GARTH CALLAGHAN

Most people probably don ' t start thinking about their own mortality until much later in life. At that point they don ' t have the ability to change or to focus on the relationships that matter. One of the things I always have to remind people of is that I started writing napkin notes to my daughter for five or six years before my first cancer diagnosis. I recognized that there was this need to have more interaction and a better relationship with my daughter.

If my doctors came to me and said, " By the way Garth we made a mistake. You don ' t have cancer anymore. Go off treatment, do whatever," I wouldn ' t change how I ' m going to live the rest of my life. I recognize that my physical being is a really short time. Any one of us can die tomorrow or this afternoon.

I’ ve stopped thinking about how the world impacts me or how I impact the world because it ' s too big. I just need to share our story and write a note to Emma every day and everything else is going to take care of itself. I value the privilege to share our story. I share the interactions that Emma and I have had and how the notes have impacted our life. Then I let it be. People can take our story and hopefully use it to impact their own lives.

I ' ve had to mature and come to recognize that I am mortal like everybody else on the planet. But I just have it kind of up front and center in my life. On top of that, I still need to, every day, be a husband and a dad.

The past few years everything about me has changed. There was a time when I wasn ' t spiritually, mentally, or emotionally in a good place. I made a conscious decision to walk away from that path. I was always thinking about death. I was not able to project out into the future. It was impacting how I interacted with my family, not because I was actually avoiding a lot of family interactions, but because I had this shroud of death around me.

18 | ART OF DYING