When my friend was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, he showed remarkable strength.
It was late February in coastal Rhode Island, dreary both inside and out, and Tom was cradling a warm mug of green tea on the stool where he spent his weekdays, part of a boat-building routine with his son that was leading to the off-season construction of a tiny wooden skiff.
It was a hoop house, wrapped in translucent plastic, that was visible through the shed door, which broke in the frigid winds. The raised beds of his garden were completely frozen solid outside, behind a blanket of snow. An ancient wool sweater draped loosely around his waist like a stray sail. When Tom glanced down at his withered hands, he realized that his life had come to a halt.
“I’m down to my skeletons,” he said. “My ribs are visible. My shoulder blades are prominent. My hips protrude from the rest of my body. “Until you reach to the knee, my thigh is really skinny.” He had formerly been a hefty, hearty, and powerful man. Death was getting closer. He talked about it in a tone that was both clear and calm. “This is the end,” he said. “This marks the end of the line.”
Many of us have seen personally the power of strength throughout our lives. We all have role models: friends and family who have recovered from addiction, who have managed to flourish despite suffering from mental illness, or who have recovered from traumatic experiences.
“What does it mean to be strong in the face of something that has no hope of recovery?”
Many of the individuals I’ve met have discovered strength in the face of adversity, whether it’s amputation, an eye loss, a terrible assault or divorce, or a public scandal. Some of the well-known feel-good stories, such as the one about an athlete who comes back from injury, surgery, and rehabilitation to set new records, or the one about a bystander who risks her own life to rescue a stranger from a swollen stream, may be genuine. When we see such feats of power, we tell ourselves, “Wow, that’s some serious strength right there.”
What does it mean to be strong in the face of something that has no chance of recovery and offers nothing in the way of good fortune, public recognition, or high drama? What happens to the strength and grace that might arise when the nature of a fresh setback itself marks the beginning of the end? What happens to strength after the curtain falls?
Such was Tom’s fortitude. Hoxsie, a descendent of a family that landed in what is now Rhode Island in the 1690s and who had become one of the state’s most important inshore commercial fisherman, had been diagnosed with clear-cell carcinoma a little more than two years previously, in late 2018.
Tom Hoxsie’s family
By the beginning of this year, his illness had progressed to its last stage. He had plummeted to 160 pounds from his previous weight of 280 pounds; his energy was poor, his hunger inconsistent, and his discomfort was excruciating. He had developed the habit of predicting his own demise. “I like the seasons of spring, summer, and autumn, but I despise the season of winter,” he stated. “For the time being, I’m trying to make it till Christmas.”
In reality, he had far less time. Undeniably, he remained, patiently awaiting the completion of his son’s high school day so that the two of them could take up tools and begin the building of a boat on the same property where Tom and his late father had previously constructed many skiffs.
I SPENT THE LAST WINTER WITH TOM, bringing him fuel for the shed heater and meals for his thinning frame, and frequently warming tea for him amid his tools, all the while interviewing him for the eulogy he requested me to deliver when his time was up.
The last period of his life had started in agony and miscalculation. Despite the fact that his hands were a jumble of calluses and scars, Tom was accustomed to suffering. He worked in an industry where punctures, cuts, and strains were commonplace, and the mindset was to bandage a wound with electrical tape and go back to work.
This indicated that cancer had snuck up on a guy who had a high tolerance for adversity and suffering to begin with. In addition to a persistent cough that had been bothering him since at least early 2018, he had been feeling generally ill since the summer of that year, when it became apparent that he was dropping excess body weight. He said that his whole left side ached, and that his arm and body throbbed like he had a massive toothache.
“Tom inquired as to how much longer he might reasonably expect to live. The oncologist did not provide an estimate.”
This was due to the fact that the summer months are the busiest months for inshore fishing operations around here, and hence the best time to have a chest X-ray done. “We were working,” he said to me once, as if that explained everything, which it does on some vessels.
As a result, Tom fished far into the autumn before seeking medical attention. He wondered aloud, half-jokingly, if he had strained a muscle before the first round of tests. “I was expecting to hear that I had a cardiac issue,” he said. Tom’s doctor informed him that he had stage IV kidney, lung, and bone cancer. He had reached the age of 62.
When Tom learned of the news, he immediately inquired as to how long he might expect to live. The oncologist did not provide an estimate. As a result, Tom started chemotherapy in early 2019 in order to maximize the amount of time he had available. He suffered horribly from the side effects until the spring, when he made the decision to return to work. “You’ll die in your bed,” he warned. “You’re going to die in that chair.”
