You Gotta Play the Hand You're Dealt

I am so thrilled to have just launched my Boston Playing Cards! They were a true labor of love and I am so proud to finally hold them in my hands. I’ve lived in Massachusetts my whole life and currently reside in the city of Boston. I just love it. It’s such a manageable city that prioritizes green space and combines old and new. It holds so much of my history within its labyrinth of streets and I wanted this deck to be collectible, special, and full of memories for anyone who’s visited the city and loves it as much as I do.

In addition to being a creative goal, playing cards are special to me for one very specific reason.

When I was nineteen, my boyfriend Nick died from a rare and aggressive cancer. He died here in Boston, on the sixth floor of Boston Children’s Hospital at 3 AM on November 19, 2016. Since his diagnosis six years prior, he was under the amazing care of Dana Farber and The Jimmy Fund Clinic here in Boston. The staff was patient, intelligent, kind, funny, caring, and sincere. They gave him his best shot. When his cancer came back for the last time in 2015 they prolonged his life for almost a full year. An extra year that I got to love him. An extra year that we were able to go to a Red Sox game, walk around the North End, and through the Common. We spent a fair few days at the Jimmy Fund Clinic, both of us squeezing into an infusion chair for nurse-approved snuggling. We got to eat dinner at the Top of the Hub (sadly, closed now) and watch the sunset over the city from the top of the Prudential.

Nick’s personal motto was “You Gotta Play the Hand you’re Dealt.” He was dealt a pretty shit hand for being diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma at age 15. When everyone else got to be a kid, he got to be sick. But he held his head up best he could and played the hand he was dealt. He found the humor in everything and he was determined to fight to make his time on this earth well spent. Nick could be a little rough around the edges but he was strong, funny, sarcastic, brutally honest, and had the biggest heart.

In the summer of 2016, Nick decided to get a tattoo. He brought a deck of cards to a tattoo parlor and had the artist deal him a hand. Several other artists and employees gathered around for the deal to make it truly random. Nick was dealt a Queen of Spades, Four of Spades, Ten of Hearts, Five of Clubs, and a Seven of Spades. Lots of spades! He had previously had me mock-up how he wanted them to be arranged, how much shading, etc. I did about a million nervous sketches before finalizing a simple fan. I remember him being surprised that I did all those sketches, but the truth is I would’ve done anything for him. I still would. He got the cards tattooed right over his heart.

After he got his tattoo I would often tease him if he complained about any minor inconvenience. Car won’t start? “Ah, well Nick you gotta play the hand you’re dealt, huh!” It would make him laugh and then he would tap his heart twice and say “well, at least I got dealt a queen.”

The end of his life came very suddenly. He was doing so well, with miraculous results from his clinical trial. He felt strong, his hair grew back (black, its true color, rather than the white another drug had turned it) and he started to be hopeful about the future. We both did. It was right about the time I had to start my sophomore year of college in September of 2016 when this miracle drug which had worked for so many months just stopped. The doctors told him there wasn’t anything else they could do. They would keep trying to prolong his life but there was no remission in sight for him. Thanks to another miracle in the form of Hurricane Matthew I had to evacuate Savannah, GA in October and got two wonderful weeks with him back home up north.

During that time he said he had a present for me. We sat on my bed and I opened up a framed hand of cards. A Queen of Spades, Four of Spades, Ten of Hearts, Five of Clubs, and a Seven of Spades. The actual cards he had kept from that summer. I asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to keep them himself. He laughed and said. “Nah, I got ‘em right here,” and tapped his heart. Along with the frame was a card that simply said, “because you were the best hand I was dealt.” A month later he was gone.

So after almost five years, I’d like to dedicate this deck of cards to Nick. My first love, who taught me so much about how to love and how to be loved, how to enjoy this precious life we are given, how to laugh in the face of great sadness, and most importantly: how to play the cards I’m dealt.

I hope you use these cards on late nights finishing a heated game, killing time with a quick match at the airport or before your meal comes at dinner, gathered around the table teaching your family a new game, or showing a delighted friend a magic trick. I hope they get worn around the edges, bent from when you couldn’t find the eight of diamonds but turns out you were sitting on it. I hope they get stained from when coffee gets spilled on it after a triumphant victory. I hope you love them, but more importantly, I hope you love the memories you make with them with the people you love the most.

If our story touches your heart, you can support Dana Farber and The Jimmy Fund through this link. So that someday, people like Nick can play their hand all the way through.