Growing up one of four children in an upper middle-class family where his parents took their home life seriously, life was pretty typical for the period, although Eggers did recall that his father was burdened by a drinking problem, perhaps due to his high-pressure job.
Typical Family Falls Apart
After high school, Eggers enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, expecting to get a degree in journalism while also taking courses in painting. While he was away at school, life at the Eggers home fell into disarray when his mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Although surgery was successful, despite chemotherapy treatments the cancer returned a year later, forcing her doctors to perform more radical surgery. Meanwhile, Eggers' father was also diagnosed with cancer, although unlike Eggers' mother, his father's cancer occurred in the brain and lung. In 1991, in just over a month, the Egger children lost both their father and mother.
As the second youngest sibling, twenty-one-year-old Eggers determined that he should be the one to stay home with the youngest brother, eight-year-old Toph.
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