One particular funeral stands out, because it was for an unusually bristly patient-warrior.  Bristly, and yet, the tributes at the funeral were all glowing.  None mentioned that our departed friend could have sharp elbows and pointed opinions.

I remember that funeral because Laura leaned into me during that eulogy and issued marching orders to me:  When I die and you give my eulogy, don’t do this.  Don’t make me out to be any more of a saint than I actually am!

I suspect many of you recognize the bossy sense of humor in that statement.

In a few weeks, Laura and I would have celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.  In October, we’d have marked 30 years since our first date.

In those decades, I came to know many sides of this wonderfully complex woman, and I could take hours today sharing her with you.

I could tell you stories that I’ve heard of when she was young, stuck in traffic on LA’s infamously congested freeways.  Even in elementary school, she had within her that no-nonsense self-assuredness that we would come to know in later years.  

“If the cars in front would just MOVE,” she would say, “there would be no traffic.”

Pragmatic problem solver, that she was, Laura had something of the Hermione Granger about her.  Her hand raised quickly.   It raised confidently, and it was a sure indicator that her sharp mind had precise answers to life’s pressing questions.

Stories like these abound – from her school days, her college years, and her legal career.  But I suspect that what we will all always remember is Laura, the warrior.

Many don’t like the image of cancer as a war.  Laura embraced it.  From the moment that she was told she had this awful disease, she told me she would “make it count.”  Hers was as much a call to mission as it was a diagnosis.

And, make it count, she did.

Over the course of her nearly decade-long battle with cancer, Laura had one thoracic surgery to remove part of her left lung and a handful of lymph nodes in her chest.   She had countless rounds of targeted radiation to combat tumors in her body and in her brain.  She had nine invasive brain operations.  She was given traditional chemotherapies, and targeted genetic drugs that are increasingly the standard of care in oncology.

Three times, she was the first person ever to try innovative new combinations of drugs.  In two of those instances, the combinations worked, and in both instances there are many out there now thriving because of Laura’s oncologic cocktails.

That the third novel treatment combination did not work is not a sign of failure on Laura’s part.  Rather, it demonstrates how militant and combative she was in her war against cancer right up to the final weeks of her life.

Every time Laura tried a therapy that was out of the box, she knew she was putting her own life in some jeopardy.  But, she took these risks because she knew that medical science had no certain cure for her.  The only hope of finding one – for her or for generations after her -  was for some patient somewhere someday to try new things, no matter the risk.   She did not see why she should not take the risk.  She wanted – oh did she desperately want – to be the one to find new paths forward.   But, she also knew that there was a collective and greater good to be had in the risks that she took.

Yes.   She had skin in the game.  But, she also understood that she was taking gambles on behalf of a larger community.

Just one month ago, though she had trouble speaking and walking, she went on a patient scholarship to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.  I went with her.  Just the two of us and 56,000 of our closest oncology friends.

She fell.  She stumbled.  She was tired and had sinking spells.  And, she crashed at the end of each day.  But, despite the weaknesses that cancer imposed on her body, Laura was in and out of meeting sessions.  She talked to industry specialists.   She wandered the various poster sessions.  She asked questions of researchers.

She was looking for more ways to help her own battle.   She was running out of ammunition against the enemy, and she knew it.  Her reserves were spent, and she was increasingly being out flanked.

ASCO was her last best hope.

But, I will never forget that, as we walked poster sessions together, she would look at me and demand that I take a photograph of this or that poster and that I would then send the image to X patient living in some distant corner of the globe.  When I asked whether we couldn’t just focus on saving her life, she would say, “That patient deserves better too!”

Laura’s lung cancer advocacy work was also delivered in the imperative mood.

To doctors, she would say, “You need to do better.”  To researchers, “You have to come up with newer and better ideas.”  To policy makers, “You have to work faster.”  To advocacy groups, “You must listen to the patient more.”  To anybody who would listen, “Patients deserve better.   We must do better.”

Of course, no statement better exemplifies Laura’s demanding crusade against lung cancer than the “Die, Cancer, Die!” t-shirt that she made for herself to wear to each and every session of brain radiation that she had to endure.

