Keep Living: Eric Middleton’s Story

ON A RAINY DAY ON FIFTH AVENUE, Eric and Geodee Middleton shared an umbrella. While shooting this picture, I realized that Eric’s story was not about dying. It was about family and love. I also realized it would not be like others I had worked on. Shortly after I took this picture, doctors in New York told Eric his cancer was unstoppable.

This project changed the path of my life as a storyteller. I had documented war and conflict before, but never something as intimate as a family preparing to say goodbye. Eric Middleton’s story was not only about death, but about the profound ways love endures when time runs short. From photographing his family portrait to sitting with him through his last nights, I carried both the privilege and the responsibility of telling his story truthfully.

Eric never saw the final piece, but he left behind lessons that reshaped how I see life: hug tighter, love more and recognize each day as the gift it is.

The Gift of Time: Meeting Eric Middleton

As a photographer, I’ve asked permission to photograph a lot of things. I’ve never asked anyone to let me take pictures while they die. That changed with Eric Middleton, a career Navy sailor, husband, and father of two. Eric had been battling cancer. After three surgeries and 14 cycles of chemotherapy, he learned in March that his disease was terminal.

We came together through a simple request. Eric and his wife, Geodee, were looking for a photographer to take a family portrait while he was still around. The only one they had was old, taken in front of a long-ago Christmas tree. When I first called, they were in Washington touring the Capitol on what was probably a final family trip. When we met, Eric told me each day felt like a gift – words that lingered with me long after.

If you knew you were about to die, what would you do? What would I do? How would we face such terrible knowledge? And how would our families handle those last moments together?

Anyone who has ever lost someone knows your life is never the same. There is a void that changes you, a bittersweet appreciation of the time you have left. The day Eric and I met, we hugged like long-lost friends. As I asked him to let me share his journey, we began a relationship like no other: I already knew exactly how it would end.

Footprints in the Sand

It sounded easy enough — but it wasn't. Eric Middleton was tired.

He just wanted to play golf one more time. His cancer wasn't going to get any better, and it would only become more difficult to play. Already, there was weakness in his hands and feet. So Eric and his father went out for what they both knew might be a rare chance to play together again.

Eric surprised everyone that day — making long shots over water with a skill his father didn't even know he had. The cancer — now deep inside his lymph nodes, its tumors squeezing his left lung — caused him pain, but it didn't dim his smile.

When his ball landed in a bunker, Eric waded in — leaving his footprints in the sand — and made a shot that looked almost impossible. The course was quiet, with no one else around. I wanted Eric's footprints to last forever.

But Eric did what courteous golfers do. He picked up a rake and slowly erased his footprints, one by one — preparing the place for those who would come after.

Perfect Ribs

Eric has always been a perfectionist – the kind of guy who does everything to the best of his ability, right down to the tiniest detail of the smallest job.

His wife, Geodee, understands this. That’s why she requested his always-perfect ribs for Mother’s Day – tender, juicy, precisely spiced, basted and grilled. It was a ritual he always insisted on doing solo; anyone who tried to help just messed things up.

But “chemo head” got in the way. That’s what Eric calls the side effects of his treatments and medicines. Chemo head causes him to lose track of time and interrupts the stream of his thoughts. It robs him of his 150-plus IQ, of the brain power he used as a Navy instructor.

Still, he was determined to do his best on those ribs. He stood in front of the grill, struggling to focus. His mother Leslie was beside him, waving the smoke away from his face. Eldest daughter Erica was on the other side, wiping his nose. Eric wanted to go it alone as much as he could, but this assistance, from family members, he could take. The help led to some chit-chat, and the chit-chat led to hugs, and the hugs to tears.

Dinner was not served until long after sunset.

Eric’s ribs turned out dry and crusty.

To his wife, they were perfect.

The Chair and the Car

The wheelchair company calls it the “launching position” – an option that allows patients to distribute their body weight to prevent bedsores. For Eric, it was a chance to play astronaut. Choosing a wheelchair when he could still walk seemed unnecessary. Despite doctors’ predictions, it was hard to imagine the day when his strength and mobility would be mere shadows.

Still, he had to prepare – and who knew there were so many models? The decision grew more complicated when it became obvious that the more comfort and options offered, the bigger the wheelchair. That led to a standoff between Eric and his wife, Geodee.

