Five years ago I had a story published here. It was about my late father and the tools he left me. When it came out, I was pushing 40, with a new son of my own and plans to turn my woodworking hobby into a career.

Things were bright. My wife, a doctor, worked full time while I was the primary parent at home. My only complaint, aside from a lack of sleep, was a nagging pain in my right leg. Not surprising, I reasoned. After all, I’d been sitting at home with a baby napping on my lap for hours on end. And I hadn’t been for a run in months. I was just getting stiffer with age. To address the issue, I tried physio, weight training, yoga, cross-fit. Nothing really worked, but I soldiered on. I did my woodworking at a maker space where I had a small studio. The room was barely big enough to park one of my first commissions—a dining table for eight in reclaimed fir—but I was on my way to furniture-making riches.

A week or two after I delivered that table something changed. I had been to cross-fit a couple days earlier and decided to skip the box jumps. I just didn’t trust my leg. Then, while at home with my son, the pain turned intense. I forced myself to take him for a walk, but I gave up when I couldn’t apply the stroller’s footbrake. Back in our apartment, I fenced him into our living room with my body and called my wife.

At the emergency room that night, I learned the reason for my leg pain and the sudden spike in it. A malignant tumor had been growing inside my femur. It had just broken through the outer layer of bone, weakening it to the point where one solid impact could have shattered the bone, seeding cancer throughout my body.

I left the hospital in a wheelchair. After a month of doctor’s appointments and radiation, I was diagnosed with a rare and extremely fatal lymphoma. Then came four months of what my wife called “hardcore chemo,” plus a shiny new rod to shore up what was left of the bone and get me back on my feet.

Luckily, mine was a rare case of a rare disease. At the end of January 2020 I received the all-clear. February was a great month. It was the best month. I had a brand-new outlook on life. Soon I would be back to that woodworking career …

Then came March 2020. My son, myself, and my depleted immune system moved to my sister-in-law’s to isolate from my wife, who was on the frontlines of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic. We all know how that went.

So there were a few minor delays that my business plan didn’t account for. I also wasn’t sure if, physically, I’d be able to build furniture on the same scale as I’d envisioned. My femur had been repaired, but the tumor had wasted away most of the muscle.

But I worked at it all gradually. Now, after four years of physio and exercise, my leg is nearly back to full strength, and I’m back to moving dining tables. My business is finally growing as well. I have a new, larger space in a well-equipped shop. Commissions are coming in steadily, though finding time for them around my parenting duties can be difficult. Like any entrepreneur, I have my stresses and doubts.

When people hear about my cancer experience, they’ll often say, “You must have a brand-new outlook on life.” People have expectations of survivors, as if the flick of a switch has led to enlightenment. Cancer didn’t give me a brand-new outlook. Cancer’s an unredeemable grinch, amongst other things unfit to print. What it does well is steal; but focusing on what’s been taken, though tempting, is only detrimental.

I find that telling myself a story helps, so here it is: While I was writing about mourning the loss of my father, my infant son was losing his. My father lived long enough to teach me to use a table saw, build a deck, and be a great dad (fingers crossed). He instilled a love for making that has shaped my life. One-too-many box jumps and it might have all been for naught. I try to remind myself that I’ve earned a second chance to do the same.

 

—Jon Wayne Brown is a custom furniture maker and father in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. His original column, “Tools from my father,” appeared in FWW #275.