Michael Furbert’s dream was to see his hero Lewis Hamilton in a Formula 1 race.
Mr Furbert’s wish was granted in July 2024, through a generous gift from a family friend, a few weeks after he learnt his cancer was terminal.
Attending Hamilton’s historic victory at Silverstone became a lifetime highlight for Mr Furbert. For his children, it was a reminder that even amid great sadness, beautiful memories can still shine through.
Daughter Danielle Furbert said: “After we got the news that the treatments were no longer working, our friend asked me, ‘What does your dad like? I just feel like I want to do something nice for him.
“I told him my dad was a huge F1 fan. And he said, ‘What if my wife and I sponsor you going to one of the F1 races?’
“It was just so generous, beyond anything I had ever been offered. The whole event was just incredible, and we were able to get some lovely memories from it. It was truly a blessing.
“I still look at the videos and pictures I took from that. I asked my dad, when Lewis Hamilton won, how did he feel? He said, ‘Oh, I feel great.’ He was pretty mellow with his answer, but you could tell he was still excited. He was just thrilled to be with his kids and to have this moment.”
Emotional journey
Mr Furbert, a property manager and accountant, was diagnosed with lung cancer in February 2021. Ms Furbert recalled a sense of unfairness given that the non-smoker had already overcome throat cancer.
But Mr Furbert didn’t allow the disease to define him. He continued playing golf, even on days he received chemotherapy, and he remained the life and soul of the party.
“We could walk into a movie theatre, and he’d be like, ‘Good morning, everybody’ to the crowd. It was incredible to witness, someone who had such an amazing character and way about him, and the impact he had on people.”
He went through about eight different chemotherapies, but the cancer eventually spread across his body.
“Without saying the words between us as a family initially, it was becoming clearer this was likely something he wasn’t going to beat. He was just trying to, at this point, have some quality of life.
“The final blow came in May 2024 where we were told that there wasn’t much more they could do. My dad was tired of treatments. So, I remember saying to him, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to just try one more?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t want to do any more.’ And I left it there. I didn’t push. And for me, that was difficult.”
Ms Furbert, 36, juggled caregiving responsibilities with her professional life in the reinsurance industry.
It was a journey of love – but exhausting and, at times, frustrating and emotionally painful.
“You, in a way, lose yourself in caring for this person,” she said.
“I would do it all over again if I had to, but you do become a little bit of a background character in your own life. This person and what they need becomes the most important thing.
“There is an isolating nature of being a caregiver. You’re not losing who you are, but your life is on pause. There are a lot of things that you give up.”
She is grateful that she could spend so much quality time with her father.
But she added: “It was very challenging to try to balance my own life and what he was going through. There were times when the impact of the treatments was very difficult on him, his patience could wear thin, so he would have moments of just being a little bit abrupt. He was a wonderful person, but he was human.”
Navigating those moments was difficult.
“As a caregiver, you have to find ways to make time for yourself,” she said. “What that looked like for me was, at times, travelling off island to get a break, massages, time with friends and family, alone time and journaling. As strong as you might think you are, it would affect anybody for a while in the beginning.
“Cancer started to consume my life and my dad’s life. That word was almost said every single day.
“The impact on him at the end, his body deteriorating, not being able to eat, eventually not being able to talk: how quickly that happened, it was very difficult to witness. And I was bathing my dad. I was trying to give him water and feed him if he could eat.”
Support network
Mr Furbert also benefited from the support of his mother, Eloise Furbert, who recently turned 100, son Kyle Furbert, 34, and the charity PALS. This network was crucial to Ms Furbert, too.
“You have to reach out to your support network and have those conversations where you talk about how difficult it is,” she said.
“I almost didn’t do that enough at times. I just kept swallowing the difficulty and just parking it somewhere, and it’s going to come out in some ways.”
He passed in January 2025, aged 73, on Ms Furbert’s birthday.
A year later, Ms Furbert decided to turn the anniversary into something positive at one of his favourite restaurants, the Barracuda Grill in Hamilton.
“I gathered some of my closest friends to celebrate his life,” she said.
“That day, yes, it was the day I lost my father, but it was also the day he gave life to his best friend. He was my best friend. It was a moving and celebratory day and filled with happiness.
“It dawned on me how much he was loved by so many other people. It wasn’t just me or his immediate family, it was people in the community, and his own friends, and people he grew up with.”
The celebration centred on the good parts about Mr Furbert’s life, and who he really was as a person.
“He focused on what was in his control and made time for what brought him joy.
“His children were the light of his life, and we were there by his side until the very end; we loved each other deeply. His memory lives on in what he instilled in us.”