The larger models wouldn’t fit in Geodee’s sedan, a car Eric knew his wife loved. As the wife of a sailor and the mother of two children, Geodee had never had money for luxuries. One of Eric’s favorite memories was the day he bought the car for her – the first new one she ever had. For Geodee, though, her husband’s comfort meant more than her car; she wanted to trade the sedan for a used minivan.

It took a while for them to pick a chair. In the end, Eric chose one that would allow Geodee to keep her car – and to keep that memory from happier times alive.

Half a Life Together

Her long blond hair immediately captured his eye. Even from a distance, Geodee looked hot to Eric. When she began walking toward him – Eric still can’t recall why she did – their eyes met and she smiled, recognizing him as the bag boy from the grocery store.

Eric remembers the moment he first saw her. He can even tell you the date.

Geodee felt the attraction too. When Eric joined the Navy at age 20 and went to boot camp in Chicago, 16-year-old Geodee quit school and ran away from home to be with him. Poor but happy, they got married on Valentine’s Day – the first day they could legally tie the knot after Geodee’s 18th birthday.

From then on, Geodee built her life around Eric. She worked, got her GED and started on a college degree, but became pregnant with the couple’s first baby. After that, Eric wanted her to stay home with their child. He promised he would work harder to provide for them.

Geodee says she believed him. Eric seemed invincible, “like nothing could ever happen to him, everything was going to be fine, and I didn’t have to worry about anything.”

Now 32, after spending half her life with him, she’s scared to imagine him gone. What troubles her most is knowing that he’s going to suffer at the end. She doesn’t want her love to hurt like that.

The Haircut

Eric’s two daughters didn’t want their father to go bald. It made him look sick. But chemotherapy had already taken most of Eric’s hair. Geodee might as well remove the rest.

On their deck, Eric’s wife carefully maneuvered the clippers with one hand while collecting his fallen hair with the other. She had done this ever since learning his cancer was terminal — an effort to hold on to every bit of him. As she cut, Eric talked, describing a strange dream he’d had just a few nights earlier.

He dreamed that his disease was all a dream. In the dream within his dream, he relived every step of his illness — the treatments and surgeries, the pain, the doctors, the fear and sadness. When his eyes opened in reality, there were a few seconds between sleep and wakefulness when he was flooded with relief, awash with gratitude that the terrible thing had only been a nightmare.

Then he realized. It was all a dream. Nothing had changed. The cancer was real.

Geodee quietly wiped her tears and kept cutting.

The City That Held Their Hopes

Eric’s younger brother John turned 30 this year, but Eric still refers to him as “my little brother Johnny.” After their parents’ divorce, John stayed with their mother while Eric lived with their father to finish high school before joining the Navy. Little Johnny always looked up to his older brother, even from afar.

At the Norfolk airport, on his way to a cancer hospital in New York City in late spring, Eric held up one hand, making the ILY (“I love you”) sign to John until he disappeared from sight. Eric knew his days were numbered — too few to catch up on all those years apart.

New York has not been a pleasant place for Eric or his wife, Geodee. Getting treatment in the city required a rigorous approval process from the Navy, but the couple was determined after hearing the hospital had a 90 percent success rate with Eric’s type of cancer. But ever since June of last year—ever since the stem-cell extraction, two rounds of chemotherapy and a surgery — the city has become a symbol of their many medical setbacks.

Geodee spent four months staying at a modest hotel in Manhattan without their children. As time passed, the hope of recovery dwindled, until the only question left was how long.

After Eric’s diagnostic CT scan, a taxi took them back to their small hotel. Rain fell, dulling the vibrancy of Fifth Avenue. Eric stared out the window, knowing he was running out of options.

Your Wish Is Mine

The chemo pill that was supposed to extend Eric’s life wasn’t working. Seven tumors were growing in his body, two more since his last scan. One inside his lung was the size of a softball.

The cancer hospital in New York was out of ideas. In an effort to support her husband, Geodee had usually managed to control her emotions. But now the tears flowed. Eric embraced her, whispering, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

But she knew it would not be. And when they reached home, they would have no choice but to break the truth to their daughters. In the cab to the airport, Geodee massaged Eric’s neck, trying to ease his headache. Her rings glinted in the shadows — not big or fancy jewelry, but each one was from Eric, a reminder of some milestone or celebration.

They talked about his wishes, and about a foundation that grants patients one last dream. Eric paused for a long time, wondering what his would be.

