‘I AM STILL ALIVE’
(From the 2014 Conch Republic Independence Celebration guide)
On Oct. 3 of last year I was diagnosed with a collapsed lung. Eight days of hospitalization later, I was discharged with a Stage 3 lung cancer, and told I had three months to live…
They said there was nothing they could do. Well I went to work and discovered a new protocol called “Proton Therapy” wherein cancer cells are subjected to proton particles traveling at three quarters of the speed of light. Turned down for treatment by the Proton Center of the University of Florida as too advanced, I was accepted into Proton treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. I spent the first three weeks of December in treatment there.
I am still alive.
But that is the smallest part of the story I wish to share. We are all sentenced to death on the day we are born.
Between these two profound events — birth and death — we get to have a life.
How we live that life is up to us.
And so it is the quality of that experience (life) that we celebrate (or regret) when death seems imminent. I have
been very lucky.
My dear friend Kate Miano (The Gardens Hotel) said it to me best one evening in November. I was telling
her how the people of this community were making me cry dozens of times a day with their love, their prayers, their support, their money, and their souls.
Kate said, “Peter, most people live their lives and die without ever knowing their impact or effect on their
friends, family, and community. You have been blessed to know how much you are loved and appreciated while
you are still alive.”
Needless to say she made me cry all over again.
And so it is that I wish to thank all the Conchs and Key Westers for their love and support during my time of
trials. These trials may or may not be over. The jury is out on this. But none of us can measure our time. We can
only make the best of the time we have.
Every day.
I have felt the full force of the love and support this island is famous for. It has been a humbling and yet most
fulfilling experience.
Thank you.
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Thank you so much for printing this excerpt, written by Sir Peter not long before his death. It is quintessential Peter, thinking of others, and humbled by the thinking of others of him. His brilliant wit and love of humor sometimes led to his being misunderstood as clownish or undeserving of serious consideration. The opposite was true. Rest in peace, Sir – after the parade and the last hurrah!