It tickled her that the photo she had made of herself in front of the SRS machine in the t-shirt went viral, becoming a fund raising mechanism for her favorite charity, The Lung Cancer Research Foundation.  She’d have loved the online tributes to her from lung cancer patients and advocates around the world.  In many of those posts, her friends are dressed in their own “Die, Cancer, Die!” apparel.  She used to enjoy seeing people in the shirts at odd places – an airport, say – because it was a sign that her fighting spirit was rubbing off on others.  I hope she would approve that I chose to have her buried in her own “Die, Cancer, Die!” shirt.  It seemed the most fitting thing I could find in her overstuffed closet.

As simply as she saw the solution for Angelino traffic as a child, Laura saw the way to win the war on cancer.  The disease simply had to die!

Imperative sentences don’t always help you win friends, but Laura was never afraid to ruffle feathers.  If she felt she was right, if she knew it needed saying, she never shied away from saying it.  And, she accepted the consequences of being the one who said it, even if everyone else in the room thought it but kept quiet.  

Did it hurt her – those moments when she paid the price for demanding better of others?  Yes.  And, it was my great honor to see the softer side of this iron lady for thirty years.  Slights and insults cut her, as they cut you and as they cut me.  But, if it was for the cause of truth or good, she willingly bore the stripes.  

Laura has kept the faith, run the race, and fought the fight.  Now it is her time to rest.

 

To quote Sir Walter Scott:

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

Laura has earned her rest.  Or, I should say, her earthly body has earned the rest.  It was not lost on me that Laura died on the verge of Bastille Day, the historical marker of the start of the French Revolution.  I like to think that her passing marked the beginning of a revolution in Heaven.  As one lung cancer friend said, “When she gets to Heaven, God help God!”

Here on earth, Laura turned a deadly diagnosis into something astonishing.  Yes, the disease took her from us far too soon, but Laura lived these past nine and a half years as proof of the Christian ideal that it is a weak faith that believes only that bad things will never happen to you.  The stronger – the truer – faith understands that bad things will certainly happen to you in this fallen and broken world.  But, by Christ’s cross, those bad things can be rendered agents of salvation, hope, and meaning.

One lung cancer friend tried to add up all the money that Laura knocked loose for lung cancer research during her war against the disease.  He stopped counting as he reached the tens of millions.

Another friend reminded me that it was Laura who first decided that patients should raise funds to finance scientific inquiry on their own terms.   Agitated beyond agitation that labs were still producing drugs that could not reach metastatic tumors in the brain, Laura wanted to impose new – to her mind simple – goals on researchers.  If the molecule you make is too big to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, then it’s not a good drug against a disease that often makes its way to the brain.  

I was looking back at some of the minutes from those meetings.  In one, another patient questioned Laura’s logic.   Indeed, he questioned whether patients ought to get involved in science at all.  Her reply is recorded there for all to see.  “So, we’re just supposed to sit around waiting to die in the hope that somebody else will save us?  That’s insane!”

As I say, she did not suffer foolishness.  She wanted solutions.  She wanted change.  She deserved better, and she was determined to get it.  That’s what it looks like to live a life in the imperative mood.

But, there was a softness here too.  Let me share one story, though it is but one of countless.

Several years back, Laura learned of a young man who was newly diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.  He was told he had only months to live by his smalltown oncologist.  Rather than face a steep decline and a certain death, he decided to take matters into his own hands.  He went to the store, and he purchased a pistol.

His mother posted her concern on a lung cancer blog.   She asked if anybody – anybody at all - could offer some hope to her and her family.

Laura reached out.  “Did your son get genetic testing,” Laura asked.  “No,” was the answer.  “I’m not even sure our insurance would cover it.  We probably cannot afford it.”  But, Laura knew that several of the genetic screening companies offered testing for free, and she connected this family to the lab.

As it happened, that young man’s cancer was driven by the same genetic marker – ALK – that drove Laura’s initial cancer.  And, he began being treated with the same drug, Alectinib, that Laura first used against her metastatic lung cancer.  He is still on that drug today, nearly half a decade later.

He is married, and he has two young children.

He deserved better than suicide five years back.  He deserved hope.  He deserved a life, a family, a future.  As it did in Laura’s case, Alectinib will someday fail this young man.  There are other drugs he can try.  But, there needs to be more still.  The war isn’t won.  There is still work to do.  There are still soldiers on the battlefield, and we owe them our support.

