Dog Tags

Sometimes when I think back to during the time when my dad was sick, I remember a detail that I had forgotten or overlooked in my memories before.  

Today I remembered his dog tags.

When I was growing up, whenever I asked my dad about his experience serving in Vietnam, he always talked about how his job there was to guard a building with weapons in it, often on an overnight shift.  

My dad was never a "night owl;" as far back as I can remember, he was much more of a morning person, and I guess that was true when he was in the service, too, because he often commented when he talked about that time about how hard it was for him to stay awake on his overnight shifts.  He said he usually ran around and around the building he was assigned to guard so that he would stay awake and alert during those shifts.  The only problem with this plan, he reported, was that he had to wear his dog tags at all times and, as they hung from the chain around his neck, they drove him crazy bouncing against his chest as he ran.  Ever the improviser, though, he thought of a solution to this problem too: he took the dog tags off from around his neck and put them in his pants - in his jock strap, to be exact. 

It's kind of funny to think that a person can be proud of someone else before that person was even born or before they knew each other, but I know it's possible, because, picturing my dad as a young soldier in a foreign land, before I was born, doing what he had to do to get his job done and to defend our country, I feel such a sense of pride and respect, the same pride and respect that I have had for him throughout my life. 

But those dog tags from Dad's days in Vietnam aren't the ones I think about most often these days.  The dog tags on my mind are the ones that Dad wore on a chain around his neck as a 66 year-old man as he trained for the Ironman triathlon.  He tucked those into his shirt as he rode his bike or ran, and, the day before he became disoriented on a run and our campaign against his brain cancer began, the chain that held those dog tags broke.  And so, on that fateful day, he set out for the first time in many months without any form of identification at all.  

I think when most people think about dog tags, they think about toughness.  That's what I think about, too, because it was that, along with his strength and resilience that day that allowed Dad to dig deep enough so that, even in his state of confusion coming from the tumor the size of a racquetball in his brain, he could remember not just his home phone number (which was called first by the police but went unanswered because my mom was out of town) but also my aunt's cell phone number, which he also recalled and then gave to the police who had been called to the scene because he somehow also remembered that my mom was out of town that day and realized he needed to call someone local.

I have spent time, some while Dad was sick and even more since he went on ahead, thinking about how things would have likely gone had he not had the fortitude to pull out that information in those few moments before he was taken to the hospital by ambulance, before he had a couple of seizures, and before he quit breathing and had to be put on life support temporarily until he could be stabilized.  It is nothing short of terrifying to think that all of that would have been going on and no one in our family would have been able to be notified so that we could all get there to be with him.  It's horrifying to think about the fact that he would have been a Missing Person for an undetermined amount of time, because, with my mom out of town overnight that night, it is highly likely that no one would have realized that he didn't make it home after his run that afternoon.  We would not have known that anything out of the ordinary was going on.  Again and again, it hits me that, even with as bad as it was when he first got sick and throughout his illness, it could have been worse.  At least we knew where he was, and what was going on with him, and at least we were able to be with him. 

Dad, wearing the dog tags, competing in what ended up being his last race, one month prior to his diagnosis of brain cancer

In the days just before and just after his surgery, Dad worried a lot about what he called "loose ends."  As it would be for any of us whose life was put on hold in the blink of an eye, it was unnerving and extremely anxiety-causing for Dad that he had not been able to prepare for the time he was having to miss work and everything else for which he considered himself to be responsible.  In the midst of the constant stream of worries he had about his health and about needing to take care of the responsibilities in his personal and professional roles in life, he said he wanted to get the chain that had held his dog tags fixed, "so that I'll have it ready as soon as I can get back on the road."

And so, sitting in the hospital room with him in the Neuro-ICU, I searched on the Internet and found a company that sold replacement chains and ordered one for him; he was visibly relieved when I told him that a new chain was being sent to him in the mail.  And that's where the meaning of those dog tags deepens in our story; instead of standing only for toughness, Dad's dog tags also represented Hopefulness, and we desperately needed everything we could get to bolster both of those qualities as we entered into a more grueling battle than any of us could even imagine at that point.

