Lt. Col. Mark Weber prepared his family for the worst countless times during his 23-year Army career — but now faces a battle he knows he can’t win.
In December 2010, doctors diagnosed Weber, who had survived 19 years in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, with Stage 4 intestinal cancer.
Told he had only four months to live, the decorated soldier set out to write a farewell letter to his three sons, Matthew, now 17, and twins Joshua and Noah, 12.
“Along the way, I hope you’ll consult these pages as often and as casually as you would if I were still here and you could pick up the phone,” he writes. “These pages reflect observations and perspective rather than advice or instruction.”
The letters — nine in total — were compiled in a self-published book released in December 2012.
The book became an instant phenomenon, selling over 10,000 copies in three months, and catching the eye of big-time publisher Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House.
The book, “Tell My Sons: A Father’s Last Letters,” will hit stores on June 4.
Weber has defied expectations and continues to fight his last battle alongside his sons and wife, Kristin, in Minnesota.
We’ve excerpted some of the letters’ pearls of wisdom here.
* “We’re taught early in life that being afraid is something to be ashamed of. This is wrongheaded. Fear is healthy. Fear keeps us alive. When I went through the Army’s airborne and air assault schools and learned to jump out of planes and slide down ropes hanging from helicopters, I did not want to be sitting next to any trooper who wasn’t just a little afraid about what he or she was going to do.”
* “Strength is about getting something done, even when youhave iron-clad excuses or reasons for not doing it. Your mom has a hard time seeing how she exemplifies this, but she has shown it to us every day.”
* “Everyone has things they don’t want to do—there’s no crime in that. But there’s abig difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘don’t want to’ when it comes to facing the path of comfort or the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge . . . I am proposing that ‘can do’ is often just one or two short steps beyond ‘can’t do,’ and the territory in between is fertile ground for personal growth and professional achievement.”
* “The value of noticing and caring about what is right in front of your face—simple, common social graces. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you,’ for starters, but also giving credit to others when and where credit is due, taking a personal interest in those you serve or who serve you, and ‘unplugging’ from gadgets and the churn around you in order to give a person your full attention. These aresimple to talk about but harder to do, and they not only lead to success but encourage others to help you succeed or manage your failures.”
* “There is a time andaplace for crying and laughing. And figuring out howtocry and laugh at hardship or death is as kill worth honing into a fine art when you’re young.”
* “Pain and suffering—self inflicted or otherwise—is not merely a rude interruption of your journey, but one of the very purposes of the journey.”
* “If I’m truly and finally proud of anything inmylife, it is that I lived it in constant striving, continuous searching, and willing struggle, while conducting as honest an exploration of this world as I knew how to do.”