“I want to give you the wedding we never had,” he told Geodee. Young and poor, they had gotten married at City Hall in Chicago.

When Geodee argued that the wish should be something for him, Eric softly replied, “Your wish is mine.”

The Shadowbox

As a sailor, Eric had three career goals: make chief, earn a shadow box, and have a 20-year retirement ceremony. But after 15 years and service in two wars, he was too sick to stay in uniform. The cancer had stolen his milestones.

Eric’s wife felt he deserved those things. Rank was out of Geodee’s hands, but she could do something about the other two. She planned for months, secretly worming details out of her husband about his idea of the perfect retirement ceremony. Friends and old shipmates chipped in and pulled strings — assembling mementos of his career into a shadow box and helping arrange his special day.

The ceremony took place on the deck of the battleship Wisconsin. Dressed in his whites, Eric looked like the sailor on the Cracker Jack box. He’d dug out his smallest uniform. The cancer had taken so much of his weight.

As her husband stood tall, Geodee was thankful she’d been able to pull it off — that for this day, for this moment, Eric could stop thinking about the fact that he was dying.

At the end of the ceremony, she was presented with an American flag. She knew it wouldn’t be the last one she’d receive on Eric’s behalf.

The Room Downstairs

Eric waited a long time for the results of his blood test to return from the lab at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center. He was thinner since his visit a week ago. Exhausted, he fell asleep in the treatment chair as a nurse manned his IV tube.

Against his wishes, he was receiving a blood transfusion — but not another round of chemo. The test had shown that more chemo would be pointless. His tumors were doubling in size every few weeks.

Beyond the help of pain pills, Eric was sent home for hospice care and stronger narcotics. Drugged and deluded, he believed he was still receiving cancer treatment. Over and over, Geodee had to remind her husband that no treatment remained.

Eric’s family helped set up a room downstairs for him. No one talked about the fact that they were making a place for him to die.

Where His Girls Were

“If Eric has been anything, he’s been a good father,” his wife says.

Eric started reading stories to Geodee’s stomach as soon as they learned she was pregnant. As each daughter grew, Eric kept them close – a fun dad, full of games and laughter. The night before his final deployment, worried that Erica and Kailey would miss their story time, Eric recorded video of himself reading. Knowing he wouldn’t be home for the holidays, he included The Night Before Christmas, setting the stage with a lighted fireplace despite the fact that it was August.

Shortly after he came home, he was diagnosed with cancer.

The disease has taken a toll on the girls. Erica, 11, who attends Churchland Academy Elementary, came home from school crying after kids teased her because her father had cancer. The more she cried, the more they teased. As for Kailey, once, when Geodee told her to behave for her father, the 6-year-old replied that Eric was no longer her dad — that he was just a “Cancer Dad” who wouldn’t play with her anymore, and whose whispers could barely be understood.

Despite fading strength, Eric tried to stay involved with his children. He set up a small obstacle course in the front yard for Kailey to run around and went “jogging” with Erica in his wheelchair. But the girls were scared he might die when they were alone with him.

As Eric took to the bed for longer stretches, they slowly, unintentionally distanced themselves from him. He tried to act like it didn’t bother him, but his wife knew better. Eric always asked where his girls were.

The Buddy Truck

It was getting harder to breathe. The number of tough days was now outweighing the good. Helped by medication, Eric was finally able to nap. When he awoke, he wanted to go outside to see his truck.

Eric called it “the buddy truck.” He always referred to his two girls, Erica and Kailey, as his little buddies, and they loved riding in that truck with him — despite the fact that its paint was faded, several windows wouldn’t work, and its stereo had quit long ago.

Even though the family budget couldn’t afford to worry about such things, Eric’s wife, with the help of her mother, managed to have “the buddy truck” repainted Navy blue and get new window motors and a sound system installed.

With careful steps, Eric circled the truck slowly, running a hand softly over its surface — tickled that his truck had been treated so well, but sad that he was no longer fit to drive it.

I helped Eric climb into the driver’s seat, knowing he wasn’t going anywhere. Gently, he put his hands on the wheel and made the sound a child makes when pretending to drive:

“Brrrrrrrm … ”

I hoped he was dreaming.

Dreaming about a beautiful stretch of road with his little buddies beside him.

Letting Go

This is the last photograph I took of Eric. He died the next day.

