, there has been a competent companion with him at every step as he is still on the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666774214

Hank Graeser

Hank Graeser, a native Texan, is a disciple of Jesus. He is married to Peggy, and they have three children. He has a PhD in chemical engineering. After a thirty-four-year career with E. I. duPont, he and Peggy began what they call “second vocation” in God’s kingdom.

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Acknowledgements

Peggy—Wife, lover, sister in Christ, and companion. With grace and truth, you have put arms on God’s love for Bryan and for me. Your insight and advocacy for our son were indispensable. Your vision for Bryan’s Oasis and love for those grieving have lighted the path forward. I’m so grateful to still be on the way with you.

Everyone who prayed so faithfully for us—I hope you’ll see the answers to your prayers throughout this reflection.

The Rev. Tige Newell—Your companionship, prayers, and presence, especially with the Eucharist, assured us of God’s presence in the valley of the shadow of death.

Those physicians who ministered healing gifts with such kindness to Bryan, and indeed to all of us—MCV Drs. Bagwell, Dunn, Foster, Heckel, Massey and Russell.

The kind, patient, and very competent nurses of 7-Central MCV—You were indeed bearers of grace, healing, and humor.

The support staff at MCV—Ken, Jean, Meg, Alma. We knew you were with us—strong advocates, able to give without being intrusive.

Charis, dear daughter—Grace is your name. You have encouraged me to write, just as you graced Bryan with sweet presence peppered by Broadway and camp songs you sang with and to him. Your example of growing faith in God through your difficult times gives your old Dad great hope and joy.

Marianne Coddington—Your kindness and confidence, as well as your leadership of the Hospice of Virginia team helped us through the dark nights of Bryan’s last days and gave us holy time to walk with Bryan to the door of our Father’s house. Thank you for introducing an aspect of our son that we would never have known without your lovely reflection, The First Sounds in Heaven.

Jill Fitzgerald—You beautifully embody companioning as you counsel those who grieve. We have a good example. You and Kelly were extremely helpful in getting Bryan’s Oasis started.

Our peers, parents like us who face the same abyss—Your repeated examples of courage, hope and faith have lifted our heads and hearts. You said much without words.

Deep thanks also to those who have read and offered comments on the initial manuscript.

Christine Eaton, you know the territory of loss and suffering, and you read with heart and mind not often combined so well in such a lovely person. You offered gracious encouragement well mixed with incisive comments to improve the flow and tone of a recovering engineer’s attempt at writing. May the peace of Christ be always with you.

Jeff Smith, longtime friend in Christ and storyteller extraordinaire, you helped me keep to the story.

Aaron, dear son, thank you for constantly asking, What do you mean?, then listening to my answer and responding, "Well, why don’t you say that!"

John, my brother, I’m grateful that you read the manuscript with such insight. Your comments and thoughts help me reach a wider audience with this story of God’s love. I am so glad you are my brother. It is a joy to see you employ the redemption you have found and the experience you have gained for my good and that of many others.

Lynn Coffey, neighbor up the mountain in Nelson County, your practical take on getting a book together was helpful and encouraging advice from a published writer and author.

Marilyn McEntyre—You are an editor with warm insight and consistent encouragement, a rare combination. Thanks for your gentle, infectious enthusiasm and reminder that this story needed to be told. Your incisive words about Peggy’s grief, as only a mother can grieve, excised my selfish words and gave her a chance to speak. I am so grateful for all you gave to the manuscript, and the chance to work with such an accomplished person.

Finally, to you, Lord God—Father, Son, Spirit. Overarching all these mercies, undergirding all this love, encompassing all this healing, Companion in all the pain, you stand with open arms. Thank you for your gentle touch, your steadfast love, your comforting, corrective and authoritative words, and your mercy.

How merciful the workings of your grace,

Arousing faith and action my soul would never face

Without your matchless mercy and your grace.²

2 . Prebble, Sherrell, and Owen Barker, Morning Psalm, in Pulkingham and Farra eds., Cry Hosanna,

11

, verse

4

. Used by permission.

Introduction

. . . But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. . . . We hear about those as just went on—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. . . . I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into? I wonder, said Frodo. But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale.

