Ramy Boghdadi

In 2006 my father was diagnosed with colon cancer, and it spread to his liver and after a 7 year battle, in 2013 he passed. He was my best friend, made me who I am today. But within six months after he passed, my father-in-law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has just battled and was in remission over the summer. And we just found out about a month ago that it spread throughout his whole body. So he's still fighting – hence this concept of strong. And my dad's brother just six months ago was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer as well. That's why there's three [ribbons] there – three men all battling. Strong. C: Will you tell me more about your father? Do you have a favorite story about him? Ever since I can remember, but probably when I was around 8, I started picking up what he was doing and every Sunday my dad and I would go sit in the basement after we'd watch some football - he'd sit me on his knee - and he had this poem – it was his most favorite poem - “If” by Rudyard Kipling. And my dad would sit and we'd read the poem together and then he would embark upon me words of wisdom for the week. And we did that – not sitting on his knee the whole time! – up until I went away for college. Every Sunday we'd just sit across from each other and read the poem and just talk. And he'd give me his words of wisdom. When I went away to college, it was something that I missed. It was this connection with him. And so we'd do that every Sunday night on the phone. Then, when I graduated and moved on, we lived fairly far apart – it just continued and it evolved into words of wisdom on Sunday night for the week, whatever I'm going through. When he passed, I gave his eulogy. And I read “If” for the last time. He was the wisest person that I've ever known. C: Are there moments when you use the wisdom or the strength of these men that have influenced your life when you're going through a hard time? Yeah, you know, you think you're going through something hard until you kind of put it into context. Nothing that I'm going through is a battle for my own life. And these gentlemen, you hear about chemo and you hear about radiation and treatments, and what you don't see is – they muster everything that is in them to go – because it's brutal. And if you think about what's happening, you're pushing your body to the edge of death because you're injecting something that's meant to kill everything. That's how they treat it. And they lose their energy and they lose their strength and they lose their hair and teeth and parts of their body turn charcoal in color. It is beyond demoralizing to see yourself go from something – but to see each and every single one of them say 'No, I'm not going to go without giving it every last ounce of strength that I have – not for me, for you.' That's what these men are doing. And that's pretty awesome.