W. Garth Callaghan doesn't know how long he has to live. But he can be certain of one simple thing: No matter his fate, his daughter will have a handwritten note tucked inside her lunchbox each day until she graduates from high school.
Callaghan has received three cancer diagnoses since November 2011, and learned that he has just an 8% chance that he will live longer than five years. Now, he's taking every chance to connect with his daughter Emma in the time he has left.
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Armed with a stack of napkins and a ballpoint pen, he started Napkin Notes, a project that documents the daily messages he's slipped into Emma's lunchbox since she started second grade.
Napkin Note: The distance between dreams and reality...
Pack. Write. Connect.
http://t.co/qH5Rr8YJRl
— Garth Callaghan (@wgarth) January 24, 2014
"She does love Napkin Notes and looks forward to them each day," he told Mashable. "She has friends that are jealous of her notes. I am just thankful with the fact that she feels comfortable enough with her own self and shares them with friends."
The project also strives to encourage others parents to connect with their children through handwritten notes, and is the subject of an ebook released last September.
Callaghan has also teamed up with Because I Said I Would, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making and keeping promises. His promise: To write enough notes of encouragement to last Emma through twelfth grade.

Image: Imgur, bcisaidiwould
To date, Callaghan has written 740 notes, leaving only 86 to go. But even though his promise is near completion, he told Mashable that Emma doesn't know about the 826 notes.
"I am sure that I will have to have that discussion with her soon, but honestly, we don't talk about cancer statistics in our home, and I don't want her to focus on that."
Check out a few of Callaghan's uplifting Napkin Notes below, and follow along with his project on Facebook
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