| Sharon decided decades ago that her highest ambition was to be a good person. She touched people across three continents and every possible cultural and ethnic line, simply by having a genuine interest in their story and an abiding faith in the good will of others. Her generosity and kindness were limitless. In Lesotho, she paid the medical bills for our staff and their families. For years, she sent money, clothes and books back to the people we knew in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Lesotho. She sent supplies to a school for AIDS orphans in Swaziland. In Hungary, she helped collect musical instruments for orphans. She helped provide supplies to the victims of 9/11.
Sadly, this gentle soul was taken from us in June. Hundreds of children will never know her as a teacher. She will not see her children marry and will never meet her grandchildren. She and I will not grow old together.
Unfortunately, my wife's story is not unusual. Her abdominal pain was treated as heartburn for a month. By the time they belatedly discovered she had pancreatic cancer, it had spread throughout her abdomen. She died less than two months after diagnosis.
Pancreatic cancer will cause more than 30,000 deaths in the US and 60,000 in Europe each year. It has the #1 fatality rate of the major cancers; like Sharon, most patients have only a few months to live. Yet, pancreatic cancer receives the smallest share of research funding. There is no molecular marker or genetic screening tool yet to aid in the earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Sharon might still be alive if there were.
Whenever a friend or relative fell ill, Sharon always looked for a way to help, be it by traveling across five states to be at the bedside of a child undergoing spinal surgery, or folding Japanese paper cranes (a symbol of hope for good health), or participating in a fundraiser.
Please help us remember and honor Sharon by doing what she would have done – by donating so that others don’t die needlessly. |