If You Knew

If you knew that you probably wouldn't be here next week, next month, or next year, would you do things differently?  

Would you slow down and spend more time talking and just hanging out with the ones you love, would you rush around trying to pack in everything you could into the time you had left, or would you jet off to some remote location and sip cool drinks on a sunny beach somewhere?  Would you leave your work behind, choosing to treat each day as a vacation, or would you double-time it in an effort to finish what you'd started, in hopes of clearing your desk?  

I think sometimes people go through life just trying to get through the daily grind, setting a goal each day just to make it to 5:00 and hoping to build up enough vacation days to take some time off a few times a year. It's a easy pattern to get into, for sure.  That wasn't my dad at all, though.  He regularly set goals for lots of things.  He liked quotes that inspired action, like "A goal without a plan is just a wish" and "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe" and of course his favorite, "JUST DO IT!"  In essence, he was a roller-coaster guy, not a merry-go-round guy:

              "I like the roller coaster; you get more out of it!"

Through my dad, I learned while growing up to believe that anything was possible through hard work and perseverance.  And, for the most part, I feel like that held true in my life, up until the time he got sick.  

But I have to say that, had he known his days were numbered before that awful day two years ago this month when he was taken to the hospital by ambulance and the trial of our lives began, I don't believe he would have done many things differently.  

For all the questions and the if-then deliberations in my mind from over the last few months of Dad's life, there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain: if life is measured by adventure, my dad had a full one. 

Throughout his life, my dad identified things in himself that he wanted to change and then he made those changes.  In fact, thinking back to one of those things from when I was a teenager makes me smile even today:

About the time I turned 15, my dad told me that he had read somewhere that research had shown that a teenaged girl whose father told her at least once a day that he loved her was much more likely to graduate in the top of her class and to be happy long-term in life.  He said he knew that my sisters and I knew that he loved us but that he wasn't sure of exactly how often he told us out loud that he did, and so, just in case (another favorite expression of his), he was going to set a goal to say it to us every day at least until the time we graduated from high school.  ("I'll still say it to you after that, but you'll be away at college so it may not be quite as often," he said to further explain his plan.)  He didn't go into detail as to how he was going to be sure that he remembered to say it, but I knew him well enough to know that he would have some sort of system.  And sure enough, the next time I got into his car, I saw what it was:  he had placed a sticky note on the dashboard of his car, and on it he had written "Tell the girls I love them." Apparently the system worked, because, as far as I can remember, he told us that every day until we left home and every time he talked to us after that.

The last email I ever got from my dad was about planning for new adventures as he looked ahead to what he was going to do after he had completed the Ironman triathlon in which he was scheduled to compete but didn't get to.  Here's what he wrote in his typical stream-of-consciousness type of email:

From: Bill Bullard <bbullard@hurleyandassociates.com]]]]>

Sent: Wed, September 29, 2010 2:38:15 PM

Subject: Iron man

This will probably jinks it, but my foot is much better. I have 4 training wks to go---   Plan is to do three long runs (app3 hrs), 3 long bikes (80-100 miles and three long swims of about 2 miles each. In between stuff doesn’t matter much, I am told. If I can do these I should be fine, although walking will be part of the Plan which it is for most anyone not really competing. Nice to do around 14 hrs but just to finish is okay. Need to find a tattoo place in Calif to get Ironman logo on my calf. Lee gets one next yrr

Love ur crazy//Dad

told mom this would be the only one. Got to think of a new adventure—but no heights or extreme cold.

Thinking about the way that my dad lived his life, I see clearly that he didn't need a terminal prognosis to define his priorities or his goals.  He never sat it out, he always gave it his all, and he enjoyed every day of his life.  And if adversity is the test by which character is revealed, then I'm proud to say that my dad passed the test with flying colors.

