Tom – the Social Worker (1961-2021): A Eulogy.

I cannot claim to be someone who knew Tom most closely but I can claim to be a person who asked Tom’s permission to write a few words about him a few days before he died. To which he agreed.

Also, to call him a Social Worker would be a disservice to have as a title for his eulogy because he was a man of not one, but many identities and achievements. Being an outstanding Social Worker was only one of them. But that is how I knew him and will always remember him.

At the Cancer Center, before Tom entered our lives, we were already blessed to have a Social Worker, who had dedicated her life to helping patients. She was the kind of person who lived the most fulfilling life and whose achievements both at work and home were tremendous. She, unfortunately, was diagnosed with cancer. Imagine, helping people dealing with cancer all your life and now being afflicted with the same horrible illness yourself. She was a very private person and we all gave her the space that she asked for. She eventually passed away amidst the tears of all employees of the Cancer Center. The mood was low and it was a given in our minds that there would be no way that her shoes as a Social Worker could be filled by anyone. Working at the Cancer Center, we kind of get used to bearing loss on a daily basis but learn to celebrate the lives lost, so we did the same at her demise.

I remember when Tom joined the Cancer Center. On a busy day at work, I usually move from patient room to room and try not to stop and socialize with colleagues, otherwise, I can never get my work done. I leave that to a “slow” day. This particular day that I can recall was quite a busy one. I was walking in the hallway trying to avoid conversation with anyone. Michele, our practice manager walked in along with a new face who I had never seen before. “Dr. Imran, please meet Tom. He is one of our new Social Workers.” I stopped and hurriedly said hello to Tom. This is when Tom used his magic on me for the first time. He greeted me well and engaged me in conversation in such a delightful and insightful manner, that I forgot about my busy day and stood in the hallway and spoke to him as if I had met a long-forgotten friend from high school and we had to catch up on our entire lives since we last saw each other.

Tom would often stop at my office or meet in the break room and effortlessly strike warm and friendly conversations. It is very hard to get to know another person deeply by just office small talk. But Tom had a way of being so open about himself and such a genuine manner that I felt that I knew Tom for a very long time. He told me how his life in the past was full of mistakes. He admitted to me that for a long time, he did not fulfill his obligations in life. He had lived a troubled past where his relationship with his family had suffered and had been badly damaged. He gave way too much to indulgence and led anything but a disciplined life, at that time. But he was proud, that he had turned his life around. He talked about that phase of life as a thing of the past. He spoke like a new person who had already conquered and defeated the old person that he was.

One of the things that connected us instantly was our interest in heavy metal music. He told me that at one time he had very long hair and all he would do was chase metal music bands. He had gone to Aerosmith concerts at least two dozen times. He told me that he once went to a local bar and there was a small unknown band playing and he thought they were pretty good. A few years later, that same band made it into the mainstream music scene and called themselves Guns N’ Roses. He had hung out with Axl Rose not thinking too much of him at that time. I told him my story of how I love music and for a person who grew up in Pakistan, I had more exposure to American heavy metal music than many others, thanks to my uncle who used to live in Florida and would bring us cassette tapes that he recorded from FM radio.

Tom very quickly made excellent relationships with the Cancer Center patients as well as his colleagues. We started relying on him a lot. He was the kind of Social Worker who would just take care of things. He would go out of his way to go and meet the patients and work his magic to get to know them personally and deeply. He became the usual name for our Cancer Center. “Just call Tom and he will know what to do.”

One day, Trudy our nurse walked in with a sense of urgency, “Do you think you can look at Tom’s scans. He hasn’t been feeling well and just got the scans ordered by his doctor. Can you or one of our physicians look into it?” I explained the need of establishing a patient-doctor relationship with Tom’s permission before anyone of us could review his medical data. My friend Mehul (Dr. Patel) at our office took on the task of becoming Tom’s oncologist. His scans had unfortunately shown that he had developed pancreatic cancer that had gone to his liver and he now had stage IV disease which could not be cured and he had only another year or two to live.