And that, I think, is the message Laura would want us to take away with us today.  There is still work to do.  If she has inspired you, if she has impressed you, then let that motivate you to leave this place today and to honor her with a can-do spirit, a take-no-prisoners attitude, and a “never give up, never surrender” approach to life.   Yes, this is a lesson to be used in the war on lung cancer.  She would not want me to release any of you of the obligation to keep that fight alive just because she is gone.  This disease infuriated her.  We owe it to her to see her work through.  Cancer, simply put, needs to die.

But, we can also approach life’s smaller problems with Laura’s tenacious determination, and, if we do, we’ll be better for it.  It can be better.  

Finally, I have a message from Laura herself to two very special people – her sons, Fletcher and Rhys.  She says:

You are the very best of me.  I lived for you.  I fought for you.

My wish, my goal, and my charge to you is that you move forward from today and live lives of purpose, of faith, of love, and of joy.

That’s a hard task that your mom has given to you two.   It may be the hardest task of your lives.  But, this sacred space is filled with people who have sustained and supported us through nearly a decade of hell.  People who have fed us mercy meals.  People who have prayed with us and for us.  People who have offered rides and beds and so much more.  This is the community that will help you live up to your mom’s challenge.

Lean on me.  I am here.  

Lean on any of those you see around you.  Your mother built this village for you.  Her strength and courage flow in your DNA.  Let the world know you are her sons!

I wasn’t supposed to make Laura out to be any more of a saint than she was.  And, so I will observe that she left cabinet doors open causing other people to hit their heads on them.  She could drive you mad on a long car ride because she chewed chewing gum very, very loudly.   She’d leave a wet towel on the finished surface of wooden furniture.   She hid food in her closet because it frustrated her that the things she enjoyed the most were gone when she went to get them from the pantry.  She had a very odd aversion to eating shelled pistachios in the car, and she turned me down when I first asked her out on a date.

I’m fairly certain that St. Isidore of Seville closed the cupboard doors.  I trust that the soon-to-be canonized Carlo Acutis was too busy with Eucharistic adoration to chew gum anyway.  St. Teresa of Avila surely would have hung up her damp towel to let it dry, and I cannot see Pope St. John Paul II squirreling Twinkies underneath the sweaters in his closet.  The Rule of St. Benedict makes no objection to pistachios, and that first date thing…  Well, that shows a decided lack of vision on her part.

There you go, Laura.  No more of a saint than you actually were.   I don’t need to gild the story or exaggerate the truth.  I don’t need to at all…

Because, what you were amazed me, and it always will.

**********

It feels too long ago now to really recall any of it with as much precision as I would like. I hardly remember where this story begins anymore. But, from what little I can remember it began in February 2015 when my mother, Laura Greco, was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer after she and I survived a car accident that had totaled the car and left us both with concussions.

From what I heard they had picked out that my mom had a suspicious lump in her lung while doing scans to check for any damage she might have suffered in the accident.

I still remember hearing the news.

My dad called me and my brother, Fletcher, to my room and sat both of us on my bed, to my irritation. Once seated, he carefully explained with empathy and somberness in his voice that mom was sick with something called cancer. I was 6, and Fletcher was almost 3 at the time so you can imagine that the message carried little meaning to me, much less to him. However, looking back, that was perhaps the most profound thing anyone had ever then or anytime since in my now 16 years.

In the years to come, the gravity of that one bit of news would creep into every aspect of my life. It would become more and more meaningful to me.

**********

I must say, I am forever grateful for my parents' efforts to shelter me and my brother from the effects of the disease. From about the time I was 8 until I turned about 13, the cross my mother bore barely ever touched my shoulders or my brother's. Of course by this point I knew the severity of the disease and its intimidatingly high mortality rate; however, I had complete faith in my parents.

I saw my mom as some sort of Achilles. She was to me a strong and steadfast warrior, not invincible; however, she was highly durable.

I viewed my dad as the mightiest anchor known to man, able to halt a freighter in the most violent of storms.