³

One hundred and ninety-eight. An engineer by nature and training, I counted the stairs again and again, just to check the result each time. 1, 2, 3 . . . 196, 197, 198. Right! Again! I’m in control! I climbed for physical exercise and the clear air, highly preferable to a stuffy, crowded elevator. Often, I wondered, as Sam Gamgee did in the passage above, what sort of a tale I had landed in and what its end might be. Sometimes I raced the elevator up. See, I’d say to myself, you have power, you won. Occasionally, I just went on without thinking because this was the next thing to do. Just plodding on is sometimes comforting to me, and I wanted comfort. Most of my climbs were undertaken after a day’s work. Often, I trudged up the stairs, not so much exhausted by work, just sad, fearful, and resigned. A slow climb allowed questions to resurface and resonate. Why do I have to climb these steps? What will greet me up there? I tried diversionary mind games to avoid those questions. If I can take them all, two at a time, without stopping, then it will be OK.

One hundred ninety-eight steps from the ground floor of the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) hospital to the seventh floor pediatric ward. The climbs were innumerable. The number of steps is indelible. My wife Peggy and I, along with our children Charis, Aaron, and Bryan, had moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 1980, but the big downtown trauma center and teaching hospital was unfamiliar to us until eighteen-year-old Bryan was diagnosed with cancer in January 1995. We spent many hours in that hospital over the next three years as he endured fifteen surgeries and more than ten two-week sessions of twenty-four-hour, in-hospital chemotherapy. Osteogenic sarcoma,⁴ a bone cancer, had begun in his rapidly growing left femur, just above the knee joint. Bryan was a pediatric patient because the virulent disease that assaulted him normally appears in puberty. Pediatric oncologists treat it best. So, I climbed to the seventh floor to see him through his cycles of sickness and recovery.

Those long weeks and months stretched into years as I hoped for a cure that was not to be. All the treatment, hopes, prayers, and even stair climbing seemed in vain when Bryan departed. There were many whose words stayed with me during that time, among them Gerald Sittser’s:

. . . it is possible to live in and be enlarged by loss, even as we continue to experience it. . . . Response involves the choices we make, the grace we receive, and ultimately the transformation we experience in the loss.⁵

He knew whereof he spoke: he had suffered the catastrophic loss of a mother, wife, and child in an accident.

There are three primary colors and only sixteen notes in a musical scale, but their combinations are endless. Each painting, photograph, or musical work incorporates the elements in a different way. That’s how it is with each story told about the loss of a person dear to us. Perhaps in this story about the choices we made, the grace we received, and the transformation we experienced, you will hear a new melody or see a color you haven’t noticed before. Maybe you will find companionship and encouragement.

I cannot say I know all there is to know about grief or have suffered the greatest pain ever. There was enough pain, though, and I had to make my way through it as best I could, to find some kind of meaning and purpose. Comparing losses is not helpful. It takes so much emotional energy and can lead to pride (Mine was so much worse than yours. What are you complaining about? I’m the only one who has suffered a loss like this). Or comparison can lead to despair (There’s so much suffering! We’ll never survive this. This is the worst thing that could happen to anyone.) Losses simply are, horrendous to each person, irrespective of circumstances.

My primary companions in this story are Bryan and Peggy. So, it’s really our story in Part I. It began the day life changed for us irreversibly. On January 2, 1995, our primary care physician informed us that Bryan had cancer. That day began an intense struggle for Bryan’s healing. For three years, we asked people to stand with us, encourage us, and pray with us. In return I felt it only right to thank them, encourage our fellowship in faith and hope, let them know how we were faring, then ask them to continue with us. This was before the days of email and social media, so we stayed in touch with a series of twenty-three letters written about six weeks apart. Writing them was one way to pause, lift my head from the rocky, slippery trail, and in a mysterious way transfer some of the burden to those willing to share it with us. The letters are included, slightly edited, as mileposts for those years from January 1995 to January 1998. Text surrounding the letters is not strictly chronological, but contextual, as I reflect on what I wrote then and add facts and feelings that would not fit in a one-page letter. I tell the story behind the letter—what I could not say, did not want to say, or did not know to say. Latent memories are there also. They have emerged as I re-experienced the time around the letter writing.

Part II tells our story from January 1998 after Bryan’s death to April 2007. There I reflect on dimensions of that intense nine-year journey of learning and choosing to grieve well, receive grace, and allow ourselves to be transformed through grief and mourning. Grief is the inner reaction in soul, spirit, and emotions, to the fact of loss. Mourning is the outward expression of grief—in body, actions, and speech. I was astonished by the range of mourning: from emotional and physical pain so intense that everything else had to stop, all the way to quiet moments punctuated by a tear, right in the middle of work or at the grocery store. The pain and intensity of mourning has abated but not due only to the passage of time, as you will see.