In life, people react differently when they are encountered with tragic events. These are the moments that define the true version of any man. Some deal with a fighting spirit, others deal with rationalization or stoicism. Some cower and become anxious. Others remain angry or in denial. When Tom was encountered with this situation, he dealt with it in the best way it could possibly be handled. He accepted the reality of the diagnosis but kept living his life as productive and joyful as he could. He continued to work through the illness and chemotherapy sessions. Nobody could tell that this man, who was holding the hands of these patients dying from the same illness, helping them in any way possible, and providing them emotional support was going through the exact same himself!

During the summers, I realized that there were a lot of nice music bands who were planning to tour our area. I bought concert tickets to Billy Joel, Motely Crue, Poison, and Kiss for the summers. Tom told me that he had already bought those tickets as well and he was planning to go with his wife Cindy. We would talk about the bands and their music and enjoy each other’s love for music. Then COVID hit and all the concerts got canceled. We were given the option of either canceling our tickets or keeping them because if we kept them, we would get better seats at the concerts when they would finally take place. I thought that this was just a gimmick to have people hang on to their tickets instead of asking for refunds and I went ahead and canceled all my tickets. When I asked Tom, he had kept all his tickets. His argument was that when the concerts would re-open, due to space limitations, the tickets may be much harder to acquire. I felt guilty thinking that I should ask him to return his tickets because his prognosis from his cancer was quite limited and deep inside I knew that he would not be able to go to these concerts because he may not be with us anymore. But of course, I could not dare to say this to him. It’s not that he did not know but he chose to ignore the fact that he was dying and rather take the positive and optimistic view of having tickets to concerts that he one day would be able to attend.

Tom kept working full time at the Cancer Center without showing any hint of appearing ill. We were all very sensitive about the privacy of his diagnosis. Whenever we used to ask him to see one of the patients, we would make sure not to tell the patients that he was facing the same catastrophe. But he was a very open and forthcoming person. He would self-disclose to his patients and build such close bonds with them that they truly believed that they were in the same boat together and felt supported and encouraged by his demeanor. He did not talk about retiring or having any difficulty dealing with the patients who were going through the same mental and physical agony as himself. It was as if a ship was sinking and everyone aboard was panicking about the imminent death but this one person was so strong emotionally that he took it upon himself to give help and comfort to others without worrying about his own fate. He decided to spend his last few months of life not by becoming a sorry figure but by being a hero who would be of help to others until his dying day.

This was the time that I learned the most important lesson from Tom. I would keep thinking to myself: “Look at this man. He had a troubled past and he self-admittedly had problems with drugs and alcohol but then had the discipline and courage to turn around his life and dedicated it to helping people. After doing all this, now at such a young age, he has to face a terminal diagnosis. How upset he must be with God! How he must be complaining to God that it is so unfair to him that he started doing all the right things in life but still felt punished by having such a diagnosis at such a young age.” Although I did not verbalize any of my thoughts to him I felt that he knew what I was thinking. He proved by his behavior and his demeanor how wrong I was. He gave the air of a person who was still very thankful to God. He was not bitter at all. He appeared to be a person who was happy with whatever God had written into the book of his destiny and he would accept any fate without dissent. He often expressed gratitude that he was given a chance in life to overcome his shortcomings and eventually help others and repair all of the broken relationships he had in his previous life.

