My friend Wendy Lustbader is publishing a follow up to her excellent What’s Worth Knowing. In her new book she explores some of the foundational ways that knowledge of one’s one mortality changes how daily life is experienced.
A dramatic example of this transformation can be glimpsed when a world famous television sportscaster develops terminal cancer. CNN’s Sanjay Gupta reports on the close of one such life.
Over the last 40 years, Nick Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl to the Kentucky Derby. [snip] Twice voted the sexiest sportscaster in America, Charles is now undergoing rounds of chemotherapy that have darkened the circles under his eyes and, he says, “make me look like I’m halfway in the grave.”
His oldest is child is 39. His youngest is a 5 year-old girl named Giovanna.
“My little girl needs a good daddy more than anything right now,” he says.
Watch the video HERE
The family has begun making preparations. They meet with a counselor regularly. When he was diagnosed, Charles told Giovanna he was sick — that his hair would fall out.
This time last year, she looked at him with her big brown eyes and asked: “Are you going to die?”Weeks earlier, Charles and his wife sat down to tape the first in a series of birthday videos he’s leaving for Giovanna. The camera rolls. Charles sings. In TV terms, he nails it.
Giovanna Charles, the girl daddy loves with all his heart
Because she’s cute, because she’s smart
Because she’s sweet, because she’s strong
Because she’s so much fun!
