You may remember Shane Frehlich from earlier posts on this blog. He passed away in 2015 from a rare form of Leukemia. I attended a professional conference in San Diego last week, where a touching memorial to Shane was given by some of his closest friends and colleagues at California State University Northridge, where he was a professor.
As part of that memorial they showed a short video produced at CSUN to show how Shane had touched the lives of so many people on that campus. I was able to get a link to that video, so you can put a face to his name, and see just how much he was loved by his family and his CSUN colleagues:
I did not participate actively in the memorial in San Diego. I watched the video and listened to the handful of people who did say something about Shane and what he meant to them and our association. All I could think of was "Why me?" Why have I survived cancer, when so many others who fought just as hard (and Shane twice) did not make it? That has been a haunting question for the past 7 years, and I didn't want to make that the subject of any comments I made about Shane at that moment. It was his moment and I didn't want to take away from that with words about myself. All I could think of was "Why me?" so I sat quietly among the others in the room.
Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that I have beaten cancer entirely and that there are only physical scars to show from my battles with the Prairie Dogs. Again, the truth is, I have not beaten cancer entirely--I've only survived it for 7 years, and events like Shane's memorial serve to bring that reality back to me.
mike
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