Last summer I accompanied my husband to radiation therapy for his prostate cancer. For five days each week we drove to a facility were his treatment took place. We got to know many of the other people who were engaged in the same process and when he finally finished the cycle and rang the bell we were ecstatic. Of course we could only hope that his cancer was gone and would not return. His journey will continue as his doctor watches for signs that the cancer has returned. 

When I heard that former President Joe Biden also had prostate cancer I felt a sadness in knowing the tough times that lay ahead for him and his family. Sadly his cancer was more advanced that my husband’s so I worried about what he would have to endure and whether or not the treatments would work. I knew the emotional and physical journey that lay ahead and I prayed that all would go as well for him as it seemed to be for my husband. 

One year later I hear that Joe Biden’s cancer has traveled to his bones and that he is enduring great pain. As someone who only recently had a total knee replacement I know how brutal the levels of pain can be when our bones are involved in the healing process. I also realize just how frightening the experience must be for Joe and his family. Nobody wants to see a loved one suffering and nobody wants to feel such uncertainty with regard to attempts to defeat a growing cancer. 

By his own admission Joe Biden was an imperfect president just as each of our American leaders have been. We would be hard pressed to find any of them who never made a mistake but the vast majority of them have seemed to try to be their best. President Biden was especially determined to do right by the American people even as he was tasked with pulling the nation together in a very difficult time. All the while he demonstrated great sympathy for every one of us who experienced hardships. He somehow understood how challenging life can be for all humans and often expressed his hopes that he would be able to fulfill the needs of our nation. 

I always felt that President Biden was a good man who also often had to make incredibly tough decisions. He seemed to have an inner strength that took into account the needs of everyone, not just those who openly supported him. I believe that he did his best in a time when the whole world was grappling with illness, war and death. All the while he had a cancer smoldering inside of him which he likely ignored because he had a job to do for all of us. 

There are some who see President Biden as a weak man because he showed his emotions from time to time and expressed his loving concern for a son who was fighting addictions. He showed us how to love unconditionally and tirelessly. He pushed himself to fight for us even as his body was turning on him. Then he humbly left the race when it became apparent that he was less and less able to bear the unrelenting pressures of the job. It took so much unselfish courage to drop out of the race even as he was being ridiculed and judged as being old and unfit. 

Ironically we ended up with a president who seems only to care about himself. His health is quite obviously failing and he pretends and boasts that he is somehow aging backwards. We see the signs every single day that he is not well in either body or mind while his protectors pretend that he is a vibrant genius. In the meantime he is so vile that he makes fun of Joe Biden’s present situation without even a shred of human decency. 

I read an essay recently from a young woman who writes political editorials on many social media sites. She told the story of growing up with an incredible father who raised her and her siblings after her mother ran away from her maternal responsibilities. She showered her father with praise and then revealed that she had lost him all too soon. In President Biden she saw the same kind of honor and kindness that had been the hallmarks of her father. She greatly admired the work that President Biden attempted to do and her writing lead to a meeting with him in the Oval Office. She recounted how awed she was being in his presence and imagined how proud her father would have been. Somehow she was so overwhelmed by that meeting that she spoke to President Biden about her father and how he had inspired her. Then she told the president that she saw him as the kind of father figure that our nation needed in difficult times. As tears filled her eyes and her sobs became audible President Biden comforted her seeming to understand the enormity of her feelings. This moment showed her the compassion that President Biden earnestly gave to the people that he encountered. 

I hope and pray that President Biden’s pain will leave him and that by some miracle he will get well. He was a light of genuine goodness among us and he deserves to hear praise for his lifetime of efforts. We can see all too clearly now the difference between a good man and one who is only intent on enriching himself with power and money and trophies. Sometimes we humans don’t seem to notice how the wonder of what we have it until the person creating it is gone. May God be with President Joe Biden and may he know how much we will always appreciate what he did for us. He was the good man we needed in a very tought time.