Mark of Honor

During the months while my dad was in training for the Ironman triathlon before he was diagnosed with cancer, he mentioned several times that he was thinking about getting a tattoo after he finished the race to celebrate his achievement.  He said that he wanted to get the Ironman logo on his ankle.  Finishing the Ironman was definitely a Bucket List item for him, and we supported his plan to get inked after such an impressive accomplishment.

In the days before and just after the time when he had surgery and when we got the diagnosis, he brought up the subject of the tattoo again, wondering aloud if it would seem like a misrepresentation if he went ahead and got the Ironman symbol on his leg even if he wasn’t able to complete in the event.  I can still recall the feeling of the precariousness of the air in his room in the Neuro-ICU as I think back to the last conversation I had with him about the subject.  “I’d hate to get it done and then have people ask me about it and then I’d have to say I didn’t really do it,” he said to my sister Jennifer and me, certainly picturing himself - as did we and as we surely wanted him to do – years down the road, reminiscing about his battle with brain cancer as a thing in the past.  

“What if we get one too – would that make you want to do it?” Jennifer asked him.  

“What?? Y’all can’t get one!  It’s only for Ironman athletes!!”  he said, incredulous at the apparent ludicrousness of the idea.  We watched him for a minute as he seemed to be working something out in his head and then he said dispiritedly, “I guess I don’t need to get one either.”  The look in his eyes and the emotion in his voice were heartbreaking, and, looking back, such a harbinger of things to come as he was forced to rewrite his Bucket List again and again due to his declining health.

On the Saturday after my dad went on ahead, we held a memorial celebration in his honor.  I don’t recall how the topic of tattoos came up then as I talked to my mom’s cousin and her husband, but I do remember the stunned look on their faces when I told them that my sisters, my mom, and I were discussing getting a memorial tattoo.  They exchanged a look that appeared to me to be one of horror and pity, one that said, “They are in shock but hopefully they won’t do anything CRAZY!”   I didn’t care, though; like everything my family had been through over the eleven weeks preceding that moment in time, we knew that our situation, our experience, and our perspective were unique, something that no one else would ever totally understand or view as we did.  

Last summer, on our first family vacation without Dad, my sister Nancy brought up the idea again, and my oldest daughter started saying that she wanted to be in on the commemorative inking as well.  The problem was that we weren’t sure of the design we wanted to get or where on our bodies we wanted to get it.  We went back and forth with thoughts and ideas; the frontrunner was a picture of a running stickman that would go on the back of each of our left shoulders.  Still, though, there was some uncertainty, or at least some inaction, and the plan remained inert.

Over the course of the last year, in the time span from one family vacation to another, my sisters, my mom, my daughter, and I all agreed that we liked the idea of having the image be consist of a depiction of the way Dad typically signed off when he wrote notes and messages to people, with two lower-case printed b’s followed by two forward slash marks as an accentuation or underscoring of his initials.  We also decided, based on an astute comment made by my youngest sister Nancy’s best friend, that we wanted to have the tattoo in a place on our bodies where we could easily see it, with the idea that that could bring comfort and inspiration to each of us.

And so, last week, on the day we all gathered in California, three of us decided to take the plunge – Nancy, my daughter Maddie, and me.  My mom and my middle sister Jennifer went with us to the tattoo parlor (they are still considering getting ink and plan to use the same design if they decide to go ahead with the idea at some point), and Mom brought along several samples of things that Dad had written to show the tattoo artist, who actually traced Dad’s writing for the pattern she used on all three of us.

Nancy and I opted to get the design done in navy blue, Dad’s favorite color, and Maddie chose black, which I thought was funny because Dad often wore those two colors together when he ran (“Real runners don’t wear matching outfits!” he claimed.).  All three of us decided to get the design placed facing us, on the inside of our left wrist, since Dad was left-handed, and positioned slightly off-center, to symbolize Dad’s uniqueness.  In what I thought was a really cool and kindhearted gesture, the tattoo artist placed the sticky note that’s she’d used to make the template of the design on the table beside us so we could see it as we got it done.  One after the other, we were marked, in honor and in memory of the man who will always be as much a part of us as the ink on our wrists.

