Pamlico Breeze

Jeff has X ray vision.  When he first came to our house, he saw the sag in the brick that had come from repeated freeze thaw cycles without adequate drainage.   He worried about the lint in the dryer exhaust that could be a fire hazard.  His eyes gazed at problems and sought solutions.   He has been able to preserve the earnestness and curiosity of youth and balance that with the experience of adulthood. 

Now Jeff lays dying.  After a happiest moment when his daughter married our son Ben, Jeff felt a sharp pain in his belly.    A sore as well as intermittent stabbing discomfort felt more like a pulled muscle.  He is a diagnostician.  He wondered:  what can cause left upper quadrant abdominal pain?  He can rebuild brakes of fancy German import cars and build stout homes that many covet.  He is a successful and a trusted builder.  He is patient with his clients and fair with his contractors.  Most have worked with him for decades.  So as an optimist he went to the ER to find a ready solution.

I cannot imagine what Jeff felt when they told him that he had a mass.  Pancreatic.  His family members had pancreatic cancer.   I am sure he is thinking removal, chemotherapy and then cure.   He is too happy to have cancer!  He is too vigorous to be sick!

He lives in Charlottesville where UVa had targeted pancreatic cancer.  The Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center is full of world class oncologists and compassionate and dedicated personnel.  After surgery with Dr. Reid,  Jeff was up within hours.  He tried to break the record for the most laps walked in the post-surgical unit.  He was looking forward to chemotherapy.  He became a nutritionist to build up his reserves.  He read voraciously on the web, scores of studies and trial data.  He became a lay expert.

We met Jeff and Teri almost five years ago when Ben introduced us to his future bride, Megan a.k.a Moose.   She is as beautiful as she is charming and also a snow board instructor.  Having finished two degrees at Virginia Tech, she is a brain.  They are happy in love and always running around, participating in races, hikes and climbs.  For their honeymoon, they went to the mountains of Switzerland.  They went dog sledding and fell in love with the canines.  They kayaked in the cold lakes and schussed down the Alps.  They are always looking for each other and smiling.

Now Ben and Megan are facing pancreatic cancer together in a most cherished father.  It is a double black diamond out of bounds skiing with rocks and crevasse on each side.  The weather is frigid and bleak and there is no ski patrol to bail them out.  After a month of marriage, they are facing the loss of the pillar of Moose’s family.  Jeff is the rock of Gibraltar and has always been there for them.  How can they help Jeff?

Jeff is a waterman.  Growing up in Virginia Beach and raising a family in Avon and Hatteras has made his veins salty.  He loves the water and all things nautical.  His dream is to go cruising in the Caribbean with his wife Teri.   He is a power boater and often fished the Gulf stream with a single engine outboard on a small runabout.   Running Hatteras inlet was local knowledge to Jeff.   He still has the same boat and engine now stored on Afton mountain.  The road to his home on Afton Mountain is Avon road.  The calling port of his sailing boat, Pamlico Breeze, is Hatteras, North Carolina.

They moved from North Carolina as their precocious son Aaron needed higher education.  Jeff has made his family a priority and was not afraid to establish new roots.  From the coastal waters of Avon, he moved to Afton Mountain, Charlottesville.   Aaron and Megan thrived in the schools of Albemarle County and went on to Virginia Tech.  Ben met Moose their senior year and fell in love.  Our lives will forever be intwined in that simple desire to further kid education.

Three years ago, Jeff and Teri spent a weekend aboard Enchantress.  This was our first real meeting.  We were anchoring out in Fishing Bay.   We were trapped together so it would be either glorious or disastrous.  Megan and Ben were  our buffers.   Who goes sailing for a weekend with possible future in laws ?

The winds were fair, and the air caressed the young couple as they paddle boarded around Fishing Bay Harbor.  Joan, Jeff, Teri and I could only bask in the loving atmosphere that Ben and Moose created.   As we enjoyed an enchanted sunset, night fell, and we were gently swayed to sleep with a future so promising and magical.   Our children were in love.  We were gaining a brother and sister in Jeff and Teri, as well as a new daughter.

The sail back to Deltaville the next morning was brisk.  There is always wind coming off the Piankatank river.   Enchantress, powered by a stiff breeze, heeled.   Her chines bit into the Chesapeake waters.  She powered up and planed as her main and jib worked in unison.   Jeff’s smile is infectious as he grinned from ear to ear.   We can see his eyes twinkling as his face told us: “Hey I want to do this too !  Let’s go sailing!”   The wind was predictably on our nose and Enchantress tacked back and forth so that the dinner dishes made cacophony below, but there was order in the cockpit as we sought the shelter of Broad creek, home.

