John Selbe

Before we begin: contrary to the many flower tabs that you see all over this page (designed by the mortuary, not by us), please do not feel obligated to send flowers. Instead, you might honor Dad's memory by donating to the American Cancer Society (m.cancer.org) or to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (www.nmcrs.org), which supports active duty and retired sailors, Marines and their families. Dad would be deeply appreciative to see these organizations benefit in his name.

THANK YOU for coming to visit Dad's website. It means so much to know that you are sharing in his most special moments. While you are here, I want to be sure that you really know something quite extraordinary about my father--something that you may have already suspected or guessed, but what I discovered to be very true in the last four years of Dad's life. If you came to his memorial service, or the celebration of his life, you have already learned this...but if you can still reread it and remember him during the challenging times of your own life, then it will be a great comfort to us in knowing that his example has become a legacy for others to hold in their hearts. His family name was important to him; as he spent countless hours conducting genealogy research and uncovering remarkable stories about his past ancestors, he felt great pride in learning how their actions followed a pattern of inspiring strength and resilience for future generations to carry on. Those stories will be forthcoming, as he had wished. In the meantime, I am quite proud to share an illustration of that strength, in the hope that it may someday become a brick within your own.

As I tell this story, it is necessary to provide or remind you of a bit of background information about my father's immediate family. All my life, we have been devoted movie fans. We collect and watch them, marathon-style: Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc. I was fortunate that my husband felt the same way, and so it was easy to instill that same love in our own three children. When our son Andrew saw the first Rocky movie on television, his curiosity was piqued; soon enough, we had the entire iconic Rocky collection on Blue-Ray. Ironically, I ended up being the one to watch it with him, even though these movies had actually not been a part of our go-to weekend menu while growing up; we had loved adventure but eschewed the depictions of realistic violence (along with war movies that reminded Dad of his own experiences). Anyways, as I watched the Rocky movies with Andrew for the first time, I seized what we teachers would call a "teachable moment" and tried to explain to my son that the films were not really about the final boxing event--which only occurs during the last ten minutes or so of each movie--but more so about a man who learns what it really means to have strength, endurance and perseverance long before he enters the boxing ring.

And so, while keeping this theme in mind as any English teacher would automatically do, I now watch these movies with my father in my thoughts...because HE is the true prizefighter. He withstood every hit that I can only imagine was inflicted by weaknesses within his own body. Each physical breakdown was punishing, starting with his stomach ulcer from four years ago that ruptured not once, but twice. He almost bled to death, twice. And still...he held on via a ventilator, twice. The doctor told us that he only had one chance left with a particular procedure, and if it didn't work, there would be nothing else that they could do for him. Beth and I cried together in the waiting room, expecting the worst. The next morning, I arrived with my mother, preparing to say goodbye to Dad. However, much to our great relief, he pulled through and was soon disconnected from the ventilator. I later thought, shame on us for doubting his will to survive!

What gave him that strength to keep standing, to not collapse in the ring, to endure while his stomach was seemingly coming apart? We know now that it was his love for his family--in particular, our mother, whom he knew needed him more than ever. My brother and I quickly discovered just how much she had come to depend upon him when we had to take care of her in his absence. When he contracted MRSA in the hospital and incurred wounds in his leg that would never completely heal in the last four years of his life, requiring repeated hospital visits and two-week stays in rehab facilities while he was pumped full of intravenous antibiotics, he never stopped believing that he would return home each time to continue to oversee the attention provided to his wife, even though he now had to rely on caregivers who could be present for her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. His own body, bruised and bleeding, would no longer allow him to do that. Still, he clung to the belief that her memory and physical strength would return, and they would reunite and resume the life that they had so dearly treasured for fifty years. They certainly couldn't do that if he gave up! So, with her photo taped to his computer keyboard, he stayed busy by continuing the family genealogical research that filled him with such pride as he discovered new family members--both living and passed on--and their remarkable achievements that were comparable to his own. His family history always reminded him that there was nothing that he couldn't do, especially when my brother and I thought that he surely could not endure any more punishment that his body was inflicting upon him. Recurring blood clots, a heart arrhythmia that at times resembled a heart attack, chronic leg swelling and kidney infections requiring dialysis all did their best to knock him down and out...but with Sharp's physical therapists as his trainers in his corner, he always pulled himself up and fought them back, sending them off just enough to allow him to leave the hospital ring on his own power.