When my daughter told one of her friends what we'd done, her friend said,
"Some families plant a tree in someone's memory, but this is way cooler."

It's not an Ironman insignia, but I think this one was well earned and sits as a mark of honor too.

Bargaining

I heard a story once in which some children were playing ball when the ball accidentally got tossed over the fence into the next yard.  There was a young girl whom the other kids did not allow to play in their ball game because she had problems with her eyesight and with her balance, but she was happy enough just to have the job of going to retrieve the ball when needed.  Eager to play her part in the game when given the opportunity, she tediously climbed the fence and dropped down into the next yard.  Once there, she saw something in the shade underneath a big tree, and she called out “Here, Kitty!” to what she thought was a cat.  After getting no response, the girl picked up the ball, struggled back over the fence, and returned the ball to the other children.  The creature in the shade of the tree was actually a skunk, and, after the girl had climbed back over the fence, he sat there in silence, stunned by the friendly way she had called out to him, which was an extreme contrast to every other interaction he had ever had with a human.  He started thinking about how different his life would have been if he had been born different, if he were a cat or a dog instead of a skunk.  He even started to consider how great it would be if he were a young girl, even one with poor eyesight and coordination, but he couldn’t really go so far as to imagine that – it’s just too far-fetched of a fantasy to fathom.

Bargaining is one of the stages of Grief described in the writings of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.  The word itself is technically defined as “negotiating the terms and conditions of a transaction;” I see it as an attempt to gain control, and I have learned over the past nine months that at times it can be a valuable tool in figuring out how to cope with changes, disappointment, and sorrow.

The bargaining that my family and I did while Dad was sick, as part of what I later learned was our anticipatory grief process, was in the form of acting like we didn’t mind or really even notice that he couldn’t do many of the things that he did before his diagnosis, including working, driving, exercising, and even basic things like getting ready for the day, talking to people on the phone, and getting himself something to eat or drink.

We also bargained by letting ourselves believe that if we got what we thought was the best treatment possible for him, managed his medications and his care, had him go to rehab, and set up my parents’ house just right, Dad would get better.  We thought that if we gave it our all, we would get something in return, and, like a child who prioritizes in the letter to Santa according to what gift he or she wants the most, what we really wanted to be given was better health, and a better quality of life, for Dad.

A little further down the road, we even bargained by saying that we’d feel so lucky if we could still have him with us and allow him to enjoy life for just a year or two more, although, since I secretly thought that that part was absolutely possible (probable?), I shot for the stars by hoping and believing that Dad had a chance, maybe even a good chance, at being in the very exclusive group of people who “overcame” brain cancer. 

Dad was always a very practical person; he felt like thinking about far-fetched things like winning the lottery was a big waste of time; "Crazy Talk," he called it, when people spent time discussing what he considered to be outrageous ideas.  But even he joined in on our Bargaining Efforts.  For several days after his initial trip to the hospital, he thought he might still be able to compete in the Ironman triathlon that was two weeks away.  He talked about how he didn’t think taking a few days off from his intensive training regiment would affect his ability to finish the race, even though at that point the sensation on the left side of his body was so impaired that he couldn’t stand up or hold a utensil to feed himself.  He was convinced that as soon as he could get out of the hospital he would be ready to go back to work, without missing a beat.  Several doctors and nurses tried to talk to him about the certainty that he would need to take at least 6 weeks off just to recover from brain surgery, even if no follow-up treatment was necessary and even if he had no symptoms or health problems after the surgery.  Each time, he listened to the person’s spiel, but as soon as he or she turned their back or left the room, he winked at us or stage-whispered “That’s what they think!” to be sure we knew he wasn’t going to follow that plan! 