With this star-studded roster, I felt like the worst-case scenario was far out of sight over the horizon. How could that outcome -death - ever show its face? The effects on my life were small concessions which sometimes felt more like a blessing. I would routinely stay at friends' houses while my parents were off in Boston seeking a means to delay the cancer further.

I remember, however, one morning when I was in about fourth or fifth grade waking up to a rather quiet house. I walked into my parents' bedroom confused to see an empty bed with its sheets carelessly torn off as if its occupants had been forced to make a frantic dash away from the house the night before. I then creep into the living room, startled to see our family friend asleep on the sofa. I proceed to poke him rudely until he woke. I then asked why he was here and where did my parents had gone. He answered with something along the lines of: "your mom had a health problem, and she had to go the hospital, with your dad."

Confident my parents could handle themselves for more than a few hours, I thought little of the situation afterwards and proceeded on the with the next day or so until I was reunited with my dad. Turns out, my mom had almost died those few days. I still think it's remarkable how clean a job they did sheltering us, without unduly hiding us from the frightening situation and the dire consequences our family was confronted with over and over.

**********

The last, or at least the most recent, chapter of my life begins with the introduction of Leptomeningeal disease.

Now, I haven't attended medical school so forgive my naive explanation but, Lepta (that's what we called it for short) is cancer that has spread into the fluid of your spine and around your brain.

The day I received the news of that my mom had developed Lepta is one I hope someday to forget. I believe I was 14 at the time. My parents came home from a routine checkup in Boston where they'd discovered the news. They had run it by Fletcher before me for some reason that I can't remember now, but, when it was my turn to be told, they called me down to our living room for the chat.

I remember hating it. I truly hated hearing how severe their voices sounded. I couldn't sit down for more than a few moments. I was busy kicking a ball around in the nearby kitchen trying to drown out the noise until they released me.

From that day, I can't remember anything getting much better with my mom's health. The facade that I had tricked myself into believing was quickly collapsing before me.

Mom seemed a little less invincible day by day. It looked to me like Lepto would be the fatal arrow that struck her in the heel.

**********

It was Christmas time 2023. The whole family was going to one of those drive through Christmas light shows. I thought the whole thing was a bit dull but kept my feelings to myself to preserve the cheerful atmosphere. We got to a stopping point where everyone could get out of the car and explore this little village with shopping places the owners had set up. Everyone unloaded except my mom. She said she didn't feel up to it and opted to stay in the car.

Writing this now I'm still not sure why this made me so upset. I think it was because that time we spent together wandering the shops without her felt like an unwanted preview into the not-so-distant future. For the next 15 minutes or so, I was heartbroken.

After we had seen enough, we got back into the car and finished the light show. I silently wept in the back seat.

Now things weren't all doom and despair during this time. During a last-ditch mission to find a treatment option, my parents found a group of doctors out of Dallas with a new unorthodox method of treating Lepto. For the most part I stayed home in New York as mom and dad travelled to and from the Lone Star State.

My mom's former law firm was based in New Orleans, and she had grown a strong bond with the city during her legal career. She had taken my brother to visit a few years prior and seemed hellbent on taking me as well. She proposed a plan one night that involved my accompanying her to Dallas to get treatment, then traveling on to New Orleans to meet up with her old friend and tour the city.

I was a teen, and my mom and I could have a somewhat nasty relationship at times, so I was stanchly against the trip. Eventually, with pressure from my dad, and tickets to a Dallas Mavericks game, I agreed to go.

The trip started out with bickering but not about anything too monumental. Arguments over food and what we were going to do in Dallas seemed like normal stuff for a teen­aged boy and his mom. I picked up a nasty cough, but things were steady enough after her treatment in Dallas, so we set off to New Orleans.

Once we got there, I started to relax and enjoy myself. I loved the food, and her friend was more than happy to help us around and explore all that New Orleans seemed to offer.

Things went alright until the third day when my mom came down with a horrible sickness. She was like a corpse for about 3 days. She would just recline there motionless on her bed moaning meaningless words and instructions towards me. On top of this, her friend's mother-in-law suddenly went into hospice, cutting off all means of support for the two of us.

I was trapped in New Orleans.

