Condemned to live

I looked at my father. Then at the bottom of my cell phone. 10:32 p.m. July 21, 2023.

My father was gone.

On Friday evening I watched my father – my Superman – got his last breath. It was a moment of peace for a man in the war for three years.

My father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2020. Some doctors told him that he had six months in the best case. They gave him all the dark statistics, told him how his body would close, and planned a future hell on earth.

At the age of 65, my father received a death sentence. But a funny thing happened.

My father heard all the negativity and he decided not to listen. Instead of waiting for death, my father leaned into optimism and was busy living with it.

He had brain surgery and carried out chemotherapy and radiation. After the treatments he raised weights or went for miles. He adapted his diet and my mother became his personal cook and did everything from scratch. My father was a man on a mission. And the price he persecuted was not only time. It was the quality of life and the best of the day.

Instead of preparing for the end, he traveled around the world, climbed mountains and drove it down, swam into oceans and even acro-yoga (if you know my father, you would know that the man would not do acro yoga). None of these options have ever been discussed in the cancer brochures.

Death typed my father on the shoulder for three years. But my father gave the middle finger, harder, continued and ate healthier.

He did the impossible by believing it was possible.

When cancer took away his ability to use his left arm, he trained his right arm to do more. To watch a 68-year-old man to teach his non-dominant arm to use chicken sticks is an art of pure determination.

When Cancer showed vision in one eye and restricted his field of vision in his other eye, he informed himself again how to read.

And when cancer did not allow him to bathe or bathe himself, even though he hated his limits, he asked for help because it was the bravest and strongest thing he could do.

I saw my father suffering and I never heard him complain. Not once.

When my grandfather – his father – died a few months ago at the age of 95, I thought it could break him. And when his four brothers had to fight him to go and talk and tell him that it was unfair, my father remained steadfast:

He insisted that cancer was not unfair. To say this would mean that his whole life was unfair and he loved his life. He only hated the disease and found it terrible. And his task was not to curse his life, but to make the best of it.

And for him it meant a simple choice: feel either bad for yourself or do something to do your life as well as possible.

My father was lucky. Sometimes people do everything right, and the disease still takes far too quickly. But with the time he had and the time he created, my father didn’t think my father took cancer.

Even when he had a week, he was in his hospital bed and asked me how we would bring him to football games in autumn. We had both season tickets for our beloved Colorado Buffaloes. They have been terrible in the past 15 years, but we have still appeared for every game and stayed to the end. My father was excited about the fall. Deion Sanders brought the first -class time in Boulder. He wanted to be there on September 9th to see the first win on the way to the largest turnaround in College Football story.

Some people thought he was crazy about taking part in football games in the hospice. For me it was only part of his vision.

Arnold always talks about vision and my father also believed in it. And his vision did not include death. He introduced himself in this stadium. And although he won’t make it, this vision helped him to go on when every doctor said he would do it.

None of you knew my father. But he loved life so much that he was not ready to see his illness as something other than another obstacle that he would overcome.

In my last conversation, my father told me something that I will never forget.

He spoke of ending what I started – as a husband, as a father, as a friend and in my work. We started with Arnold’s pump club when his health quickly declined. We didn’t discuss much about my work, but he told me that he read every email and I did something important.

When I faced death, my father believed that the world needed more positivity. If he has learned something, this optimism is the way.

Then he asked me how many people we reach every day. I told him 500,000.

Then he asked how many I wanted to achieve. I told him 5 million.

And then he dropped the microphone.

He said: “Adam, why should I limit what you can do? Where would I be if I did it if I was diagnosed?”

Man. My father didn’t always have many words, but those he had were damn good.

In the end, my father made his vision reality. He stayed optimistic, bet on himself and appreciated every day as if his life depended on it.

After seeing my father got his last breath, I told him that I was proud of him. I kissed him on my forehead and said that one last time it was nice to see him.