Cats Love Peanut Butter With Mr. Brian Mahon

So with that, I'd like to say, Brian, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

I never saw her weep excessively for her situation. Instead, she would smile and say, let's get on with it. And she had such a fortitude about life and she actually said something. It really is amazing to me, she said, dad, it's not a battle. Cancer is never a battle. Cancer is never a case of winning and losing. It's a case of doing your best, always doing your best. And she used to say, nevertheless, I persisted.

And if anything, that defined Amy better than anything else, she persisted right to the very end of her life and defining herself as Amy and not as a cancer person. She, she defined herself by who she was. Now what I could tell you about Amy over and above what I've just mentioned is that she would help people. She would go out of her way to become friends with people.

Case in point, she had a nurse that would come into her house and she would help Amy dealing with many situations that Amy had to contend with , with bowel cancer, colon cancer and her name was Tamsen. And Tamsen would come in and she was relatively a new nurse visiting in the home obviously. And she would come routinely to see Amy and deal with different situations. And the first rule of thumb of being a nurse is don't get emotionally involved with your patient.

And yet Amy would tell you, and I could obviously see that they became close personal friends. And I remember that after Amy Tamsen came to us at the Memorial in absolute tears saying how much she had loved Amy and enjoyed getting to know her and how she was dealing with it, going forward. She now runs marathons and she raises money for Amy. And, for colon research, I should say on behalf of Amy.

And she continues to do that to this day, which is really, uh, and writes us constantly emails us and tells us what she's doing. So it's, it's special and Amy had a special effect on so very many people. One of the things that Amy liked to do was to defy the norms, the routines, and Amy wore a gold Cape. And, she put this gold cape on whenever she could go out for a walk for raising funds for cancer research.

So, she decided that she was going to walk between Bradford on Avon and Bath along the canal, because as you know, the UK is full of canals and you can go across UK through these canals.

So you could walk the canal between Bradford on Avon and Bath, and it would take you about two hours, two and a half hours to get through it, anyways, Amy would put on this gold Cape and anyone that wanted to walk with her would walk with her and people would look at her and say, what's with the lady with the gold cape and everyone that was walking with her could say, well, this is Amy and she's dealing with terminal cancer, and so she's running, she's walking to raise

money for bowel cancer research in the UK. And they raised, I couldn't believe it the day that we, we walked with her on a number of occasions, but on this first day she raised lots of money. People would say, well, I want to contribute to that. And that just was Amy. Amy was always about doing something to make things better. And, it just defined our daughter in such a beautiful way. And she told us, you know, before she died, she said, you know, make sure that you do something with your life.

Make sure it counts in a way and more so than maybe what you've done already. And that's what we're looking to find for ourselves a way to help others. Because to let her just die and do nothing about, seems like a waste of a life to me because if anything, and we're going to, live our lives to make sure her life counted by carrying on things that she did and helping other people.

And, interesting that today we're doing this interview because today I just had a call from the neck and throat clinic, and they're going to see me. It's been three, four years now since, um, no, actually four or five years now, since I've had this. And I still struggle with Bell's palsy on the right side so that day, I will never forget because Amy was far concerned about me, than she was telling us about her diagnosis and hers was terminal.

That was, that's just Amy, you know, she just, she didn't want to make it about her, but shortly thereafter, uh, Sharon went over initially. And then, uh, I went over after that because I was designated for a whole lot of testing. To see what they could do about the Bells, so they had me stay back, but then eventually I flew over and we spent the last year of Amy's life in the UK, living in the UK.

And we could do that because we were retired, but we stayed in their home and, and spent the year with her. And this wasn't just any home that Amy and Chris had purchased. It was a home built in 1690, and they had, Amy had totally renovated it and designed with Pinterest boards, each room knew exactly what it's going to look like. And one of the interesting things about that house as I reflect on it, there wasn't a straight wall in it, but Amy had put a Pinterest board in every room.

