Isn't it amazing you can meet someone and find something about his/her attitude and outlook in life that has a profound impact on you? That happened to me. I met Valerie over 20 years ago at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and I am still gleaning lessons from our relatively short meeting.
At that time, I was attending a mathematics class for a semester. The teacher was telling us the rules of his classroom. One of the stipulations was no hats. He looked up from his podium and pointed to a girl with a baseball cap. Her ponytail was cascading out of the back of the cap. He remarked he wouldn’t ask her to remove her cap since her hair was styled around it, but please not to wear it again. Of course, at that moment, everyone looked towards her. If that was me, I would be flushed with embarrassment, glaring at the teacher for pointing me out. However, her expression was calm and collected. She smiled and nodded she would not wear it again to his class.
When the class ended, as I was walking out the door, I noticed she was walking down to talk with the teacher. I had no idea why she would even bother to talk with him. What else could there be to say? If it was me, I would have high-tailed it out of there with my head down, not trying to strike up a conversation with the person who embarrassed me.
A few days later, I was in one of the cafeterias and happened to see this same girl, minus the baseball cap. She was sitting alone at a table, munching on a salad. I walked over to her and introduced myself. She smiled and invited me to join her.
The conversation led to our shared class. I couldn’t help myself, curiosity was burning me and I asked her how she felt when the teacher pointed her out for wearing the baseball cap. I told her I thought she handled it well; I personally would have crawled under my seat for the remainder of the class!
She shared that she apologized to him for wearing the cap. She wouldn’t have worn it had she known about the rule. That day she had decided to wear her wig that had the cap attached. When I gave her a puzzled look, without missing a beat she said she has cancer.
I was speechless-- she was so matter of fact about the disease. She didn’t whisper it or use any euphemisms. She smiled when she recalled the teacher was the one embarrassed about the whole thing. He even offered to make an exception for her, but she refused. She said she had different style wigs and it was no problem. She shared she made it a point to let all of her teachers know about her cancer, since she was in treatment and couldn’t avoid missing some classes.
After she said she had cancer, I noticed that her hair was indeed a different length than the first time I saw her in class. Also, she was wearing two layers of clothing and her arms were very thin. I had never met anyone with cancer until now. Her attitude outshone her appearance. She was bubbly, talkative and honest. We got to talking about our majors. She was a biology major, she wanted to know everything about the cancer she had and eventually work on a cure. This was her fifth year at university, but she was classified as a sophomore, like me. She was tethered to her health. Her class load depended on if the cancer was in remission and what kind of treatments she was on. During the whole conversation, not once did she show anger, fear or regret.
With her attitude as the lead, I did not feel sorry for her, but rather marvel at her courage and strength. I came to a realization that day—it is easy to have a positive attitude when everything is going fine. Valerie had mastered having the same positive attitude when nothing was going her way. I was so glad I stopped by to meet her.
After that semester was over, she took a leave of absence. I was able to keep up with her progress through the local news—I wasn’t the only one that saw her as a remarkable person. Throughout the years, she was on steroid treatments, which swelled her body that she looked like a completely different person. Yet when she spoke, I immediately recognized her unbeatable spirit. When she had to have surgery, she insisted to be awake during it. She wanted to know exactly how the surgeons were performing the operation so she could learn about the tumor. Imagine, being able to take a terrifying experience and turn it into a biology lesson!
I really wish I could say Valerie fought the good fight and beat the cancer. However, that was not the case. She passed away after I graduated from UNLV. However, when I think back to Valerie, I’m not so filled with regret. Instead, I remember the lesson she taught me—find the good things when times get tough. She accomplished so much in her time here on Earth.
I know she’s in Heaven, with her dazzling smile, wearing her baseball cap with her real hair cascading down.
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