Remembering Dan

Today would have been Dan and Joe's fourteenth anniversary. Unfortunately, Dan passed away last February after battling pancreatic cancer. That's Dan on the right holding Riley, with Joe on the left. The photo was taken last summer when we came down one weekend to visit them at their lake house. We were still living in Chicago at the time and Riley had been with us for only a few months.

Dan was truly one of a kind and his passing has left a huge void in this world. He taught high school English for over 30 years at the same high school. Over the years he sponsored the year book staff, the drama department, coached boys swimming and fought on a daily basis to make his students lives a little richer and broaden their views of the world beyond Central Indiana farm country.

Dan didn't always succeed with the latter work, but when he did, the results were amazing. One of his former students happened to be a friend of mine, briefly, before I met Joe and Dan. Troy was an amazing artist who I believe got a little inspiration from Dan to try larger dreams than what would normally be expected of him. Troy attended art school after graduation and went on to become a set designer for The Indiana Repertory Theater and other local community theaters here in Indianapolis.

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I met Dan the spring that Joe and I worked together at the same place. I was fairly new to town, having moved just a few months before and didn't know very many people. Joe had asked me over, if I wasn't doing anything, to help them demolish an old garage to make way for a swimming pool. Believe it or not, hard labor sounded a lot better than the plans I had of making the divot in my sofa a little bit deeper that weekend.

If you've ever done demo work on a building, you can understand how gratifying in some ways it can be. And tiring. So what do Joe and I do after working hard all Saturday? We hit the bars. Big mistake. Dan was up early Sunday morning, swinging a sledge hammer against the stucco walls of what remained of the garage. I weakly tried to help for about 10 seconds, realized the the sledge wasn't the only thing pounding and went back to bed for another hour or two. By the time I got up, Dan had reduced the rest of the garage to rubble and the only thing left to do was help throw the piece in the dumpster.

That was the weekend that Dan gave me the nickname Jimmy Ray. Only he said that Ray was spelled with an E and not a Y. Anyone who ever met me through Dan after that always thought my middle name was Ray. (For those of you who are curious it's really Allen.) Dan and Joe's favorite movie was "Coal Miner's Daughter". Most of their time speaking to each other was like they were extras from the movie.

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And this is where I get stuck. I can't seem to describe what Dan meant to me. From that first moment of meeting him, I knew that his was a good soul. Oh, he could be just as catty and bitchy as the rest of us. But the underlying truth was that he would never make you feel less important than any one else in the world. Everyone was instantly at ease in his presence and feel that you had known him for years.

He would cook these amazing meals whenever I was over at their place. And do it while putting the roof on the replacement garage that he built. He was meticulous, careful and precise in everything he did and said. He never met a stranger, even though he would tell you he wasn't comfortable meeting new people.

When Dan found out that he had cancer, he and the doctors had hopes that he would be able to beat it. The tumor was on a duct leading away from his pancreas giving hope that a successful treatment would be possible. He did his rounds of chemo, steadily gaining weight back throughout, and never getting sick. His doctor said that gave hope that he could beat it.

A year ago the treatments stopped. Not because the cancer had come back, but just because that was the end of what could be done. Dan told us that he asked the doctor what they would do next. The doctor looked at him and said with a puzzled look on his face, "Are you sure you're ready for this talk?" Dan asked what he meant by that. The doctor replied that that was it. There would be nothing more to do.

So Dan and Joe waited along with family and friends, anxious, hopeful, silent. It wouldn't be until sometime in December that he would know if the treatments had worked. Dan finally got the results back and the doctors couldn't find any signs of the cancer. The doctor said that if the cancer would return it would happen in 12 to 14 weeks.

Thirteen weeks later, I received the call from Joe that the cancer had returned. It had spread everywhere. There would be no hope this time. Dan had asked if we could come down for the weekend. We drove down Sunday morning and went straight to their lake home. As sick as Dan was, he still was trying to make sure that everyone was taken care of.

At the time we didn't talk about it, but after leaving we knew that Dan was saying his goodbye's. Ten days later he was gone. He died at home, surrounded by his dogs, and with Joe by his side.

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Dan gave me (and Robbie) possibly the best compliment I've ever received. When we told him and Joe that we were adopting a baby, he cried. He thought that us becoming parents was the most wonderful thing he could think of. I'm just so sorry that Riley won't get to know her Uncle Dan in person.

My apologies to Joe and Dan's family if I got the time-line or facts of Dan's illness wrong. I'm working from a very clunky memory. I have an easier time remembering the man. I think Dan would want it that way. Forget the cancer! Remember the trips to Florida! Remember the cookouts! Remember the laughter! Remember?