Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

by Joe Biden

Those are words for all of us to live by, and another reminder to me of what Beau meant when he said, “You’ve got to promise me, Dad, no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right.” I had understood instantly, in the moment, what my son was trying to tell me even without him spelling it out. Be engaged, Dad, he was saying. Stay in the game. Keep fighting for what you believe in. Don’t give up. At the time, and even as I completed the manuscript for this book in the spring of 2017, it always seemed to me that I had captured Beau’s meaning largely because of our personal intimacy, our own shared wavelength. When people are close, especially a parent and a child, there are so many things conveyed and understood without words. But over the last year, as I have been going around the country talking to people about Beau’s life and his legacy, and reflecting on the meaning of his time with us, and his message for those of us who live on, I have realized something else. My son hadn’t so much told me how to keep going after he was gone, or what he expected of me. He had showed me. Beau was leading me forward not by word or thought, but something far more lasting and far more bracing: the power of his example. Even before he got sick, and certainly all through his battle with brain cancer, Beau had showed me, and his family, and his friends, the value of living with purpose in the face of the tallest odds. It remains an honor for us all to try to live by the example he set, b...