Yesterday…June 7th, 2026 was National Cancer Survivors Day.

For the first time, I get to put that word on myself with no asterisk. No “almost.” No “in treatment.” No “waiting on the next scan.” Just survivor. Present tense. Out loud. In front of God and everybody.

So I’ve partied. Loud. Unapologetic. Steaks on the grill, kids in the pool, music up. Because somewhere back in early 2025, when I was bald, had my insides on the outside, and emotionally gut-punched while trying to figure out how to explain the word “metastatic” to my children, there was a version of this timeline where I never got to write this sentence. The fact that I am writing it? That is worth a cannonball or two.

Speaking of cannonballs…The pool is open.

I officially christened the pool for the summer. Boots off, shirt off, scars out, dignity off, and a running launch off the side that probably registered on somebody’s seismograph that they’ll blame on fracking. This pool is going to see a lot of action this summer. Kids, friends, training laps, recovery floats, and at least one more cannonball.

Maintenance chemo wraps up at the end of August.

After having my port accessed like a phone on the charger for 1.5 years, I am going to walk out of that infusion suite for the last time, hug those nurses until they make me leave, and then not look back. Those women carried me through some of the darkest stretches of my life with grace and dark humor. I owe them more than I can ever pay back. But after the last hug? I’m gone. The port comes out, the calendar empties of trips to Dallas, and I get to be the guy I was before all of this… only different. Hopefully a little better.

My divorce was finalized on May 15th. Which… if you do the math… is also the date I got married sixteen years ago. I won’t dig into the why of it here, but there is a particular kind of humor in having the marriage officially end on the exact same day it began sixteen years prior. If you’d written it into a book or a screenplay, an editor would have made you cut it for being too unrealistic.

Here is a sentence I did not expect to write a year ago: I am training for a triathlon. I’m still trying to decide if that’s a question or a statement. I am training for a triathlon? When I hear Jack Black say it in my head, it’s always in the form of a question. 

I’m kind of cheating though… It’s in September as a relay. I am taking the swim leg, which, given that I am still rebuilding lung capacity during chemo and after radiation, is the most ambitious thing I’ve signed up for in a long time. Claire is taking the bike. Claire is one of my oldest and well documented best friends… we have been running around off and on together since 8th grade.

That’s 30 years, Claire.

I had Claude Grok (gotta support the fam) double check my math since I ran out of fingers and toes. That’s three decades. On top of this being her idea and taking her own leg of the race, she is also the one getting me back in the pool for my leg, which means she gets to watch me wheeze across at the speed of smell and pretend that counts as forward progress. As for the running portion, my dad, Lou is bringing us home in a race that amounts to his semi-daily workout. Should be cake for him, he’s my superman. 

For the first time in nearly two years, I have enough gas in the tank to spend a real afternoon in the shop. Greasy hands, sore back, that good kind of tired. The kind where you fall into bed at 9pm and sleep like the dead because you actually did something with your day.

The tractor projects are moving again. Slowly… but moving.

Energy coming back means small joys. I have been babying the lawn this spring and the salsa garden is making peppers and onions like a beast. Jalapeños, sweet peppers, and 1015s are all going wide open. I am going to be drowning in pico by mid-June. 

The kids and I are heading to Alaska this summer for a couple of weeks. The plan: escape the Texas oven, hike on actual glaciers, eat fish that was swimming an hour earlier, and let Norah and Beau see a corner of the world that looks nothing like central Texas. It’s the kind of trip you plan when you are reminded…loudly and in writing…that you are not guaranteed any of these summers.

Norah finished 6th grade with all A’s and a single B in Advanced Reading. So the B comes with a footnote that reads “this kid is reading on a 12th grade level and her old man could not be prouder.”

Beau has a birthday coming up here shortly. I’ll have a little dude one year older, and we’ll celebrate hard because after everything, every birthday in this house is like a holy day.

Yesterday I was a survivor for the first time, officially, on the calendar. Today I am a survivor with sore swim shoulders, a race on the horizon, a garden going feral, two healthy kids, an Alaskan wilderness calling my name, a friend who’s about to drag me across a finish line, a dad who’s still my hero, and a pool that has officially been christened for the summer.

The timeline where I never get to type any of that? Thankfully, that affected a different J.T. who probably goes by Justin.

Psalm 30:2. Forever.

See you in the water.

J.T.B.