A couple of days after his surgery, when he was told that he had brain cancer, he said he knew he would need to take time to recover and then he planned to restart his training program and get back to work before his sick days ran out.  He asked me to contact the race organizer for the Ironman and see if he could get a deferment, which is athlete-speak for getting permission to enter the race the following year instead of the current year.  In the meantime, he said, he planned to do some smaller triathlons and to continue his training efforts by running, biking, and/or swimming on a daily basis.  He told us that he would just work from his home office for a couple of weeks so as not to get too far behind on that either.

At one point while he was in the hospital, his neurologist said that Dad would not be allowed to drive until he had been seizure-free for at least six months, and he actually told us out of Dad’s earshot that Dad might never be allowed to get behind the wheel again.  “Whatever!” Dad said after the guy left the room.  “If everybody’s going to be doing all of this Crazy Talk about me not driving, I guess I will just get a ride to work and to wherever else I need to go.  Or maybe I will just ride my bike; that would be a good workout!”

After hearing Dad talk about his plan to ride his bike to get to wherever he needed to go once he got out of the hospital, Mom told him that we'd have to see how safe he would be on his bike.  Dad waited until he thought she couldn't hear him and stage-whispered, "I'll just get one of my son-in-laws to put my racing bike on the spinner in the garage and help me on it, and then she'll see that I can ride just fine!"

About that same time, the oncologist informed us that Dad would probably need to get radiation every day for about six weeks as part of his follow-up treatment.  Dad hated that idea because it seemed inefficient to him; he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just “go for it” and give him a higher dose of radiation to get it over with more quickly.  He had a steady stream of negotiation going about that part of his treatment; he felt like it was not “doable” for him to be going to and from the hospital daily for that long or even just to be restricted from leaving town for all that time.  “It’s like I’m grounded,” he sulked when the radiation oncologist told him he couldn’t travel during the six weeks of radiation that was being planned.  "Oh, well, I guess I can do anything for six weeks if it means I'll get better," he offered, as his part of the negotiation.

In the weeks after that, going through rehab, the trip to the Brain Tumor Clinic at Duke, and two rounds of chemo, he shifted gears again and again, eventually giving up on the idea of competing and just hoping to be able to work out for fun.  He told several doctors, nurses, and therapists that he no longer believed exercising and eating right could keep a person healthy: “Look at me;” he said.  “I’m living proof that you’ve got to run or whatever just for the fun of it because it won’t necessarily keep you from getting brain cancer or anything else.” 

While Dad was in rehab and even at the Brain Tumor Clinic, when I looked around the waiting rooms and treatment areas and saw people who weren’t as changed as Dad was, who weren’t as impaired as he was, or who hadn’t been given such a devastating diagnosis or prognosis, I was like the skunk in that story; I would have given almost anything to get just a little something more for Dad, more hope, more function, more time, more fun, more independence, more quality of life. I just wanted for Dad to feel ok and to be happy for even a little while longer.  After awhile, I didn’t even dream of the possibility of his ever being just like he had been anymore; it was too far-fetched and I felt like that would have been asking for far too much given our situation.  It would have been Crazy Talk!

The Writing on the Wall

One of the things I am asked most often about my dad’s illness is if he had any symptoms prior to the day of his fateful run.

As I’ve written in previous entries and as anyone who knew him was aware, Dad was a long-time competitive athlete who thrived on pushing himself to the limit (and sometimes beyond).  He had a very high threshold for pain, which sometimes did not serve him well as he did not always know when to call it quits.  

Dad, getting medical attention after running his fastest-ever time in a marathon

One thing about him I haven’t mentioned, though, and something about himself that he readily admitted was that he was fairly uncoordinated, a fact that was especially surprising considering he was such a talented athlete.  Maybe it was because of this clumsiness or because he was often in a hurry to get somewhere (he hated to be late!), or maybe it was because the amount of time he spent on the road on his bike or running upped his odds statistically of having accidents and mishaps, but either way it wasn’t that unusual for him to have a scraped-up knee or a bloody elbow from a spill that he had taken. 

