Nineteen is a book of nineteen lessons learned from Haydn Robarts, whose short life profoundly changed all around him. Written by his father, it combines a personal memoir, universal lessons, insights from religion and science, and perspectives from Haydn and his parents. The result is a work that ultimately inspires an awareness, an awakening, and a mindset toward living this precious life with purpose and clarity. Haydn was a remarkable young man whose dignified response to his own suffering provides essential wisdom and hopeful possibilities for your own life.
The philosopher is not influenced by praise or blame. He knows the truth and is not afraid, regardless of what happens to him in this world.
--Tao Te Ching, LXVII
In December 2018, during a family vacation in Canada, Adam was asked what he would choose to be if he were not an architect. He replied without hesitation, "A hospice nurse." Five years earlier, he had a profound experience accompanying his father through the final weeks of life before he died of cancer in Uganda. Adam could not have imagined then that nine months later he would begin to accompany his nineteen-year-old son, Haydn, through a battle with a rare brain cancer. Haydn graduated from this physical world in May 2020, one week before his twentieth birthday. Nineteen, Adam's first book, shares the beautiful and poignant lessons learned on his family's journey with Haydn.