In the photo, he’s sitting in a recliner, waiting for his wife to return. Geodee had been trying to soothe his pain by chilling her hands in ice, then rubbing them on his body. His tumors had grown so large they were visible, bulging through his rib cage. That night, she sat by his bedside, but neither slept much.

By morning, Eric seemed happy — strong enough to record a message to his wife for the years ahead, saying how much he loved her. As the day wore on, he fought the inevitable. His hospice nurse said she’d never seen anyone put up a harder struggle. Geodee didn’t want her husband to suffer anymore, but she didn’t know how to persuade him to let go.

His eyes were closed. The sound of his ragged breathing filled the room. Geodee ushered everyone out, then took her husband’s hand. She told him that they were alone, that their daughters wouldn’t witness his passing. And that it was fine for him to leave now. His family loved him and would be OK.

Slowly, Eric released his grip on life. Geodee laid her head on his chest and heard no heartbeat.

At 35 years old, Eric was gone.

Keep Living

Eric was wearing his Navy dress blues. His 6-year-old daughter, Kailey, stood by the casket, slowly raised her arms, and placed Eric’s sailor hat on his chest.

This was the first time Eric’s two daughters had experienced death. If one of her tears fell on her father, Kailey wondered, would it make him smile? If she prayed hard enough, would God put his spirit back in his body?
No, her mother answered. “That’s not the way life works,” Geodee tried to explain.

After a military gun salute, the bugler’s cry echoed into an empty sky. The color guard carefully lifted the American flag draped over Eric’s casket, folded it with perfection, and presented it to Geodee and the two girls.

In a bronze urn with the Navy seal, Eric had his homecoming — to a place next to Geodee’s bed.

Starting over will not be easy for Eric’s family — a fine line between trying to heal while still remembering. His wife wonders how to keep his memory alive for their children.

Others have endured the same. She knows it will be all right.

Because, in the end, all we can do is keep living.

Of life and love

ERICA, 11, AND KAILEY, 6, pose with their parents for a final family portrait, the request that initially brought me to the Middletons.

What I learned from Eric Middleton’s last days

I didn’t begin my journey with Eric Middleton as a journalist. A friend of my boss had asked a favor — could he find a photographer to take a family portrait for a career Navy man who’d been diagnosed with cancer? My boss asked me.
“Sure,” I said. It felt like the right thing to do. I had no way of knowing where it would lead.

When we met in April, Eric welcomed me as if we were old friends. He was with his former shipmates at Huntington Park in Newport News. He was full of life, and I was struck by his positive energy — so struck that I asked if he would be willing to share his story in the newspaper. He said yes, and I spent the next six months documenting his battle.

AMONG THE THOUSANDS OF PHOTOS I TOOK, this is the only one I have of the two of us. It was taken during a dinner where I helped Eric to the restroom. He was weak and in pain, but when I raised my camera, he smiled.

Watching someone die is tough, but even in his last days Eric never lost his wit and humor, his positive way of seeing the world, his courage.

During our time together, he had just one request: that I not photograph his face after his death. I gave him my word.

Newspaper photographers are supposed to distance themselves from their subjects – be objective, don’t get in the way of the story. With Eric, I crossed that line. When he was in need and no one else was there, I put my camera aside. I held his hand. I drove him to chemo. We shared secrets.

Late one night, when he was in terrible pain, I helped him move from the living room to his bed. I knelt down and told him to hold on to my neck for support. As I stood up, I saw fear in his eyes for the first time. I told him how proud I was of him, how brave he was.
“Really?” he whispered, then smiled.

I don’t want to forget that smile.

Eric never got out of that bed. He died the next day, Aug. 24. He was 35.

After his funeral, I stood in the doorway of the room where Eric had spent his final days. It still smelled like him. Though I had known from the outset that he would die, it was hard staring into that empty room.

The responsibility to tell his story right weighed heavily on me. I feared the Common Ground series might not do him justice, that it might not capture the Eric I had come to know. I felt guilty for worrying about how his death would affect me. And had I ever really understood how hard it must have been for him to let go?

Maybe I had become too close. When I came to The Pilot, photographer Bill Tiernan told me this profession is a gift. It’s a privilege to be invited into people’s lives during their happiest, and lowest, moments. I never understood the true meaning of that until I met Eric.

I learned much about my own life from his death – about how my world holds miracles I hadn’t realized, how I wake up every morning to blessings.

Eric gave me the courage to hug tighter, and to say, “I love you.”