The Grief Diaries: Synchronicity

On the last Saturday night of April 2024 Andrew, surrounded by his fellow grad students, celebrated the successful end of his first year of grad school with a glass in hand and a bet on the future. Flush with anticipation of an upcoming study abroad trip to Japan, excited about Saquon Barkley, the Philadelphia Eagles new running back acquired from their NFC rivals the NY Giants, and happy with the results of the recent NFL draft, he opened an account with Fan Duel and with the $100 promotional credit he placed a single bet on the Philadelphia Eagles to win the Super Bowl in February 2025.

He’d spent the previous football season navigating complex emotions and worry. After finding a lump in his testicle in late July of 2023, as he prepared first for grad school orientation and then classes, he learned that he had testicular cancer. In rapid succession, he started class, had surgery, and because his diagnostic numbers were good, he started a surveillance program which would include various regular tests, diminishing in regularity, over the next five years. By that grad school party in April, he’d endured many a scan and blood test, but all remained clear. Andrew’s first year of grad school was completed, a new friend group was thriving, I felt happy, maybe hopeful, maybe he did too.

In the end, just a couple of months later, he was one of those people you read about on every prescription drug commercial, those in the list of other possible side effects, including death. The odds are usually good that you will be fine, so you take that bet but there are Andrews behind those stats. He died on October 24, 2024, a blue-skyed Thursday afternoon. His death certificate lists bleomycin lung toxicity as the primary cause of death. Of course, he would not have been in contact with bleomycin without the cancer, so I guess you don’t get one without the other.

Two months later, we struggled under a weight to keep Andrew alive, to introduce him to others, to celebrate who he was; to not have his legacy reduced to age and cause of death. My sister Emilie threw out the idea of a bingo card, and on the first day of the new year we launched the Andrew bingo card, a tiny, twenty-five-square, pixel-and-paper-quilt stitched together with love, and memory, and longing. It included tasks like, play a round of trivia, go to the fair, and of course, root for his beloved Eagles.

Early on a Sunday morning late in October 2025, Lee and I went to the fair. During the fair, the yards in the neighborhood adjacent to the fairgrounds become pseudo parking lots. Most of the yards were still devoid of cars, and the woman running this lot, took our money, asked Lee if he could back in under a tree, and waved us on.

This trip was driven by Lee, and I assumed it was primarily to mark go to the fair off our Bingo card. As we made our way to the gate, he detailed his plan. A newly minted beekeeper he was interested in the exhibits associated with honey and bee related products, and wanted to try the doughnuts at Peachey’s Baking Company. I was relieved we had a purpose. We found the honey and the bee world paraphernalia in one corner of a large building divided, most simply, by plant and animal. The animal side housed chickens and cattle, sheep and goats; we bought an NC State Animal Sciences hat for Lee’s dad, who raises cattle in Oklahoma.

The line for the doughnuts was visible before we saw the trailer and so we moved on. As we passed booth after booth, smell after smell, we talked about Andrew and the fair. He was never a rider of rides, even as a kid, so that couldn’t have been the draw. Maybe it was the atmosphere; the fair, good or bad, has a vibe.

We’d been once to this fair as a family. Way back in October of 2000, we’d driven the two-plus hours from where Lee was stationed, and we lived, at Camp Lejeune. We walked the fair in the heat, Elisabeth and Rachel alternatingly laughing and crying on various rides, Andrew just fifteen months old, clutching a giant ear of corn in his chubby toddler hand as Lee and I took turns pushing him over the rough terrain.

On this recent visit, walking with speed rather than interest, Lee and I made our way back to the car after, at most, an hour. As we approached our grass-paved parking lot, the women who’d parked us seemed curious about the couple who paid $20 to attend the fair for 60 minutes. She greeted us with a question and Lee responded nicely that we’d gotten what we’d come for. She inquired more, so Lee mentioned the bees and the doughnuts; she noticed the hat he held in his hand. Did Lee, she wondered, raise cattle. No, but his dad in Oklahoma did; the hat was a gift.

Lee then added that our son Andrew had graduated from NC State and loved the fair. She smiled and asked, as you would, what did he major in? Political Science. These types of interactions can be fraught now. I don’t avoid them but instantly gear up for where we might be headed. And then, as was completely predictable, the question that turned the small talk into real talk.

What is he doing now?

I could hear Lee. Cancer. Chemo. Damaged lungs. Almost a year. Her face was a kaleidoscope of emotions. He was telling her how Andrew received his master’s degree in international studies posthumously the previous May. I was nodding, crying. How we’d attended the ceremony and it was beautiful and heart-breaking. Loved the fair. Loved NC State. So good to him. I believe she reached out to rub my arm. Lee said something about how he likes to talk about him, leaving the impression that I don’t. We both struggle with this, it’s impossible to give words to feelings that cannot be expressed. I love to talk about Andrew but it often comes with tears. I joined in as I could, then we were telling her, how Andrew went to Japan for a study abroad trip last June, not telling her that upon return, a routine surveillance scan showed a tumor on a lymph node in his abdomen. We were saying how much he loved to travel, not saying he started chemo on his 25^th birthday, was dead before his birthday gifts would be used, including a trip to Philly to see his lifetime favorite football team the Philadelphia Eagles play the Jacksonville Jaguars. That game, played on Sunday, November 3^rd, just ten days after our world imploded, was to have been Andrew’s first chance to cheer for the Birds among his fellow fans at the Linc.

As we stood talking and crying about life and death and travel and loss, Mary introduced herself and said that she was a Poultry Science professor at NC State —then she said something about a scholarship in Andrew’s name. She wanted to help. We exchanged contact details, thanked her, for her generous kindness, for the hope of a scholarship in Andrew’s name, but also for allowing us to talk about Andrew, to once again be parents bragging about their son.

Over the next few months, we emailed back and forth sporadically, first with me trying to fill in educational details I really wasn’t sure of, and then reassurances from her she was still working on it. And then, as February turned to March, Mary and I met on Zoom, quickly joined by John, the Associate Director of Philanthropy for NC State Humanities and Social Sciences. It was happening. Fast. I listened closely, taking notes: types of scholarships, time frames, parameters, mentally making decisions about how best to share this information with Lee, with Elisabeth, with Rachel. After the meeting I called Lee, relaying details and dollars, as I watched a cardinal in the tree outside my window.

I’m not excited, or happy or proud about the scholarship. I’d much rather it didn’t exist, that Andrew was here to help in other ways. But he’s not, so we have a timeline and big financial goal instead. It’s also, like the bingo card, an opportunity to talk about Andrew, what he means to us, who he was, what he loved. We decided the focus of the scholarship would be for study abroad. As we share this scholarship and build toward the $50,000 required to be fully endowed, I look forward to the day that students will travel under his name, discovering the joys, challenges, and opportunities of the world beyond our borders.

In February 2025, the Eagles won Super Bowl LIX, and Andrew won his bet. We found the congratulatory email from FanDuel buried in his phone, and the $1600.50 payout was the first deposit towards the Andrew Suttee Study Abroad Award at North Carolina State University.  

Before you go…I don’t normally ask but, if you feel moved to, please share. If you would like to donate you can do so here.

Thank you. Thank you for reading, for bearing witness to our grief, for watching the recalibration of what it means to live in a world that looks different than we thought it would and still showing up for us.