The Last Lecture: Part III

Later, jaundice set in, and my doctors suspected I had hepatitis.

I’d find obscure journal articles and bring them with me to appointments.

They even didn’t seem to mind when I brought along advocates—my friend and colleague Jessica Hodgins came to appointments to offer both support and her brilliant research skills in navigating medical information.

I turned out to be among the minority of patients who could benefit from what is called the “Whipple operation,” named for a doctor who in the 1930s conjured up this complicated procedure.

Still, I knew I was in for a brutal time, especially since the surgery needed to be followed by an extremely toxic regimen of chemotherapy and radiation.

My whole chart was right there.
“Shall we have a look-see?” I said to Jai. I felt no qualms at all about what I was about to do. After all, these were my records.

The cancer had metastasized to my liver.

There was a knock on the door. Dr. Wolff entered, a folder in his hand. He looked from Jai to me to the CT scans on the computer, and he knew what had just happened. I decided to just be preemptive. “We know,” I said.

Yes, I felt stunned and bereft for myself and especially for Jai, who couldn’t stop crying.

I found myself almost detached from it all, thinking: “He isn’t putting his arm around her shoulder. I understand why. That would be too presumptuous. But he’s leaning in, his hand on her knee. Boy, he’s good at this.”

I watched Dr. Wolff use semantics to phrase whatever he could in a positive light. When we asked, “How long before I die?” he answered, “You probably have three to six months of good health.”

From the side, she could see that the man had a slight smile on his face, the kind of absentminded smile a person might have when he’s all alone, happy in his own thoughts. Robbee found herself thinking: “Wow, this is the epitome of a person appreciating this day and this moment.”

When you have a dire medical issue, it’s tough to know how you’re really faring emotionally.

But there are times, believe it or not, when I’ve come across as arrogant and tactless.

My sister, Tammy, had to put up with the ultimate know-it-all kid brother. I was always telling her what to do, as if our birth order was a mistake that I was incessantly trying to correct.

In Andy’s view, I was self-possessed to a fault, I was way too brash and I was an inflexible contrarian, always spouting opinions.

I reveled in being Uncle Randy, the guy who showed up in their lives every month or so to help them look at their world from strange new angles.

I listened to her, and thought, as only a bachelor uncle can: “That’s just the sort of admonition that sets kids up for failure. Of course they’d eventually get my car dirty. Kids can’t help it.”

My message: People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing.

Not telling Mom made everything we did into a pirate adventure. Even the mundane could feel magical.

The most formidable brick wall I ever came upon in my life was just five feet, six inches tall, and was absolutely beautiful.

As I said in the lecture, I was always pretty adept at charging through the brick walls in my academic and professional life.

Even as a tenured professor who could afford something better, I lived in a $450-a-month attic apartment with a fire-escape walkup.

She’s a beauty, of course, and she had this gorgeous long hair then, and this smile that said a lot about both her warmth and her impishness.

I admit: I’m either an incurable romantic or a bit Machiavellian.

And I was already seeing myself as a character in a disaster movie, thinking of how I’d save my new bride during the calamity apparently to come.

My parents had raised me to recognize that automobiles are there to get you from point A to point B. They are utilitarian devices, not expressions of social status.

Within an instant, she was bleeding so profusely that I realized there was no time to even call an ambulance.

Jai’s health and the viability of our baby were at great risk.

Dylan was sent to the neonatal intensive care unit.

I grabbed the nearest nurse, literally by the lapels, and I couldn’t even pull together complete sentences. I was gasping out fear in staccato.
“Baby. Last name Pausch. Where?”

He’d been in a so-called “closed-air bassinette,” which is a more benign description of an incubator.

In recognition of this, my dad, then twenty-two years old, was issued the Bronze Star for valor.

And so there I was, weeks after his death, getting another lesson from him about the meaning of sacrifice—and about the power of humility.

This last New Year’s Eve, though, was very emotional and bittersweet in our house.

If my life were a movie, this scene of me and Dylan would get slammed by critics for over-the-top foreshadowing.

Rather than showing Dylan and Logan the proper way to do it—carefully and meticulously—I just let them have at it haphazardly.

Rather than showing Dylan and Logan the proper way to do it—carefully and meticulously—I just let them have at it haphazardly.

But the kids are a spectacular dream fulfilled, and there’s great solace in that for both of us.

The cop looked at my scars. He looked in my eyes. I could see on his face: He now knew he was talking to a dying man. And if by some chance I was the most brazen con man he’d ever stopped, well, he wasn’t taking this any further.