I didn’t want to cover Dave Piland’s memorial service Tuesday. Inside, I knew I’d gotten too emotionally attached to the family to put out anything objective.
That’s the way we’re supposed to be, you know. As reporters, our job is to step outside and observe. We’re supposed to observe suffering and pain. We’re supposed to coldly report what we see, without emotion and without bias.
Only, it isn’t that simple.
We’re human. We laugh. We cry. We see others go through circumstances they never dreamed they’d have to live through. Lisa Piland watched her husband slowly lose his ability to move. Last Friday, she recounted to me every second of watching him die.
For 23 months, the Piland family lived with the word “terminal” and human nature tells us to keep up a brave front. So for 23 months, the Pilands made daily trips to Seattle for treatment, then to Texas. “Terminal” was inescapable. For a few precious months, they held out hope that they’d found a miracle of extreme rarity when it was discovered that Dave’s brain tumor had shrunk. But this form of cancer is cruel in its advancement. Just as quickly as it declined, here it came again. No one wanted to admit it because the love everyone has for Dave, Lisa, T.J., Greg, Crissy and Katie is boundless. But inside, we knew what it meant.
Still, the family welcomed, even craved guests to visit them at home. Dave loved it, even when he had trouble lifting himself out of bed. And you haven’t seen glee until you’ve seen Lisa Piland with a roomful of people.
And we’re supposed to be cold and detached through that?
If I was unprofessional in caring for the Pilands, label me guilty. I don’t care.
I don’t care because of the myriad of feelings I had coming home from the service Tuesday.
I remembered a story a cousin of Dave’s told. His name is Joey Hammer. It was a story that will appear in Wednesday’s paper, a story about Dave and the Hammers as kids, when Dave acted as a babysitter. Great story. Hilarious.
I was recounting that on the drive home, wondering how I was going to write this. Alone of the Evergreen Highway, I thought of the Hammers and laughed. What a rotten little swine Dave must have been as a kid. I laughed more. Harder. Longer. You know the feeling. You laugh and can’t stop. It’s looney tunes., Then you rub away an itch on your cheek. You feel something wet on your finger and you realize you’re not laughing anymore.
You know your laugh. You think you’re laughing and you are, in a way. But you can’t see the car in front of you because tears blur your vision. Other drivers peer into your own personal space in the driver’s seat, watching you weep. So you pull off the road out of your own sense of safety.
You’re laughing because of the story. You’re crying because he’s gone. And you’re doing both simultaneously.
If I was unprofessional in my subjective and highly personal reporting of the Piland family, I’m sorry. I’m also not sorry in the least.
It’s that kind of a day..
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