Dad did have a wreck on his bicycle about a week before he was diagnosed that resulted in some pretty impressive Road Rash on his left knee, shoulder, and arm.  He had taken a spill with the bike tipping to the left side, which frustrated him so much that he had taken his bicycle to the shop the next day to get them to check it to see if it was out of balance.  As we found out a short while later, it was actually Dad who was out of balance; he had left-sided weakness due to the tumor in his brain.  However, at the time, he chalked up the wreck to something being wrong with his bike or to the usual stuff with him, not paying attention to what he was doing, being in a rush, being a bit of a klutz, and/or heat and fatigue due to a very intense training regiment.

Dad, taking an ice-pack break during an ultra-marathon (Note the supplies on the table.)

 Dad had entered three shorter distance triathlons last summer as part of his preparation for the Ironman Triathlon for which he was registered in November, and in all three he did not feel well at the finish, which a doctor who checked him out in between races attributed to heat exhaustion and dehydration.

 

He finished the last tune-up race in mid-August by staggering over the last mile of the run portion and then falling across the finish line, at which point Mom took him over to the first aid tent where he got some fluids and a stern lecture from the medics there about the dangers of dehydration.  They told him he absolutely had to drink at least 10 cups of water daily in the days leading up to a big race when the temperature and humidity were as high as they had been.  Apparently, after drinking some Gatorade in the tent, Dad perked up enough to jokingly ask one of the medics if beer counts as a fluid, which they did not find funny.  And, as was typical for him, despite the finish line drama, he won his age division in this race, too, which he felt was a good indicator that he was right on target in his training program to get ready for the Ironman.

Dad, after again pushing himself to the limit

 Even though Dad was bald-headed for decades, in personality he oftentimes functioned like a Dizzy Blond.  He had been known to pull up in a parking lot or driveway, put the car in park, get out, and come into the house or his office, all without noticing that he hadn’t turned off the engine of the car!  So, if he was doing things like entering the house without closing the front door behind him or losing his wallet, it wasn’t really something we noticed as a Red Flag because of his past actions.

In late August, my dad went to visit his mother, who was ill and living in a nursing home near my parents’ house.  Not long after he got back home, the telephone rang, and it was one of the nurses at the nursing home letting him know that he had left one of his shoes there.  Evidently, he walked out of it in the hallway of the nursing home and, without noticing, walked to his car in the parking lot and drove home.  Again, we chalked it up to Dad just being Dad, not paying attention and being in a hurry to get somewhere.

A few weeks later, Dad drove my mom and one of my sisters to a restaurant near my parents’ house.  It was pouring down rain, and so, after Dad parked the car in the parking lot, they ran from the car to the door of the restaurant.  Once they got inside, Mom noticed that Dad didn’t have a shoe on his left foot.  She pointed it out to him, and he ran back to the car and found his shoe there.  Again, something that might have been alarming for someone else, but not that out of character for Dad. 

According to the resources we were given on brain tumors, the first symptoms are usually things like headaches, blurred vision, memory loss, behavioral changes, or seizures, all of which can be attributed to increased pressure within the brain.  Other symptoms (depending on the location and size of the tumor) can be nausea, drowsiness, weakness or impairment in sensation on one side of the body, or language impairment.

Even with the 20/20 hindsight that we had once the diagnosis was made, of these, the only symptom that Dad had before the day his tumor was diagnosed was impaired sensation on the left side of his body.

Out on his run that day, he got disoriented and had trouble finding the words he needed to respond to questions he was being asked by people around him.  He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where a CT scan revealed a “large mass in his brain.”  He was then transferred by ambulance to a large teaching medical center with a Neuro-ICU, and, en route, he had his first seizure.  The paramedics stabilized him and got him to the second hospital, where the medical staff quickly took him to get an MRI; however, during the test he suffered a second seizure, stopped breathing, and had to be resuscitated and put on a ventilator to help him breathe.

