Chad Carr, May You Rest in Peace
Chad Carr, the grandson of former Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr, passed away on Nov. 23. May you rest in peace, Chad.
Cancer sucks. There’s no two ways about it. That may seem like an obvious statement, but it bears repeating when we lose someone to it, and we lose a lot of people to cancer every day.
Chad Carr passed away this week after a bout with a brain tumor at the tragically young age of 5. I make no claims to know Chad, his father, his grandfathers, or anyone connected to him. I’m not trying to make anyone feel better about his passing because I know I can’t.
All I can claim is that I’m a cancer survivor and I know how much it sucks. I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was 15 and came out the other side healthy after four years of treatment. To say that treatment was the hardest thing I’ll ever do is to undersell it, and, despite their protestations, I know it was even harder on my family.
Through the course of chemotherapy I lost just about 80 pounds, was paralyzed from the waist down for more than a day, and generally was put through hell for most of my adolescence.
Medicine saved me. My family saved me. My community saved me. I was so, so lucky to have my family and friends supporting me the entire time. Great bonds are born out of great pain. I celebrated my 10th anniversary of the end of my treatment in August and I have no doubt the reason I’m here now is because of the people around me.
Chad, and his family, have great people around them, it seems. The Michigan community has shown great support for his parents and his grandparents. That’s amazing. All I can say is that very few of us can actually imagine what it’s like to lose a bright ray of light to the void of biologically evil blackness. I brushed up against that void, but was lucky enough to not fall into it.
I can’t sympathize, but I’ll say a few things anyway.
I underwent treatment in a children’s hospital and I was consistently the oldest person in the waiting room because I was diagnosed on the cusp of adult cancer. It was good for me because the illness could be fully cured (adult leukemia is almost always a chronic condition), but being in a children’s oncology/hematology ward is tough, even as a stranger to most in there. You remember faces if you have to go in to the hospital three times a week, which makes their absences noticeable and, usually, tragic.
The thought of seeing someone like Chad two or three times a week in the waiting room and then just not seeing him all of the sudden is one that I’m more familiar with than I want to be. It hurts strangers, so I can’t imagine what it does to friends and family.
The toughest fighters against the disease were usually the youngest. They were fun and optimistic and imaginative. It’s not fair that they would succumb because it seems like they never would or should. Sometimes human life just runs into something that is physically overwhelming, but it won’t ever run into anything that’s more metaphysically powerful. That’s why we remember Chad and wish the best for his family. We are a community.
If you haven’t already, check out Chad’s charity and donate. Wish the Carr’s and all the other families dealing with this bastard of a disease your best.
Next: What to watch for vs. OSU
The Game doesn’t mean anything compared to mortality, but hopefully we can all forget about all of the tragedy in the world for a few hours today and, God willing, we’ll all feel a little better at the end of it.