But grief? It is always there. In the words of a grief counselor from Hospice of Virginia, the organization that helped us with warm, caring, insightful, and practical presence through Bryan’s last days, Hank, grief will become a familiar companion. It has turned out to be so. The empty space is always there. The amputated limb never stops being felt.

After Bryan’s death, events were no longer driving me. No more chemo, no more surgery. The bills, insurance, and financial tasks were over. Back to work as normal. Normal? Normal was never going to return. The challenge of grief became apparent. I would have to learn an entirely different way of living. There are many ways of dealing with grief, including an inordinate number of bad ways. Bottle it up. Run away from every thing or person that reminds us of it. Work to exhaustion in a vain attempt to put life back together the way it was. Find numbing distractions. Or just give up and suffer in silent isolation where bitterness grows and corrodes us. Not that I wasn’t tempted by all of them, but there is a better way. I will try to share with you how I grew as a man through this loss. Since this is a shared story, you will also hear Peggy’s reflections on the experience of grief and growth.

3

.

Tolkien, Lord of the Rings,

739

.

4 . Osteosarcoma (also called osteogenic sarcoma) is the most common type of cancer that starts in the bones. The cancer cells in these tumors look like early forms of bone cells that normally help make new bone tissue, but the bone tissue in an osteosarcoma is not as strong as that in normal bones. Most osteosarcomas occur in children, teens, and young adults. Teens are the most affected age group, but osteosarcoma can develop at any age (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/osteosarcoma/about/what-is-osteosarcoma.html). In

1995

, the published survival rate for osteosarcoma that has spread like Bryan’s from knee to lung (distant) was

20

percent. Currently, according to the American Cancer Society, the distant survival rate is

24

percent, based on data from people diagnosed from

2012

to

2018

(https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/osteosarcoma/detection-diagnosis-staging/survival-rates.html). Although it is rare, this kind of cancer is virulent and aggressive, very serious, and life threatening if it has spread.

5

.

Sittser, Grace Disguised,

18

. Emphasis mine.

Part I

Our Story

1

On the Spot

Everything Changes in an Instant

A day that began like any other ended like no other.

I woke to the smell of coffee on January 2, 1995, at our home in Chester, Virginia. Since January 1 was a Sunday, I lay in bed and relished the fact that I had a New Year’s holiday from my work as a chemical engineer at duPont’s large manufacturing facility in Richmond. It was also the first school day after the long Christmas break. Peggy walked upstairs and opened the door to the room where our only at-home child, Bryan, was still fast asleep, as would be expected of a senior in high school. In her best drill-sergeant-mother voice she commanded, It’s time to get moving, Bryan. He muttered a brilliant, sleepy-voiced reply, "I am moving, Mom . . . microscopically. Soon both Bryan and I began to move macroscopically to shower and coffee, respectively. My first sip of coffee at the breakfast table was tastier than normal, given a day ahead without a schedule. Bryan, still sleepy, clomped down the stairs to the kitchen then poured a quick bowl of cereal. How’s the knee? I asked. It hurts a bit, he replied, but I’ll be OK." I watched through the kitchen bay window as Bryan limped down the steps to the car, off to school. Peg and I finished our breakfast then retreated to our quiet places, she to a bedroom nook upstairs and I to my study downstairs. The feel of a beloved book in my hand, the aroma of coffee wafting from the cup nearby and a warm room boded well for a great day off. I relaxed, read, and meditated for hours. It was an introvert’s heaven.

An introvert’s hell is a ringing phone. It jarred, interrupted, and irritated me. Peggy answered it. She called from upstairs Hank, it’s Dr. Smithson. He wants to talk with both of us. As our primary care physician, he had been in consultation with orthopedic specialists about an MRI of Bryan’s left knee. Pain and swelling had been apparent since the previous August. Numerous doctor’s visits, rest, and anti-inflammatory medication had not made any change. X-rays showed nothing. Finally, in December, Peggy had insisted on a more detailed examination. I wondered why Peggy couldn’t talk with the doctor and relay the results, which I expected to be a torn ligament or the like. Oh, well, I’m already interrupted, I reasoned. I picked up the downstairs phone.

