Chronicling his fight to live, former Oakmont resident inspires others

Come to think of it, Robert Starkey had been feeling lousy for a long time before he ended up in an ambulance outside his Oakmont Village home two years ago.

His whole body ached, and his legs were more swollen than usual. When he reached down one evening to pull up one of his compression socks, he felt something snap in his chest.

“It felt like someone had stabbed me with a sword,” he recalled.

Starkey had fractured his sternum, and that was just the beginning of the bad news. He was transported to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, where he learned he had advanced bone cancer, which had resulted in hundreds of fractures, including his ribs and sternum.

All those broken bones had the effect of making him shorter. Once 6-foot-1, the compression resulting from the breaks eventually robbed him of 6 inches.

That shrinking, sad and scary as it was, set the stage for immense personal growth.

Starkey’s journey to Memorial hospital marked the beginning of a new phase in his life. Living in San Francisco during the worst of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, he’d become an expert in nursing, ministering and holding the hands of over 100 friends in the last weeks, days and hours of their lives. Now, finding himself in similarly dire circumstances, he felt compelled to chronicle his journey.

Journey resonates with neighbors

Starkey, 72, had long been in the habit of sharing his thoughts — and stories, and poems, and photographs — on Facebook and Nextdoor. Indeed, he has at times been a bona fide social media star. A gifted photographer, his wildlife images, and pictures of the devastation wrought by the 2017 Tubbs fire, have earned him praise and many followers. In 2015, he wrote about Zoe, a charismatic McNab border collie who enriched his life in unexpected ways. Zoe died seven years ago. A Facebook group devoted to her has over 25,000 followers.

But the tone and tenor of his writing took a dramatic turn in February 2019, when doctors informed him of his Stage 4 bone cancer. Since then his social media posts — ruminations of death, devoid of bitterness and self-pity — have found a wide audience, among his former Oakmont neighbors and beyond. For Starkey, getting his thoughts and pictures out into the world is a task that gives him purpose, “a reason to wake up in the morning.”

His musings have resonated in particular with his fellow seniors. By offering his feelings and perspective on mortality “in such a positive, beneficial, constructive way,” Oakmont resident Tom Anderson said, “he is an inspiration to many.”

“He’s very honest about what a tough fight it is,” said fellow Oakmonter Cindy DeMoore, “and how every day is a gift.”

‘I have to get out of here’

In a recent poem called “Facing Death,” marking the second anniversary of his most recent major health scare, he wrote:

I was suddenly plunged into darkness

Then awakened by the stern voice

Delivering my sentence

“You have bone cancer

And two blood clots in your lung”

Bright ceiling lights resembling sunlight

Illuminate the heads of friends and strangers

Looking into my grave

I have to get out of here

Before the first shovel of earth

Takes away the last ounce of hope

…

In the darkness, a voice whispers

“Just give up now,

You’re tired, just go to sleep”

But out there, beyond the graveyard

There were many more voices calling

“Don’t give up, you still have work to do!”

Among the dozens of Nextdoor replies were these:

What amazing strength you have, marveled April from Rincon Valley south. You are an inspiration to me.

You're a tough bird, agreed Bev from Village School Neighbors. I'm glad you are around, to share your light with everyone.

You are a blessing, a bright light. Keep fighting the good fight, urged Pam from Bennett Valley.

You have given me a gift of strength as I continue with my battle, wrote Al from Oakmont Village.

“The interesting thing,” said Starkey, who has lived in San Francisco for the past year, “is that I don’t post with the intention of getting feedback. I’m posting because it’s what I do to survive.

“But when I get this wonderful response back, it’s just icing on the cake.”

Seeing the glass three-quarters full

Some of his readers do more than just write back. Cindy DeMoore remembers checking out a Facebook post by an elderly man, a former Oakmont neighbor, who was convalescing in a nearby nursing home. Battling loneliness, in addition to advanced bone cancer, he invited Facebook readers to send him cards.

DeMoore didn’t know Starkey, but felt for him, and thought to herself, I’ll send him a card.

She can’t quite explain what happened next. “An inner voice told me that instead of sending a card,” DeMoore recalled, “I should go down there and say hello in person.”

And so, a year ago, DeMoore poked her head into Starkey’s room at the Summerfield Healthcare Center. She vividly recalled their first exchange:

“And you are?” he inquired.

“I’m … I’m from Facebook,” she replied. She sat down, they started talking, and before long DeMoore was visiting two to three times a week. She accompanied Starkey on walks — first short trips down the corridor, then outside, down the driveway. Eventually those walks turned into 2, 3, then 5-mile hikes.

“I’ve never seen anything like Bob’s struggle to get better and leave that place,” she recalled. “It was an honor to be next to him through that journey.”

One woman, who knew of Starkey through the Facebook group devoted to Zoe, drove from the Sierra foothills to hold his hand for a couple of hours, he recalled, then drove back. Another woman appeared in his doorway, announcing she knew him through his photography. “I’ve come to sit with you,” she said.

When Starkey mentioned on social media that he needed a lift to his weekly chemotherapy appointments in Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove neighborhood, Deanna Helm drove 44 miles from her home in Lake County to make sure he didn’t miss any of those sessions. When Starkey was finally well enough to move out of the nursing home, she got behind the wheel of his 20-year-old Thunderbird and drove him to his new digs on Clay Street.

Driving him home after chemo appointments “wasn’t always joyful for him,” she said. “He was in pain, but he stayed upbeat, took the high road.

“He always sees the glass three-quarters full,” Helm said.

Not a death sentence

Before Starkey left Oakmont in the back of that ambulance in 2019, he was neighbors with Benita Jeppson, whom he describes as being like a “mother” and “sister” to him. Like Starkey, she looked forward to her daily 4 p.m. hot tub soak. Like him, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Jeppson remains deeply grateful to him for a piece of advice that helped ease her fear.

Three months after her diagnosis, Jeppson was anxiously awaiting the results of the scans that would tell her whether her cancer was spreading, or shrinking.

“I want you to look at it this way,” Starkey told her. Whatever the results were, “it’s only information,” which she would use to guide her next steps, “to get more information.” The scan results were not, in other words, a death sentence.

“That was helpful to me, and I use it to this day,” Jeppson said. Doctors gave her three months to live, following her initial diagnosis. That was three years ago.

“My body happened to respond well to the cancer drugs,” she said.

So has Starkey, who now has “no detectable bone cancer” in his blood, but still takes pills, and undergoes chemo every other week. The problem now, he said, is the “destruction of my body.”

The collapse of his sternum and rib cage created a “shelf” on his chest. Worse, those bones are now compressing his organs — especially his lungs, making it harder to breathe.

But he’s definitely, defiantly, not “on the way out,” Starkey insisted. He is walking, writing, taking pictures, inspiring. He is fighting the good fight.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.