DINKlife member and first-time Movember participant Chris Presley, 34, is uncomfortably acquainted with cancer. His mother in-law has already lost one breast to breast cancer—“At present she is cancer free,” Chris says, “but I fear she may not stay that way”—and he’s lost two grandparents to lung cancer, his grandmother on his father’s side and his grandfather on his mother’s side.

And until recently, his sister was a professional cancer researcher before deciding to get her M.D.

“I've often suspected her motivation to spend so much time on the topic was our family medical history,” Chris says.

Although this is his first time as a Movember man, it isn’t Chris’ first time actively supporting someone with cancer. When his grandmother’s chemotherapy treatments took her hair, Chris shaved his head bald, “The first time ever,” he says, and posted his picture on Facebook as a show of solidarity.

“I can't say enough about what a trooper she was, and how positive she stayed right up to her last day,” he says.

She passed away just under a year ago. And three years ago, he lost the grandfather he’d lived next door to for seventeen years, from the age of two to nineteen.

"We worked on the farm and fished together, and even after moving away to find work when I became an adult, I still spent as much time as I could with him,” Chris says.

His grandfather was even Chris’ driver on his wedding day. And although he lived too far away to visit regularly once he moved, Chris would call every few weeks, and he’d visit him every time he returned to his hometown, often bringing gifts from his local Mennonite market.

These days, Chris wears his grandfather’s wedding band on his right hand and thinks about him daily. A few times a year, he visits his grandfather in the cemetery and talks to him over a can of Pepsi, pouring his grandfather’s share on his grave.