Dr. Smithson began, We have had the MRI results since before your Christmas trip, but we decided to wait until you got back to discuss them with you. Good, I thought, there’s nothing urgent. Then he came straight to the point. "There appears to be a lesion⁶ in Bryan’s leg. He was trying very hard to make it less of a hammer blow to us and not to say cancer." But immediately we both knew what he meant.

Like the space shuttle Challenger explosion, what seemed to be normal progress in our planned mission of life was obliterated in a moment. Those who have seen the newsreel pictures of shocked disbelief and anguish on faces of the crew’s families in the moments after they witnessed the explosion would have recognized the same in us. At that second it felt like an electric shock, combined with searing intuition that we had been swept onto a path which offered only suffering and pain. Grief began right then. Experts call it anticipatory grief.

We talked with Dr. Smithson about fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure we asked him the same questions four or five times. We made him repeat the words we couldn’t believe we were hearing. As they sank in, my heart began to pound with an elemental fear, coupled with a growing sense of numbness. We had celebrated the last Christmas of our old life. The facts Dr. Smithson gave us and the next steps of treatment he outlined finally penetrated our instinctive barrier of disbelief. Longer periods of silence punctuated the conversation. Finally, we said goodbye.

We ran for each other. I felt Peggy’s arms tight around me as her tears dripped onto my pajamas. We held on and cried. I was dumbfounded, terrified at what this would this mean. I spoke the first words: Let’s pray. We knelt. Our prayer wasn’t very erudite, long, or deep. We simply bowed our heads in silence for a moment, then looked up, Lord, we will trust you in this. Amen. We had no idea of what was to come, only foreboding. Only years later did I recognize how crucial that moment was. That first, automatic response set the tone for all the days going forward. The choice was before us. Would we turn toward our fear, pain, grief, and disappointment, admit our powerlessness, and ask for help from God? Or would we try to be self-sufficient, switch to fix-it mode and seek refuge only in modern medical technology and the advanced treatment techniques that were readily available? We did use those means—they are good; there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them. But the problem with self-sufficiency is the self part. It would mean we alone, by relentless effort, were responsible for the outcome. We did in the coming months see others who were in treatment alongside Bryan who bore that terrible load alone. Our hearts went out to them. We realized that if we had done the same it would become a habit, then a powerful source of continual worry, frantic searches for better treatment, heavy guilt, anxious badgering of medical personnel, sleepless nights, and deepening depression. Our prayer that day, Lord, we will trust you in this. Amen, sealed our decision to look beyond exclusively self-dependent strategies. We chose to work alongside a power greater than ourselves.

The magnitude of our unreserved decision was not clear in the shared silence after our prayer on January 2. It didn’t feel grandiose, lofty, or religious but simply real and humbling to kneel and pray. Without knowing it, we planted a mustard seed of trust that would grow to a large tree.⁷ This did not mean that we could abdicate responsibility and leave it all in God’s hands. We had to go on from that day, rearrange our schedule and work. We had a vital part to play, to seek healing by medical means, engage, encourage, and wait with assurance that Bryan’s life had always been—would always be—in God’s hands.

It was a long day to keep that terrible knowledge to ourselves. We had agreed with Dr. Smithson to come with Bryan to his office the next day so we could hear the news as a family. We were called from the waiting room then followed the nurse back to an examining room where Dr. Smithson was waiting. Bryan was stunned at the MRI picture. He clearly saw the large mass in his knee. He listened to what it meant, as well as the probable course of surgery and chemotherapy. In an instant, he caught the implications. At 18, his whole life had been violently restructured. That reality pierced to his deepest hopes as he asked, through tears, Will I ever be able to have children? With hope, but no ability to see the future, we assured him that he would. What else would we say?

Still in an emotional and mental fog, we drove directly from the doctor’s office to St. Mary’s hospital emergency room for diagnostic tests. I was grateful to get there safely. I couldn’t remember the thirty-minute drive. Among the tests was a needle biopsy of the bone. Just the description gives me shivers. I was allowed to see Bryan right in the middle of the procedure. As the procedure room door opened, Bryan sat there with what looked like a massive stainless-steel tube protruding from his knee. It was surreal to hear loud laughter with a lively conversation in progress. As the doctor took samples, Bryan talked, smiled, and exchanged jokes with him. Evidently the anesthetic worked. Bryan had taken his first step down an unknown