removed from the back of the five-year-old boy’s head. He
was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma—a word, his dad
says, no child should ever have to know.^2 After the surgery,
Garrett was left blind, mute, and paralyzed. Put on a
ventilator to help him breathe, he would have to learn how
to walk, talk, and go to the bathroom all over again. Even if
by some miracle he was able to do all that, he was still given
only a 50 percent chance of surviving the next five years.
The Millers began counting the days they had left with
their son.
One day in the middle of the cancer treatments, while
looking at his son, Eric thought about how the clock was
running out on Garrett’s life. In spite of the challenges
facing his little boy, and the worry this caused, he realized
something. It was an epiphany of sorts. Working in the
medical profession, an industry “where the clock runs out
on people all the time,” Eric realized he was wrong. It
wasn’t just Garrett’s life that could end at any second—it
was all of theirs. There was no guarantee anyone in the
Miller family would outlive Garrett.
“We needed to be living life all of the time,” Eric told
me. “Because none of us are guaranteed that we’re going to
be around an hour or two from now.” Whatever time they
had left, the Millers were going to live life to the fullest.
After Garrett was moved out of the ICU and taken off
the ventilator, his dad wondered if there was anyone out
there who knew how he was feeling. Sitting in a window
bay of the hospital, he prayed for an answer to the despair