Relentless

Writing first out of despair, but gradually opening to a broader awareness, Tom Madsen captures all the emotion and wonder of a family’s journey with cancer, death, and the depths of grief. But they emerge from - or are pulled out of - the morass of grief by their son from the Other Side of the Veil.

Tom’s son Kevin is the Relentless personality threading through this story. As a boy and a young man, Kevin exults in his physical abilities. He climbs rocks and trees with animal grace and power. He’s a formidable athlete, especially on the football and rugby fields. He is strikingly handsome. His physique, chiseled.

We follow the Madsens from California to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Boston, and finally back to California. The boys (Kevin has a brother, Gustavo) grow up speaking English, Portuguese, and Spanish. They spend the boys’ formative years in Danville, California, near San Francisco.  It is an idyllic family setting.

But in December 2014, their idyllic life shatters. Kevin - now sixteen - finds a lump on the back of his left thigh. The diagnosis comes back as Rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer.  So begins a three and a half year battle: surgeries; radiation; chemotherapy. Hair loss. Retching. Life in patches, between remissions and relapses.

Kevin exceeds all doctor’s predictions, and handles cancer with courage, grace, and composure beyond his years. But the disease is patient, and slowly drains even his immense drive and reserves. He passes in June 2018, just one month shy of his twentieth birthday.

But this is where the story really begins…

“My wife Marilene and I belong to that club that none of us wants to join, and that I would not wish on anyone: the club of parents who’ve lost children.”  says Tom.  “No other loss can compare. You’re emptied: a shell.”

“But soon after Kevin passed, we began to receive signs from him. They came in many forms: animals; insects; birds; lights; cell phones acting up; license plates; messages in films; odd encounters. You can dismiss some as coincidence. But as you receive more and more, and as they defy the probabilities of coincidence, as they become more insistent, we were forced to acknowledge them. We thanked Kevin. And we asked for more. We even made specific requests. And Kevin answers most of our requests, and he always seems to answer them with Love, Warmth, and often with humor or with the steely determination he showed in life.”

“All my life, I believed that our spirits survived death.” Tom continues. “The gift that Kevin has given us is that now we know our spirits survive. He has made this abundantly - sometimes even bluntly - clear. So much of Kevin comes across - and so strongly - that we no longer doubt the afterlife at all.  And this knowing alters how we think about this life, in a freeing, liberating way.&r...