Afterword

Elizabeth North

 

 

In the early summer of 2010, I was sitting on my front porch swing, swapping tales with Patric about the antics my sons get up to with virtually unlimited acreage, a golf cart, power tools, and sometimes more imagination than sense. Patric was filling in with his own adventures from childhood, including homemade fireworks and police stations, and I can say with complete certainty that it is a good thing that Patric and my sons live on opposite sides of the continent. The world would not be safe if you combined Patric's ideas and sense of humor with my sons' youth, determination, and lack of fear. Having said that, it is my fondest wish that someday soon my sons will have a chance to meet Patric because Patric Michael is one of those rare individuals who touches your life, no matter how briefly, and you walk away a better person for the experience.

During that conversation, Patric said to me that people were starting to ask him how he wanted to be remembered after he was gone. He wasn't sure how to answer them. He had definite ideas about what he didn't want, but only the seed of an idea for what he did want. That seed grew into this book.

At that time, several authors had already written stories for and about Patric, and he felt that all of them combined were a good representation of the many facets that make Patric unique. He felt that if you combined the stories with his experiences as set forth in his blog, it would create a book that was both an accurate reflection of who he was and a record of the highs and lows of fighting cancer. His wish was that others fighting cancer and their families might find help, comfort and understanding through his shared experiences. He wanted to offer what we all long for—a chance to connect with someone else with similar views, feelings and experiences and to be really understood. He hoped with words to achieve that moment of “here is someone like me, someone who has felt the way I do.”

As we were putting the final touches on this volume, I was talking with Patric. I asked him how he felt reading the draft now that it was in actual book form. His first comment was, "I wish I'd done a better job editing my blog entries before I posted them." The customary tension relieving joke was followed by, "I'm too close to it." Those words tell me that we succeeded. Not in being able to capture everything that makes Patric special—that would be impossible—but in coming as close to Patric as we possibly can and sharing that irrepressible man with you.

 

 

January 2011