Even once the diagnosis had been made and we had read all about the Warning Signs, we still weren’t able to see The Writing on the Wall; even looking back with 20/20 hindsight, we still couldn’t identify what went wrong and when it had begun. 

No headaches, vision changes, etc.  He was still functioning at his 100%, which was equivalent to most other people's 150%.  We later found a To-Do List in his home office and noticed a slight difference in the legibility of his handwriting, which might have been related to the tumor since he was left-handed.  His typical writing style was of the Chicken Scratch variety, though, and so, as much as the falls and forgetting of the shoe were hard to definitively identify as a symptom, it was even harder to connect those dots, even given what we knew.  Literally, there really was no discernible Writing on the Wall.

We were told by several of Dad’s doctors that the type of brain cancer he had is extremely fast-growing; in fact, this type of tumor usually doubles in size about every three weeks.  The doctors said that the tumor very likely started to grow just a few months before the diagnosis.

And, while it seems like it would be somewhat comforting for us to know that there was no chance for prophecy, there wasn’t something there that we missed, and there was essentially no opportunity for early detection, it really isn’t comforting, because nothing is.  The only thing I see written on the wall is that it sucks and it isn’t right or fair, and I want my dad back!

This One's For You, Dad

There are a lot of things about my dad that someone who didn’t have the privilege of knowing him well might not really understand - things that were such a part of him, things that really made him the person he was, things that I want to be sure to always remember. Here are a few:

*Many times when he wanted to buy my mom a present, he couldn’t figure out what to buy, and so he went to a store that sold women's clothing and just bought everything on one of the manikins, including the shoes and jewelry. He would point to a manikin and say to the sales clerk, "She looks about the same size as my wife. Can I please buy everything she has on?"
*He tried desperately to keep up with technology, including social networking, because, as he said, "I need to stay connected!" However, he often got things in this category confused. Despite many lessons from his grandchildren, he never understood how other people could see what he put on his Facebook profile. And he sometimes got mixed up about the term "text" and called it "twist."
*Whenever he competed in races that he didn't really have a chance of winning, he often made up a category and proclaimed himself the winner of that. For example, once after a biking race, he said, "I didn't win my age group, but I was the first guy over 50 to finish who didn't wear biking shorts." (He wore running shorts when riding his bike early in his biking "career.")
*He was preparing to do an Ironman triathlon, at the age of 67.

*He thought it was a good idea to “round up” in the amount of exercise time – he regularly told my mom that he was going to run or bike for a certain amount of time and then actually went for longer, basing his time on how long he thought it would take her to notice he had exceeded his original “bid”
*He once told his grandchildren to load up in the car for a “big surprise,” which ended up being a sale he had found for some fake-Croc shoes AT A GAS STATION.
*He LOVED to try to jump out and scare people, and this became a long-standing family joke because he was TERRIBLE at hiding. And every ghost story he told ended the same exact way, with him saying something like "And the boy went up the ladder, climbing the first step, then the second, then the third, until SOMETHING GRABBED HIM - his friend!" (Even when the kids were young, they weren't at all scared by his ghost stories.)
*Anytime a holiday was coming up that involved a gift for him like Father’s Day or his birthday, he would suggest (repeatedly) that we give him the gift ahead of time. Then when the actual holiday rolled around, he would jokingly say that we didn’t give him anything. Which brings me to what made me think of some of these quirks …

Last night, I dreamed that I was talking to Dad on the phone, and he laughed and said, “Thanks for calling, but what did you get me for Father’s Day? I don't think I got anything from you.” After thinking about it, I now have a new plan:

CANCER IS NOT GOING TO KEEP ME FROM HONORING MY DAD ON FATHER’S DAYS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!

So here’s what I got you this year, Dad, and I hope you like it: