ONWARD

It has been 18 months since my last post. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I blocked this blog from public view during the majority of that time. Why? Sometimes, one must remove all distractions in order to aim precisely at a worthy target.

I am cancer free. My regimen now is to do bloodwork every 6 months as well as periodic lung function and heart tests to evaluate the long term collateral damage of the chemo. They say my right lung doesn’t have the same volume it used to. But I am back to running 5 miles a few times a week. And yes, playing soccer.

You say “re-mission.” I say, “re-boot.”

Way back in February of 2019, while I was wrapping up treatment, I started a Registered Nursing degree. I just graduated, and some of my intrepid classmates nominated me to say a few words at our commencement. Do not put "speech” on the menu and expect me not to order a double portion. And anyways, these classmates are some of the best people I have ever encountered in the multiverse. Just look at them! I had to oblige.

Grainy video of the speech atop this post. Or, if you prefer an expanded readable version, carry on reading. P.S., Alyssa & I rescued a deaf cattle dog mutt named Deebo Gobi. He and Rye get along swell and are both picking up American Sign Language.

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The Speech

Hello!  Thank you Dr. Duffy, thank you to the administrators, professors, family, and friends.  And, of course, congratulations to the SUNY Adirondack graduates of the class of 2021!  My name is Charlie Charbonneau.  Like you, I am graduating today, and I am so happy to be here.  I’m going to tell you a story about why that is.  

Three years ago, I was waiting in line to board a flight in Los Angeles when I began to cough.  I’d had a chronic cough for about four months at that point.  But this was different.  Fluid filled my lungs.  I couldn’t breathe.  I was drowning on dry land.  I ran to a bathroom and coughed up thick puddles of bright red blood.  I didn’t have any medical experience then, but I knew this was a very bad sign.  I looked at myself in the mirror, and immediately thought, Jesus, don’t let me die in an airport bathroom.  And then, something terrible occurred to me: I don’t want to die as this person.  

I did not like the guy staring back at me.  I was not proud of him.  

More than that, I resented him.  Which is weird, because...

...objectively, I should’ve been proud.  I had a successful career as a TV writer, a dream I’d had since I was a teenager.  In fact, after a decade of fetching coffee and answering phones for people way more important than me, after I finally got a writing job, when people would ask me how things were going, I’d tell them, “I’m living the dream!” 

But I’m here to tell you a secret.  I was not living a dream, I was living a nightmare.  Getting to that point took every fabric of my being, and once I arrived, there was nothing left.  I had no hobbies, I had very few friends, and all I did was work.  I’d become my worst enemy.  Selfish, unkind, and untrue to myself.  Instead of recognizing I was in the wrong career and stepping back and remembering the values with which I was raised, I continued on for years, and resentment grew inside me.  I lost touch with life-long friends, I neglected my family, and I willfully destroyed a romantic relationship I’d been in since before I could legally buy a beer.  In the parlance of our times, I had become a real asshole.  

I’m paraphrasing here, but Nietsche said something like, “a man who has a why can bear almost any how.”  And that was the problem.  I had forgotten who I was and why I wanted to be there so badly.  

Pretty soon, I was coughing up blood in that airport bathroom.  A CT scan showed a 10 centimeter large tumor piercing into my right lung, pressing against my trachea, and gripping my aorta.  I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and it was literally choking me to death.   

When I was a teenager, a homeless man in Boston shouted out at me as I passed by, “Hey kid, you know what hell is?”  I said, “No, please, tell me. What is hell?”  He did.  He said, “Hell is meeting the person you could have been just before you die.  Now, buy me some vodka.”  

Lying in the hospital at night after that CT scan, struggling to breathe, I thought about that homeless man’s words.  Was I about to die?  Would I meet the person I could’ve been?  And right then, a nurse walked in the room.  She was confident, poised, knowledgeable, alert and awake, beautiful, and so deeply kind.  She asked me how I was feeling.  She listened to me carefully.  And she made sure I was breathing all night.  Before her shift ended, she embraced me and said, “I’m so glad I met you, I wish you good health and good luck.”

Less than a year later, baby fine hair barely growing back on my bare scalp after months of chemotherapy, I walked into the Nursing Office at SUNY Adirondack for my admissions interview.  A woman introduced herself.  She was confident, poised, knowledgeable, alert and awake, beautiful, and so deeply kind.  She said, “Charlie, my name is Donna Healy, I’m the Dean here, do you recognize me?”  I looked at her for a long time, and finally I realized, “No, I have no idea who you are.”

But then she showed me pictures of her children, and I remembered.  I grew up down the street from Dean Healy.  I played with her kids during those formative years when I learned right from wrong.  When I figured out not just how to be kind, but why.  Donna hugged me after the interview (this was before COVID, mind you) and she told me  never to hesitate to reach out if I needed help.  

This was my experience at SUNY Adirondack.  Full of academic challenges, yes, but I was met everywhere with support, kindness, and reminders of why I was here.  I know many of you shared this experience, and I implore you to keep this firm in your minds as you commence your next chapter.  It is so easy to forget why we’re here.  For the past few months, I’ve been working the ER.  During the long, chaotic evenings, I often hear nurses ask each other, “How’s it going, how you doing?”  Wouldn’t you know it, I still hear that phrase, “Living the dream,” and sometimes I recognize that tone I used to have.  Disdain.  Resentment.  

So, what’s the point here?  I’m not saying to not pursue your dreams.  On the contrary, you should.  I encourage you to put this diploma to use, work yourselves to the bone, strive as hard as you possibly can.  All I ask is that if you reach your dream and it doesn’t feel like a dream, but feels like a nightmare, if you find yourselves trafficking in self-deception, resentment, and inauthentic phrases like “living the dream,” stop.  Wake up.  Go back to school.

Go back to school??!  But we just finished!  That’s not what I mean.  I mean for you to remember.  Remember why you applied to SUNY Adirondack.  Remember why you worked so hard to reach this very moment. Jesus, you did it!  And it wasn’t easy.  Some of us did it because our parents wanted us to, or because our parents didn’t want us to.  Some of us did it to make a better life for our kids or because we were stuck in a job we hated.  Some of us did it because we promised our dying child we would.  Many of us did it while working full time, while caring for children young and old, or while pregnant, while battling illness or disability, or while saying goodbye to a dying parent.  And, oh yeah, you all did it during a global pandemic.  

This is the virtue of a school like SUNY Adirondack.  It provided us the resources to excel in something we loved in spite of the grave challenges we all faced.  Remember the people who got you through.   My girlfriend Alyssa, my brother Sam, my sister Rachael and my parents.  Our family members and friends.  Remember the professors who were available at the drop of a hat because you couldn’t understand atrial fibrillation the night before an exam, remember how they patiently answered your late night email questions only to wake up and take your temperature before the test the next morning.  Remember the administrators, advisors, financial aid staff, support staff, janitors and public safety officers who made this all possible.  Give them a loud round of applause.

I’ll leave you with this.  That nurse that took care of me when I was lying in the hospital in California.  Her name, and this is true, was Sweet.  I think about her everyday.  If you lose track of yourself out there, remember the kindness and support you got during your darkest hours.  Use it to light the way back to yourself.   And show it to others.

People love to say to cancer survivors, “You kicked cancer’s ass.”  Here’s the capital T Truth — none of us kicked cancer’s ass.  Our nurses did.  Now that’s your job.  Go out and do it.

All of you are confident, poised, knowledgeable, alert and awake, beautiful, and so deeply, galactically kind.  I am so proud to call you my classmates, and I wish you way more than good health and good luck.