tlongII
01-12-2009, 07:50 AM
http://blog.oregonlive.com/johncanzano/2009/01/katie_shearer_24_strength_cour.html
Katie Shearer died at 3:12 a.m. on Sunday. She wore a sweat-drenched shirt. And her mother held her, kissed her, and took a small cloth and soaked up one last tear that ran down Katie's cheek.
Katie, 24, was a Trail Blazers fan. She also had malignant melanoma, and I wrote a column about her that ran on Christmas Day. She'd spent two years in pain. She'd had surgeries to remove the lymph nodes in her groin, and another to remove a piece of her intestine, and tumors were carved out of her body.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/johncanzano/2009/01/medium_Katie%20001.jpg
Katie Shearer, left, and her mother Anna, right, had a simple Christmas wish.
She'd had radiation treatment, and immunotherapy, and been part of an unsuccessful clinical trial. In the last few weeks her abdomen had become so rife with tumors that it was rock hard. And so, on Christmas Day, she didn't wish for an iPod, or jewelry as a gift, but just one more good day to spend with family, friends. And, also, she wanted to see the Blazers play.
She got that wish.
More on that in a minute.
First, understand, Anna Shearer raised five children as a single mother. When the children were younger, she'd wake up in her water bed in the morning and sometimes find that all of them, and the family dog, too, had crawled in the bed with her in the middle of the night.
Late Saturday, too weak to walk, barely able to talk, unable even to reach up and put her arm around her younger brother's neck, Katie asked to be carried her to mother's bed. In her final night, she wanted to not only be at home, but to go where kids feel safest, and I don't think there's any one of us that couldn't relate to that.
"A lot of people don't get a chance to say 'goodbye' you know," her mother, an intensive-care unit nurse, said Sunday. "We got a good thing in having a chance to spend some final time with her.
"I didn't have a cop knocking on our door in the middle of the night."
Still, night came for Katie.
A few hours earlier, the Blazers disposed of the Golden State Warriors, 113-100. During the game, I spoke several times to Katie's family, and Blazers personnel asked me for updates every time we passed in the arena halls. Two Blazers executives cried when I shared an email in which Katie's mother wrote: "If I could just get her in my arms and rock her one more time, I would."
After the game, Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard informed the team that Katie was still fighting hard, but that it didn't look good. And coach Nate McMillan, who had another victory and his All-Star Brandon Roy back in the line-up, began his post-game address to the media not with talk about pick-and-rolls or zone defense or the victory, but with solemn talk about Katie.
Said McMillan: "She knew this was coming but she's not doing well and we just want to say that we are thinking about her tonight."
The Blazers gave Katie one of the best nights in her last two years on Christmas. She had two tickets to the team's holiday game against Dallas, and when the front office learned she'd have to choose among family members for that final game of her life, they stepped in and made sure everyone could go.
She sat courtside. The game officials summoned her to their dressing room where they presented her with a referee's whistle. After the game, she was escorted to the Blazers' locker room, where she met the players and executives, and she was embarrassed when her family announced Katie had a crush on Rudy Fernandez.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/johncanzano/2009/01/medium_Rudy.jpg
Katie called it, "an amazing night."
You read about her in this newspaper, and she made you think. I received more than 1,000 emails and telephone messages about Katie. One gentleman said he'd interrupted the opening of presents and read the column aloud to his children on Christmas morning. Another man promised to quit smoking, and re-evaluate his life. One woman who read about Katie left a telephone message in which she just sobbed into the phone.
Katie sat in her mother's dining room on Christmas Eve and blew me away by saying she was at peace with her death because she'd lived a full life. She was the oldest sibling and so she was more concerned with her brothers and sisters --- the ones she'd helped get to bed at night and off to school in the morning --- than she was her own well being.
In fact, Katie woke Saturday morning at 6 a.m., her final full day alive, and mumbled to her mom, "We've got to get the kids off to school."
We're talking about a young woman who graduated from Portland State with honors last month. She should be hanging her diploma today on the wall of a new apartment, starting a career, and thinking about maybe someday having her own children. But instead, she's dead.