So you could see what it was going to look like. And when Amy died, the house has was 95% done, but there was this one room that wasn't done and everything arrived for that room to be put together, uh, shortly after she passed away. And so we did that in her honor, and then also on our computer, we found the color she wanted for the pantry door, which we painted to that color. So we spent the last year, basically we did whatever we could to help. We would cook. We would clean, we would paint.

We would, we cleared her garden. One thing that Amy wanted to do was sit in the garden and enjoy the beautiful garden that she had, but it was overgrown with many, many years of neglect. So Sharon and I sat and worked on it, and one of the great joys we had was to see her come out and smile, hug us and thank us for clearing out. The yard. I think we took three truckloads away of yard waste to get that garden back.

And now it's one of the ones that in the city of Bradford and Avon that people go to visit. So, um, she never got to see it done, but she enjoyed what we were able to do to bring it back.

And we were sitting in the waiting area and we could watch the door that she went in on and I remember the moment that she came out, she was smiling and she came up to us and she said, I'm in remission. And there's a picture of us, in a car on the car ride home. And we're all on top of the world because we thought that Amy was in the right space, that everything was going well, that everything was great.

Remission meant that it was over, that she'd beat cancer and we, we absolutely lived in that moment. And then I remember Chris turning to us and saying, Hey guys, we need to understand that this doesn't mean it's over. This is just one day in which we've got some good news. Unfortunately that good news went away quite quickly as we found out that remission just meant it wasn't growing as fast as it had been in the past.

But shortly thereafter, it started growing rapidly again, the cancer, and the chemo was no longer considered effective and what doesn't help you is killing you. And so if it's killing you, they stop it. And when they stop it, the cancer grows faster. So, it was very short lived um, but I remember going in one time and Amy got some bad news and she came out and we sort of hugged her and she cried and she cried for about a half hour of just dealing with it, asking why me, why now, why all of this?

And then she looked up and she said, that's enough of this. I'm not going to live like this. I'm not going to let this control me. And she said, let's get on with things. And she got up and we moved forward, we went back and we dealt with it every day from there forward, but always with a positive bent, you know, always with, you know, what are we going to do today? Living the day to the fullest, she taught us two things. She said, look, every day counts.

So live every day as it is a special day and live it to the fullest. And that's how we approach things. Sharon and I try to live every day to the fullest.

So she blogged her whole walk with cancer on CatsLovePeanButter.com. And if you go there, you will read her story in such a way that you will get to love the daughter that we had. She's special. She, she had a way of communicating. She had a way of talking that just drew you in and our blog is so honest. So honest about what she was going through. She didn't hide anything.

She told people what the drugs did, how they reacted to her body, because so many people with colon cancer didn't know what to expect. And she wanted to write in such a fashion so that people could deal with their own colon cancer. A lot of the problems today with colon cancer is it's considered a disease of the aged. Young people aren't supposed to get it.

And I remember the story of her telling us of one, young girl who read her blog and went to her doctor and said, I want you to test me for, for colon cancer. And he said, you're too young. And then he had her read Amy's blog and in doing so he agreed to test her finally with some resistance. And when he tested her, he found out that indeed she had cancer, this young girl, and as far as we know, she got treated for her cancer and we know she got treated, but we, she got better.

She got over, she, uh, recovered from it. And so that was just one story of one person she helped, but many other people were dealing with the idea of getting a stoma or a colostomy bag. And Amy said it was nothing compared to, to not living. She said I would do it in a heartbeat. And she talked people through that. Every drug that people could take, she would say, this is what it is. This is what it does. This is how it reactes in your body.

And so it's difficult to look at the blog today for me because you see a healthy individual, at least looking healthy at the beginning and you see you're in her weakest state at the end. And it's, it's just tough to look out for me to remind myself of those days, but, to know that she's still helping people, we're still seeing people on the website on Facebook.

Today, just Amy reaching out through that to us, and we're happy to talk to them or share or tell them about Amy's story, however we can, but I would encourage everyone, if you get a chance, and you really want to understand colon cancer in a young person, then go to this. You see our daughter, she was misdiagnosed even as she was in junior college. She was told she had hemorrhoids. She was misdiagnosed. Three times she wasn't tested three times.

And by the time they finally tested her, unfortunately they found out that there was over 300 polyps in her, her bowel. And, and just, and just. The first test, they knew right away that she had cancer. And that was when, of course she gave us that call and we understood the ramifications of what she was going through. Up until then, we, we didn't know anything because the doctors had said nothing.

She actually had to pay to go to a private clinic to get diagnosed because the system refused to see her, saying that she was okay and she was already headlong into cancer. And so she actually, um, did something else that to this day amazes me.

She went with four other young, uh, colon cancer patients, and she spoke to, um, in the UK parliament, not in parliament, but to the Lords in a meeting about this disease and her member of parliament actually took it up in parliament and spoke her case, didn't give her name, but spoke her case and the need to do early diagnosis.

And so Amy, Amy really accomplished so much in her 32 years, but in that last year, she did some amazing things that I just shake my head on and go, wow, is that our daughter that did that? So, she's had a profound impact in the UK, especially. But also in Canada, the US and Australia. People who've written us from around the world saying that Amy has had an impact on their life.

It, um, it caused us to struggle in ways that we'd never struggled before. This is the biggest trial we'd ever gone through. And what I didn't want to do was show Amy any sense of weakness, typical guy. And so I, I kept everything from her, but I had a friend who was willing to spend time with me. And I remember meeting him in a coffee shop. As we were going through this in the UK, he was an elder in the local assembly, a similar to the one that we went to in Canada.

And we, I met with him constantly weekly and I remember just weeping, constantly weeping and grieving and just saying, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. I don't know. I, you know, I've prayed about this and yet, it just it's moving forward. You know, one of my prayers, I will, never forget the prayer. I said, Lord, you give me every bit of disease that she has, put it on my body, and I'm ready to go. Give her life, let her have life and I'm ready to go. I've had enough.

Um, but of course you can't do that. And, uh, it's one of those things that is, um, still on my heart, but, but God did something amazing. He took our sin nature. And took our sin upon him and die for us. So I live in that grace and that mercy. And I know that I'll see Amy again one day in heaven. So that's something that gives us comfort, but I tried to be strong through this and this person that listened to me, I said to him, one day, I said, wow, are you ever a great counselor?

He said, Brian, do you know what I've done? And I said, no. And he said, all I've done is listen to you. That's all I've done is let you vent, let you share. And you shared enough about what you're going through that now you're ready to talk about it a bit more, but living with cancer as a diagnosis, you start grieving right then and there. When Amy passed, we were there like you, Steve, Sharon and I were there.

I was holding Amy's hand and Sharon and Chris had a hard time dealing with a body, a shell at that point. And I could deal with all of that. I don't know why God gave me that grace and I stayed and dealt with things and cleaned up and, and it didn't, it didn't hit me right then and there. But the moment I walked out of that room, I realized that.

I had lost the most precious gift God had given me above his salvation over after his salvation was my daughter and my kids mean everything to me and I had lost my daughter and a light had gone out of my life and I had to learn how to deal with that. And I think that's why we literally stumbled into grief share down in Florida. We started it in Canada, but we came to Florida. We're snowbirds.

And we wanted desperately to find meaning in what we were going through because Amy wanted us to understand that the best thing we could do dealing with her death was helping others. And that's what we really want to do is learn to be compassionate people, to help others who are going through grief.

She looked beautiful. All the pictures you would see of her, uh, you would say she looks great. And, and, and yet she would say to me quietly, she said, dad, well, they, they, they see the outside, but they don't understand the inside that I'm dying with cancer. So yes, we not only, saw past the, the looks that she put on the face she put on, because she told us intimately what she was going through. There was one day I'll never forget. They had a snow storm in the UK. Very rare.

And Amy had had a procedure in which they had gone in through an artery to do a test. And at one point she was back at home and she convalescing and she started bleeding out of that artery and she thought she was going to bleed out and we couldn't get to the hospital. No, no ambulance could get to us. But this nurse Tamson, she found a way to get there. And what we did while she was coming is put pressure on Amy's leg, where this artery was so that the blood wouldn't come out.

And we were concerned that she was going to bleed out. And when Thompson came, of course, she reassured us, she bandaged it she put pressure on it and everything was okay. But every moment of every day, you just. You just didn't know what to expect was coming next. You know, shortly before Amy went into the hospital and I'll never forget this, uh, the Thursday the, she went in, I think Saturday night, but Thursday night she made us a meal.

She wanted to make a meal for Sharon and I and Chris special meal that she didn't want us to do anything. She wanted to do it herself. And she wanted us to have this meal together and she was so sick at some point in the day that she couldn't finish it. And my wife Sharon finished the meal, preparing it, and Amy wasn't able to eat it. And I remember, the terrible sounds coming from her for the next two days as she'd languished in pain, but didn't want to go to the hospital.

And finally, we had to call an ambulance and she went to the hospital and it was that day in the hospital, in the room, that a doctor walked in with all of his interns, he wasn't alone, he came in with and he asked, he said, can I bring in the interns, and we said, sure. We didn't know why he brought them in, but he brought them in anyways. And he stood around and he started talking, talking about Amy's diagnosis when it started and how it progressed.

And then he looked at Amy and he said, Amy, uh, the news I have for you today is not good. I have looked at everything. And after all the testing that we've done today, I can tell you that there's nothing more we can do to you, do for you. It was that moment, that very moment, that my life changed because I realized I was about to lose my daughter. And, Amy turned to the doctor and she looked at us and she said, we knew this day was coming. We knew this moment was coming. I'm done.

I have nothing more to give she'd be comfortable. And Amy was, um, sent to palliative care shortly thereafter, and we stayed with her for the rest, the remaining time that she had. One of the things that she asked to do, which was, neat. She asked for her bed to be pointed in the palliative care, looking outside over this beautiful meadow, gorgeous meadow. She loved the outdoors. It was, it was just, it was spectacular. And she said, I want to look at the world outside for the time I have left.

And then she asked us to get a Coke. She said a feel like Coca-Cola. I know I can't hold it down, so they, she would literally drink it with a straw and then it would be pumped back out because she couldn't hold anything in her stomach, but she said it tasted so good going down that she wanted to do it anyways. And. So, yeah, I lived with, we lived with her every single day, going through and deteriorate bit by bit by bit. And it was tough because what parent wants to see their child suffer?

What parent thinks that their child should ever die before them? It's just not right. It, it's nothing, uh, that you could ever deal with. You just don't know what to do. You feel so inadequate, you feel so, so useless because there's nothing you can do to stop it. There's nothing you can do to hold it back. But the only thing that we could do in the thing that she wanted, most of all is for us to be there. And there was a point at which we thought she was getting better.

As I talked before that she was in remission, we were going to go home but obviously that was shortsighted, and we never did go home, we just stayed. And I'm glad we did. I'm glad we spent all that time with her because it was fresh. It was special. It was precious. Let me tell you, you just don't talk about meaningless things when life is on the line and that's what it was for Amy at that time.

We were looking for some alone time Sharon and I, but Chris asked to come back, so he came back with us and he stayed with us for a couple of weeks, we found it difficult, um, because we were all grieving in our own way. And I think Sharon and I just want to time alone to talk and deal with it. We did go to the, the local assembly, the church that we attended in Florida and it was interesting. We watched people, uh, deal with our grief in different ways.

There were those who would come up and hug us and talk to us. There were those who didn't know what to say. So they, you, you could look at their eyes as they wandered around the outside of the church so they could avoid us. They just didn't want to deal with us, because they didn't know how to to talk to us. And that's one of the things that we've struggled with for so long is that so many people don't know, don't know how to talk to us or don't want to talk to us about Amy.