So, started a love affair with sailing and with Jeff and Teri.  We would sail around DELMARVA in one year and meet each other at Urbana two years later.  Jeff was the captain of his own vessel, Pamlico Breeze, and we followed  on Enchantress.    Jeff did not let cancer dictate his options.  He went on with life, learned to sail and commissioned a brand-new boat.   He sought the best treatment while living to the fullest.   He was an example for us all, "boats against the current” to seek the adventure beyond the green light of Daisy’s dock across the river.

His goal was to live as long as possible and be with his family.  When we decided to go around DELMARVA in July, he took his chemotherapy on board and was getting treatment as we rounded Cape Charles and then North to Cape May.  The Atlantic swells did not deter the nausea of chemotherapy.  He took the night watch as any other crew member, except underneath his foulies was an iv-pump chirping all night long with his medication.  How many people receive their chemotherapy while sailing overnight in the Atlantic Ocean ?

Before the trip...

...after

Facing a shortened life, he choose to expand his time by pursing his life’s dreams.   I thought he was  ambitious when he bought his boat, the first Jeanneau 51 in the lower Chesapeake Bay, Pamlico Breeze.  He installed an ICW friendly mast and long range Wi-Fi equipment to connect to the outside world.  A server with thousands of movies went below as well as a washer and dryer.  Teri made the stateroom home, and Jeff’s smile was solar energy to fuel his expedition.  I realize now that he was wise.   Jeff was simply living.

Even a punishing storm off the North bank of the Potomac did not dampen his quest to sail.  We were outrunning the typical summer thunderstorm but this one was fueled by the outgoing South Potomac river flow and the surging Northbound Bay flood tide.  A white squall enveloped us and there was water coming down the step mast fitting below.  We were basically pummeled.  Minutes seems like hours but we had singular focus and Enchantress took us safely to Smith Point. 

A warm sun greeted us a few hours later, and we were none the worse for the wear.  Jeff and Teri were smiling  as they shed their rain gear for shorts.  Is not life grand when we go through adversity with friends and family and come out on top?  We are humbled by nature's forces but also awed by human resilience and courage.  “Success is counted sweetest by those who near succeed.”  We were feeling not like Amherst spinsters but more like the jubilant Volvo Ocean racers featured in SpinSheet magazine.

For Jeff is the ultimate problem solver and relishes challenges.  He is not afraid to change and to experiment. He takes apart engines and puts them together.  He does not blindly follow expert advice but rather becomes an expert himself.  He puts the experience in expertise.

photo by Teri Goldberg

He is so charmed by life that sometimes he is bursting at the seams!  His enthusiasm is infectious.  I am now measuring my coffee at exactly 195 F.  He sends me a drain for the kitchen, and I am trying to be a house plumber rather than a heart plumber.  Jeff enriches our lives by creating solutions.  He has hope for the future.  Life can be better. Problems can be solved.  This is Jeff’s nature, to find solutions to our pressing problems.  Jeff give us hope and makes our lives better!

This past week, our hearts are heavy as Jeff is dying.  We knew that this time would come, but we refuse to believe in it.  We could not assuage it.  Even when he had lost tremendous weight and his skin turned brilliant yellow, his mind so active and alive made up for his physical decline.  He was still Jeff with his deep blue eyes that gazed at us with a genuine earnestness.

Now Jeff lays mostly asleep.  He is surround by his loving family.  His body’s betrayal has not diminished his aura.  He is at home in the house that he built.  He is with Teri and Aaron and Megan and Ben.  He would have it no other way but to be with his family.  He told me that he would live longer in sickness to be with his family than sail a short time in the Caribbean with relative health.  He would endure chemotherapy and its pitfalls to borrow time…

You who are most alive had to first make the journey.   All of us have to make this trip home one day.  I am glad you will be smiling at us from the distant lee shore.  Like the breezes of the Pamlico sound, we are enlivened when we feel change and movement.  Jeff’s vision is life and so we will try to keep our hearts filled with love and our eyes open to new adventures.

photo by A Goldberg

  

We need Jeff’s X ray vision to navigate our future.   We cannot imagine a future without Jeff but that time is fast approaching.  So Jeff, I am writing out of deep sorrow.  I want to express my admiration for your courage. I want to thank you for your example.  I am writing to send you love and peace.  I am sad for us who are left behind.  We are impoverished because you are not with us.  So we beat on...   

photo by Jeff Goldberg, Pamlico Breeze on Pamlico Sound

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

--William Wordsworth

Jeff passed March 7^th surround by his family on Afton Mountain, Signal Road, off Avon road just one year short after his diagnosis.   Jeff wished that we support pancreatic cancer research at UVA Health System's Cancer Center.  Donation in honor of Jeff can be made with the link:

http://get-involved.uvahealth.com/goto/JeffGoldberg