As the months passed, he started losing weight. He started having pain that was difficult to control with medications alone so he had to go through radiation. He would always give me an update about his health status and never said anything pessimistic or negative. I did not even have the heart to sympathize with him because he did not appear to be a person who needed any. Some of our co-workers started thinking about having a get-together in his honor. He had recently won a city-wide award for being the best Social Worker in town which he received at an extravagant ceremony but we wanted to do something more intimate for him where only the Cancer Center employees would be invited. Word went around that since he liked the music so much, we would arrange for a local band to come to our event and play some of his favorite rock songs. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic hit around this time and our plans could not come to fruition. This is when I had an idea! I thought that I would contact Aerosmith, yes the actual band Aerosmith and try to write something catchy to them asking them to honor Tom as one of their top fans. I sent a private message on Instagram to the official Aerosmith account hoping for an answer. Although this plan could also not get successful but at least I later told Tom about it and he had a good chuckle.

This is what I wrote to Aerosmith, “Dear Steve, Tom, Joey, Brad, Joe, Buck: I am an oncologist practicing in Rochester New York and one of my colleagues who is a Social Worker has been to your concerts at least thirty times and he is a die-hard fan. He is a recovered alcoholic and once he made his life clean, he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and now he is going on hospice and he has only a few more weeks left to live. I know you have millions of fans but I thought that I would send you this message. Who knows maybe one of you could do something to recognize him and we will be sending one happy man to heaven. I know it’s CRAZY for me to send this message but it’s a SWEET EMOTION. This guy has been LIVING ON THE EDGE but then got his life BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN and CAME TOGETHER and now I’m DREAMING ON that you guys will recognize him in some way and that would be AMAZING.” (For those who are not familiar with Aerosmith, the words in upper case alphabet are names of some of their greatest hits.)

Finally, one day I heard that Tom had decided not to come to work anymore. He had made this decision because he had become too weak and was in a lot of pain. He had only a few more weeks left. He accepted hospice level of care which meant that he would stay at home and if he got acutely sick, he would not be brought to the hospital. A hospice nurse would visit him to provide care at his home until he would die peacefully in the comfort of his own home.

I texted him to ask him if I could visit him and he agreed. I went to his house realizing that he lived in a neighborhood by which I had passed at least a hundred times in the last few years. Thinking to myself how we wait for someone to have a tragedy in their life to visit them rather than doing that during good times, I knocked on the door. His wife Cindy opened the door and let me in. There he was, sitting on a couch in his living room. He appeared calm and well tucked-in in a nice blanket. His surroundings were very peaceful and comfortable. He was weak and did not have the same energy that I was used to seeing. I could not help but sense the feeling of looming death in the room. Despite that, I could not detect even the slightest of negative emotion such as sorrow, guilt, or despair on his face. His body was reduced to skin and bones but all I could see was contentment, closure, and a look of “been there, done that” on his face. We spoke for about half an hour and he made me feel as if it was any other day at work when we would stop in the hallway for an interesting conversation.

A young man appeared from another room and Tom introduced us to each other. He was Tom’s son and they had been estranged for many years but later in life when Tom got his life back on track, he reached out to his son and made amends. He drove all the way from Adirondacks, where he lived, to be with Tom in his final few days. This was yet another sign of how Tom had repaired all the broken relationships from his past life. Tom often spoke about Cindy and his words were always filled with respect and love for her.

This is when I mentioned to Tom how I had started writing a blog and asked his permission that if someday, I wrote about him, whether it would be OK with him. He looked at me for a moment and then nodded and as if he understood that I was looking for more affirmation, he told me that he would be fine with me telling his story. In fact, I got a feeling that he wanted his story to be told.

Tom finally left us. He showed with such class that some people, when they leave us physically, actually get even closer to us emotionally. He taught me so much in the little time that we had together as friends and colleagues. He taught me that if life is not going well, you can turn it around and repair it. He taught me that if you have gone through bad times, a great way of recovering is to find people who are going through similar bad times and help them get through. He taught me the value of stopping during a busy day and having small talk. He taught me that it is OK to share your grief and personal suffering with others. He taught me that if you are given the death sentence by your destiny, live each remaining day as if death was not even an issue and should not be a hurdle in the way of continuing to help others. In a nutshell, he taught me how to live, and how to die.

Read Tom’s Obituary by clicking here.