“Tom had gained some breathing room thanks to his chemotherapy treatment. He want to have more time.”
He realized he needed to take action. As a result, he acted. Despite his inability to set and run his traps, he was confident in his ability to care for the oyster farm at Point Judith Pond that he shared with his elder sister, Chris Morris.
Tom had gained some breathing room thanks to his chemotherapy treatment. He want to have more time. He immediately went about making certain that he used it properly. Tom’s manner of being as a longtime commercial fisherman was a fusion of natural cycles and individuals who were comfortable with hard effort.
Recognizing that he was dying, he took stock of his life and his enterprises, and made the decision to guarantee that these traditions would be carried on.
He embarked on a massive and prolonged campaign of charity in order to share his expertise and equipment with others.
This undertaking evolved beyond the scope of simple measurement or accounting. To this end, Tom has supplied barrels, pumps, hoses, net rigging, gaffs, buoys, toolboxes, bales of twine, baskets of cleats and other gear, as well as many kilometers of rope, across 2019 and 2020.
TOM HOXSIE’S FAMILY
He chose his receivers with care for certain things, such as wetsuits, fishing poles, and surfboard fins, which he sent to pals. He urged people to roam around the two lots where he kept his equipment and file claims with him. He sold a few things at a discount, including his beloved surfboards and a hydraulic pump that was as good as new. In addition, he sold his fish-trap company to a younger fisherman who may be able to fill Tom’s shoes for a generation or more.
When Tom was unclear if anybody in the immediate vicinity would be interested in a particular item, he went out on social media to possible receivers from afar. In 2019, he reached out to Danny Lester, an eastern Long Island waterman, and offered him four large sacks of treated twine that Tom had used for fish traps, a form of commercial fishing that has been steadily fading in recent years but that the Lester family was still engaged in. Danny Lester accepted the offer.
Danny sent two crew members in a truck to New England in order to take advantage of the generous offer. “We’re grateful that Tom contacted out since that twine is no longer available,” he added. Some of the twine has been put to good use, and perch fykes have been created with it.
Tom was known to give free equipment to people who had never met him before. Eventually, he and Chris filled fish baskets and left them on the docks for other captains and crew members to dig through. In the past, she claimed, she and her husband would leave a load of goods at a loading dock while they sat in their truck and watched others come and collect them.
By the middle of 2020, he had sold 25 truckloads of equipment from his warehouses. By that point, he had begun to slow down. Tom expressed an interest in starting a vegetable garden during a talk with a friend that spring. He had days to spend now that he was no longer fishing, and he remembered that his father, who was also a professional fisherman, had produced magnificent garlic and other crops in his latter years of life.
Tom’s equipment storage area had become overgrown. Over the years, maple and tupelo seedlings had grown to towering heights, and the land was densely covered with trees. We cleared the land with my boys and then Tom purchased rough-cut pine boards from a sawmill and I purchased compost from a farm, and together we built six raised beds and planted two potato patches in the newly cleared land.
Along with the potatoes, we also planted tomatoes, turnips, radishes, arugula, basil, cilantro, dill, carrots, peppers, onions, and chamomile during his last summer at our house in the country.
WE PLANNED GARLIC in the autumn of 2020 in the hopes that Tom would still be alive to reap the crop the following year, which happened in July. To bring in more light, we cut a few more trees in the winter under Tom’s supervision as his body shrank and his suffering increased. We also discussed what he wanted to plant in his garden for 2021 over the winter.
His oyster farm on Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island, is visible from the road.
Hoxsie stands outside his oyster farm at Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island, with his wife, Judith.
MEMORIAL TOM HOXSIE’S FAMILY
We knew leeks were high on his wish list, so we planted them and poured through seed catalogs, preparing harvests he would not be able to see. Everybody could see him fading away in front of their own eyes.
When questioned about his discomfort, he would sometimes describe it as feeling like he was being stung by a swarm of hornets. And yet, here he was, with his fishing equipment dispersed, new crops planned, and a boat being built with his friend Ben.
I was struck by the positivity. This is an illustration. He had other motivations as well. He told me, at the end of his life, that the positive things he had learned should not be lost because of his passing. “It’s the information that’s been lost,” he stated, expressing what he despised about his own death. The question is, “How much of our heritage is lost from generation to generation?”
He passed away in early May, after a rapid last decline, just after Ben had taken possession of the new skiff they had constructed for the salt pond, and just as the garden was beginning to flourish, healthy and green, as he had predicted.
How much knowledge is passed down from generation to generation? In Tom’s case, nearly nothing, because of the way he decided to confront what was coming his way, with courage, dignity, and forethought, despite the circumstances.