Katie left us with lessons. And the hope here is that we don't ever forget them.
We're mortal. So live deep, and dare to know. Think of your life, and not your death, as the destination.
Katie said she'd considered having the Latin phrase "Memento Mori" (Translated: Remember you're mortal) tattooed on her wrist last month, but then reconsidered because she wanted to be cremated, "and that just seems like a waste of money."
May we all tattoo the phrase on our brains today.
Katie's life ends up the stuff of a Longfellow poem.
In "A Psalm of Life" Longfellow wrote: "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal." He wrote about fleeting time, and the basic human challenge involved in waking up each day further evolved than the previous.
Katie evolved by the minute, see. She knew she was dying. So when doctors gave her a week to live and told her in mid-December there was nothing else they could do, she didn't mope, or feel sorry for herself. She perked up. Then, she gathered her family in her final few weeks, and said goodbye, and wished not for a miracle cure, but for the precious time she had left to be filled with life.
She went sky diving with her sisters and friends. When doctors told her she had only days to live, she got in her car against medical advice and drove herself downtown to see the Nutcracker holiday performance. She read books she'd always wanted to read. She visited with people. She woke up on that final Christmas, ate food, spent time with family, then put on red and black and headed to the Rose Garden to cheer for her team.
She laughed. She loved. She lived.
Katie's mom, Anna said, "Katie's known for a long time that she's not going to make it. A lot of the stuff she did, she did for me.
"I felt like she was the adult. She's had an acceptance I've never had."
The Blazers beat the Warriors on Saturday. On Sunday morning, they boarded a plane, thinking about their game in Chicago. And in between, Anna sat in bed with Katie, holding her close, counting heartbeats and listening to her daughter breathe.
"Who else but a mother could do that," Anna said.
You should know, in the final few days, Katie wore one of those popular "I love Rudy" T-shirts until the thing was so soaked with her sweat, and stuck to her skin, that it had to be peeled off her body.
I will never think about those T-shirts ever again without also thinking of Katie. And I will never forget what she wanted to teach us, either.
Maybe you won't either.
Katie Shearer died at 3:12 a.m. on Sunday. She wore a sweat-drenched shirt. And her mother held her, kissed her, and took a small cloth and soaked up one last tear that ran down Katie's cheek.
Katie, 24, was a Trail Blazers fan. She also had malignant melanoma, and I wrote a column about her that ran on Christmas Day. She'd spent two years in pain. She'd had surgeries to remove the lymph nodes in her groin, and another to remove a piece of her intestine, and tumors were carved out of her body.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/johncanzano/2009/01/medium_Katie%20001.jpg
Katie Shearer, left, and her mother Anna, right, had a simple Christmas wish.
She'd had radiation treatment, and immunotherapy, and been part of an unsuccessful clinical trial. In the last few weeks her abdomen had become so rife with tumors that it was rock hard. And so, on Christmas Day, she didn't wish for an iPod, or jewelry as a gift, but just one more good day to spend with family, friends. And, also, she wanted to see the Blazers play.
She got that wish.
More on that in a minute.
First, understand, Anna Shearer raised five children as a single mother. When the children were younger, she'd wake up in her water bed in the morning and sometimes find that all of them, and the family dog, too, had crawled in the bed with her in the middle of the night.
Late Saturday, too weak to walk, barely able to talk, unable even to reach up and put her arm around her younger brother's neck, Katie asked to be carried her to mother's bed. In her final night, she wanted to not only be at home, but to go where kids feel safest, and I don't think there's any one of us that couldn't relate to that.
"A lot of people don't get a chance to say 'goodbye' you know," her mother, an intensive-care unit nurse, said Sunday. "We got a good thing in having a chance to spend some final time with her.
"I didn't have a cop knocking on our door in the middle of the night."
Still, night came for Katie.
A few hours earlier, the Blazers disposed of the Golden State Warriors, 113-100. During the game, I spoke several times to Katie's family, and Blazers personnel asked me for updates every time we passed in the arena halls. Two Blazers executives cried when I shared an email in which Katie's mother wrote: "If I could just get her in my arms and rock her one more time, I would."