And we want to talk about Amy. We want to share what Amy stood for, what she believed in, what she taught us about compassion and caring for others. So, yeah, we spent some time in Florida then we came home and we had two memorials. We had one in the UK and one in Canada and Amy wrote her own eulogy. She actually planned out her own funeral, everything. She, she told us exactly what she wanted done, so we did that. And when we came back to Canada, it was similar.

There were a lot more people that were willing to, um, meet with us and wanted to talk to us. But again, most people didn't know what to say, they didn't know what to, you know, they didn't know how to deal with it. And we didn't know how to deal with it. Let's be honest. We didn't know what we were doing. And so we went to this close friend of ours, Mona Kane. And Mona and Bruce, we had met in Florida the year before. Two years before.

And we knew them from Canada, they come down to Florida, they had a place in Florida. On the way back, I said to Bruce, would you preach in our chapel? And he said, sure. So they came back. He preached on, uh, it was on the girl scout boy scout Sunday, so he spoke on, be prepared to meet thy God. And then he drove home, they drove home and two weeks later, he, he collapsed with a heart attack, massive heart attack and died.

So when we came back to Canada, two years later, having lost Amy, I didn't know what to do. And we called Mona and we said, Mona, can you give some time for us? And she said, sure. We went to her house, her apartment, and we sat down with her and we said, we don't know what to do, we don't know how to get through this, we don't know how to deal with our grief.

And she had been to Grief Share, and she said to us, why don't you come with me and we'll go to Grief Share and we'll see if that is a help at all in your life. And so what we did is we went to reshare in London, Ontario, and we were there for about six sessions because we were heading down to Florida for the winter. And that's how we met you. Steve.

We decided that once we'd been through these six sessions, they were so powerful to us and helping us deal with our grief that we said, we got to continue this. So we looked up where we could go in Florida and the Journey Church had it available for us. And so that's when we met you and Shelly, and Marshall and we, we found such benefit from being able to talk and share and, and be open about what we were going through and, and others were willing to listen, which was amazing to me.

We were all in the same place, dealing with grief. And so we could be open and honest. We didn't have to put on airs. We didn't have to hold back. That's one of the, the great blessings of Grief Share, and that's why we've continued on in it. We found it so helpful.

You don't have to explain what you're going through because the people there know about it. Conversely. Having you talk about your journey of grief today to our listening audience is also going to be very helpful to people that are on their own journey of grief.

Because as we know, it can be very difficult if you're isolated and not having an opportunity to interact with others and the way the world is now with the pandemic, that is something that is difficult for people to go through the grief process and have the necessary interaction that is required to help them get through the grief process. So again, I can't thank you enough for your willingness to open up and talk about your journey of grief.

And having lost someone that's gone through suicide and Steve with grief share how to help people who are going through grief. And that's how we all met, but we all have the same desire to see others helped and, and to find meaning in the sense of being able to help others. You know, we've been given a gift. The gift is we understand something in life that many don't go through until it's, you know, until late in life is grief and how to deal with it may be and how we can help others.

Um, I just, I can't think that Amy's life ended on that day. It continues. One thing Amy said to me though, that I'll never forget. She said, dad, having cancer is one thing, but she lost her son Leo at 26 weeks. And it was probably due to this cancer. And I remember her telling me the story that she'd sent Chris to go home and get clothes cause she soiled everything and she just needed clothes. And so she, here she is and they delivered stillborn Leo at 26 weeks.

And we were in Canada at the time, this was, this was before this. And Chris was there. Chris had gone home to get clothes, so, Amy was alone on that table and they delivered Leo. And they let Amy see Leo before they took him away. And I wasn't there. None of us were there for her. And that just breaks my heart to think that no one was with her in that room at that moment. To be there with her, to hold her hand to say, uh, I wish we could have saved Leo.

We couldn't, but we were there for her when she, when she passed, we were there, Sharon and I were there. We, we held her hand. We, stayed to the very end, because it was so critically important to be there. And I want to be there for other people when they go through things to help them, if we can, in some small way to find their way through, because that's what we need to do for one another.