I did the only thing I could think to do. Take care of mom as best as I could and try to enjoy myself. I decided to grab enough food for mom, slap it on her bedside table, and hit the city. I toured Jackson Square and saw some of the funniest street performers I have ever seen. I walked down Canal and Bourbon Street, witnessing a startling amount of intoxication. I felt I made the most of a crummy situation.

Once my mom's mystery illness had mostly passed, it was time to get out of Louisiana. Her friend was able to give us a lift to the airport, and we headed home.

Unfortunately, our trip had not yet hit its lowest point. I was watching some terrible rendition of Spiderman when my mom suddenly grabbed my hand and muttered something very loudly. I looked at her oddly until she proceeded to vomit the salad, she had eaten for lunch, on both of us.

Disaster!

I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but I thought about denying that I knew her a few moments.

Coming to my senses I then started to help. She had inconveniently positioned herself in the window seat so the gentlemen next to me and I had to clear out. I informed a flight attendant while my mom rushed to the bathroom in shame. I felt a little relief that another adult was going to help me until the flight attendant handed me a trash bag and a few wet wipes, then walked off.

Shocked about the lack of any further assistance, I went to work shoveling the mushed­ up salad into the trash bag while sanitizing the seats. I'd liked to think I did an alright job. But, when mom returned, she sat down on the aisle seat and skootched her way to the window, smearing vomit all over the seats again.

So, back to work I went, cleaning up this new mess. I started to hear it from the flight attendant. She was yelling into my ear about how I need to sit down, and that the other man and I had been standing for far too long.

What a bitch! Yelling at me while refusing to help.

Fortunately, I have manners, so I kept that bit to myself. Anyways, after a while I just gave up and sat in whatever was left of the vomit. Once we had arrived in Florida, I called my dad to inform him of the situation and of my heroics, which is how I still think of my actions on that flight.

Once we landed in Albany, my dad picked us up and carried us through the last stretch of the pilgrimage. He commented that we smelled odd. Not very helpful to the morale of the car. My mom turned out to have COVID. That cough I had had back in Dallas was probably how she caught it. And, as it happens, COVID has triggered a lot of her symptoms and was made far worse by her Lepto. There are, like, three studies that show COVID and Lepto don't mix. We could not have known that, as there just aren't enough people with Lepto for advances in that field to spread widely.

**********

My last few memories of mom are from the summer of 2024. It was a horrible time in the household.

My mom had become unable to walk or do many things by herself. She was mostly unable to communicate. In some ways, she eerily reminded me of herself back in New Orleans.

Thankfully Saratoga Springs, New York is inhabited by some of the most generous and gracious people you'll ever stumble across. Food, rides to places, and gift cards for essential goods, seemed to be more plentiful than the air we breathed. My dad's parents also made the trek up north to help care for her. I remember helping mom walk, fetching her food and water, and trying to decipher her almost code-like speech.

It broke my heart.

Truly, all I can think about now is that I regret not spending enough time by her side. Reliving times where we were all together, as a family.

In the final days before mom became fully bedridden, I was away in NYC for a soccer camp. I was there when she went into the hospital for the last time. I remember my dad breaking the news to me the night I got home. The next morning, I went to see her. I couldn't even make it to the elevator before crying. I made my way into her room to see her fast asleep, so motionless that nothing short of an earthquake would wake her up.

I couldn't stand it. It killed me being there, seeing her like that. I finally said goodbye, promising to see her again soon. I remember during that time that my father would always stay at her side at the hospital.

That night I was restless thinking about the whole situation. That was until I heard the garage door open, and my dad's EV pull in. That moment lying in my bed I knew. He was home because she was gone.

**********

Now there's a lot to think about in my story, but I think one statement sums much of it up fairly concisely.

Cancer kills one person, but it infects a collective.

Just dwell on that for a moment. I think you'll start to realize its profoundness.

If you take a step back, you'll realize how many other stories there are out there. My dad, brother, family, friends…. Each of them have their own rendition of this story, each equally as tragic. My mom's cancer was a disease that touched everyone around her.

Cancer never hurts just one person. Its reach wraps around couples, families, cities, and nations. And, I think that's too easily forgotten.

My mom spent a lot of time trying to raise awareness and research money to fight cancer during the nine or so years she lived with the disease. As we continue to look for a cure for cancer, we should remember that when we cure this disease, it's not just the patients with it that we're helping.