After the game, Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard informed the team that Katie was still fighting hard, but that it didn't look good. And coach Nate McMillan, who had another victory and his All-Star Brandon Roy back in the line-up, began his post-game address to the media not with talk about pick-and-rolls or zone defense or the victory, but with solemn talk about Katie.
Said McMillan: "She knew this was coming but she's not doing well and we just want to say that we are thinking about her tonight."
The Blazers gave Katie one of the best nights in her last two years on Christmas. She had two tickets to the team's holiday game against Dallas, and when the front office learned she'd have to choose among family members for that final game of her life, they stepped in and made sure everyone could go.
She sat courtside. The game officials summoned her to their dressing room where they presented her with a referee's whistle. After the game, she was escorted to the Blazers' locker room, where she met the players and executives, and she was embarrassed when her family announced Katie had a crush on Rudy Fernandez.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/johncanzano/2009/01/medium_Rudy.jpg
Katie called it, "an amazing night."
You read about her in this newspaper, and she made you think. I received more than 1,000 emails and telephone messages about Katie. One gentleman said he'd interrupted the opening of presents and read the column aloud to his children on Christmas morning. Another man promised to quit smoking, and re-evaluate his life. One woman who read about Katie left a telephone message in which she just sobbed into the phone.
Katie sat in her mother's dining room on Christmas Eve and blew me away by saying she was at peace with her death because she'd lived a full life. She was the oldest sibling and so she was more concerned with her brothers and sisters --- the ones she'd helped get to bed at night and off to school in the morning --- than she was her own well being.
In fact, Katie woke Saturday morning at 6 a.m., her final full day alive, and mumbled to her mom, "We've got to get the kids off to school."
We're talking about a young woman who graduated from Portland State with honors last month. She should be hanging her diploma today on the wall of a new apartment, starting a career, and thinking about maybe someday having her own children. But instead, she's dead.
Katie left us with lessons. And the hope here is that we don't ever forget them.
We're mortal. So live deep, and dare to know. Think of your life, and not your death, as the destination.
Katie said she'd considered having the Latin phrase "Memento Mori" (Translated: Remember you're mortal) tattooed on her wrist last month, but then reconsidered because she wanted to be cremated, "and that just seems like a waste of money."
May we all tattoo the phrase on our brains today.
Katie's life ends up the stuff of a Longfellow poem.
In "A Psalm of Life" Longfellow wrote: "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal." He wrote about fleeting time, and the basic human challenge involved in waking up each day further evolved than the previous.
Katie evolved by the minute, see. She knew she was dying. So when doctors gave her a week to live and told her in mid-December there was nothing else they could do, she didn't mope, or feel sorry for herself. She perked up. Then, she gathered her family in her final few weeks, and said goodbye, and wished not for a miracle cure, but for the precious time she had left to be filled with life.
She went sky diving with her sisters and friends. When doctors told her she had only days to live, she got in her car against medical advice and drove herself downtown to see the Nutcracker holiday performance. She read books she'd always wanted to read. She visited with people. She woke up on that final Christmas, ate food, spent time with family, then put on red and black and headed to the Rose Garden to cheer for her team.
She laughed. She loved. She lived.
Katie's mom, Anna said, "Katie's known for a long time that she's not going to make it. A lot of the stuff she did, she did for me.
"I felt like she was the adult. She's had an acceptance I've never had."
The Blazers beat the Warriors on Saturday. On Sunday morning, they boarded a plane, thinking about their game in Chicago. And in between, Anna sat in bed with Katie, holding her close, counting heartbeats and listening to her daughter breathe.
"Who else but a mother could do that," Anna said.
You should know, in the final few days, Katie wore one of those popular "I love Rudy" T-shirts until the thing was so soaked with her sweat, and stuck to her skin, that it had to be peeled off her body.
I will never think about those T-shirts ever again without also thinking of Katie. And I will never forget what she wanted to teach us, either.
Maybe you won't either.