The very focus of you being there. There was a day in which Amy and I sat out in chairs in the UK and Bradford on Avon and we were looking out at the trees and the birds were flying, it was a beautiful spring light day. And Amy looked to me and said, isn't this beautiful? Isn't this amazin? And I agreed with her and she said, Hey dad, tell me how many years did Jesus have I said, 33. She said that I'm going to come up one short with 32. And you know, she wanted to help people.

She wanted to do anything she could to help people. And so that's the way that I've approached things. I remember sitting in that small group, there was a, a lady there that had dealt with grief and she was, she had, been in prison as well, and she felt grief because she hadn't been there when her mother died. And I'll never forget. She told us that she liked those little chocolates that you gave out Steve, and they were on the table.

So when we went to the breakout rooms, I went around the room and collected up all these chocolates and came back into the room and the moment she sat down, I put them in front of her and she smiled. And to get that smile, I'd do anything . To get that smile, that's what it's all about is to change the person's for a moment. Just give them the joy of the moment. Help them have find a even a moment's break from what they're going through. And I think that is the core to what we do.

Um, but I, I do tend to look inside and look inwardly and try to understand what I'm going through so that I might be able to help others. But if you can remember the profound things that I said, Steve, by all means share them with me. Cause I I'd love to hear them again to find out why they're so profound, but I love people, and I, um, I love to help people. I want to make my life count. And that's one of the ways that I see that I can do it.

We went to a pub and there were 14 stairs down, and she forced herself to go to this function because they were deciding at her company, Bluebolt's, for the next year, every month, they were going to do something to raise money for colon cancer research. And so, um, Amy wanted to go and be there. And so she went there and it was 14 steps down and we got her in there, sat down and she looked like a million dollars . She really looked great cause she, she did the makeup and she was dressed well.

And I was so proud of her and I was sitting beside her, watching her and everyone was coming up to her and talking to her and they, they identified that in April of 2018, they were going to start these functions, these different things they were going to do to raise money. And Amy never lived to see any one of them, but she was there for that day. And, when we left, she was holding onto me and she said, okay, dad, how many stairs? And I said, 14, she'd take a step.

And she'd say, dad, how many stairs? I say 13. And she made it up every one of those stairs. And it was tough. I could see in her body, I could see in her face, the struggle she had to make those stairs. And yet she made it, she did that because it was important to her to show up and to be seen and to be a part of what was going on. And that's what we need to do. If you're dealing with cancer, you're dealing with someone who has cancer show up. Be there, help them be an arm for them to lean on.

Be someone that would hug them and say, you love them and care for them. Go and get them the meal they need to get on the drink that they need to drink. Do anything to ease their burden and make their life easier. It's all worth it.

And that she was saying life is just too darn short to dwell on that and didn't want to waste the day. And I think that to me is a wonderful lesson for all of us, because we are all here for a finite fixed period of time. We may not know how long that will be. Well, we all know it's finite. And I think Amy knew that and took the wonderful approach to make the most of every day.

And I think that is something that we could all learn and realize there's a life lesson for every single person on this earth. Steve, what thoughts did you have about Amy and her and her journey?

It's like, you know, you think of cancer as being very personal and it's your, your fight to continue living and yet she didn't look at it that way. She looked at it like, wow, I can help some other people who are going through the same thing. I was, I was amazed with that. I think that was, that was awesome.

And I know Sharon and Brian are doing the same thing, and I think it's a wonderful tribute to their daughter to continue the good work that she's no longer able to do on this earth. I think it's a wonderful lesson for all of us to see what they're doing.

Wanted to let you know that we are going to be starting a, uh, a blog page on our website, www.HopeThruGrief.com, which is H O P E T H R U G R I E F.com. So, be on the lookout because Brian has offered to write us a post for the blog, telling us some more of the stories about Amy, that he didn't get a chance to share on today's show. And, he's actually promised to send us pictures of the garden and some of the rooms that Amy finished in the house, as well as photos of Amy.

And I did ask if we could possibly get one of her wearing the gold Cape. So, be sure to check it out. We'll have it out there as soon as. Brian gets it down to us. And thank you for joining today.