Alarmingly, Dad's opponents grew in size and strength as time wore on. This past winter, when a swelling-induced abscess numbed his wounded leg and actually prevented him from walking (a first in Dad's long medical history), my brother and I once again feared the worst. A surgeon told him that if he really wanted to leave the hospital without a wheelchair, he would need to go through the equivalent of boot camp. Dad looked at him and said, "So? I've already done that." The surgeon raised his palms, and I raised my shoulders: you don't know my father. And of course, Dad came to walk again, even when he fell and broke his leg in two places. It was just another obstacle in the training course. He had been to enough rehab facilities to decide that he preferred Friendship Manor in National City, where their gym was bigger and had a wider variety of equipment than any of the others that he had seen. It (and the therapists) would make him work harder, which would make him that much stronger, and then he could return home more quickly..

Unfortunately, Dad's final opponent turned out to be liver cancer: a vicious monster that sucker-punched him and took him by surprise just as he was preparing to return home from Friendship Manor. Much to his frustration, it instead sent him back to Grossmont Hospital, where nurses now knew him by name and actually vied to have him on their rotations because he was such a kind and lovely patient (and charmingly flirtatious!). Their tenacious tending to him always put him at ease in his hospital bed and placed a gentle smile on his face, even though he so badly wanted to show them that he could stand up and walk out on his own. Doctors told him that he wasn't strong enough to handle chemotherapy or radiation as alternative treatments (and that his survival of surgery was a moot point of discussion). Dad was still indignant enough to ask, who are they to think that I'm not strong enough? He was determined to go home with the intention of seeking a second, third and fourth opinion. When the doctor made a comment about how an improved diet could only help him, Dad could not wait to go home and do what he needed to do to battle back against this newest adversary.

Sadly enough, Dad discovered that unlike before, his sheer willpower would no longer be enough to keep him standing in the ring. It hurt us deeply to watch that cancerous parasite knock him to the mat--so much so that he could not even stand up on his own, much less walk. The pain in my chest really was a knife in my heart as Dad finally and quietly thought out loud that maybe his time really had come to be with God...that God was now calling on him to let go and come home to Him...and what was it going to be like? What was going to happen? Despite his apprehension, he still knew that God's call for him took priority over his own earthly wish to live with his beloved wife. And so, unlike four years ago when he held on and fought long and hard over weeks at a time, this time he took us by surprise in leaving so quickly within a matter of hours. I can only think that it was now enough for him to know that in the next stage of his journey, on the other side of the white light that he had already seen four years ago, our mother would come to him when it was really her time, too. In the meantime, he would see his brothers and sisters and parents again...and what a wonderful reunion that would be, that he so deserved!

So, after all of his time in the boxing ring, constantly beaten down by what his body had doled out on him, what was the purpose of him surviving it, if it would only defeat him in the end? I can only think that, in God's plan, this was Dad's final legacy, left behind to nourish the rest of us. Only after watching him endure it all do I FINALLY understand the magnitude of our father's strength, determination and love for his family--especially his beloved wife. Only now do I finally believe that I know and appreciate who he really was...because four years ago, I DIDN'T know who he was, what he was made of, and what was really possible after so many moments of doubting him.

My greatest hope today, amidst my still-desperate longing for his presence in my life (or even just a phone call letting me know how he is doing), is that he knows how proud I am of him. Whether it is in his soon-to-be-published memoirs or in a posting on www.ancestry.com, HE will be the next story in our family tree that is passed along and hopefully inspires someone in the next two hundred years to do THEIR very best for someone in their lives,

I love you, Dad. More so than that fictional movie character from forty years ago, YOU are the true prizefighter and the example to follow. I'll try not to spend time regretting that I can't tell you that in person. I instead cling to the hope that you are watching and that you know anyway. Look down at us and be proud of how you have inspired us to be better people.