MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
DEATH OF A WARRIOR: A TRIBUTE<\/p>\n
In the year 2000, I had a meeting with a woman named Jami
Goldman who was looking for a writer to tell her story. Back in 1987, when she\u00a0was 19, she and a girlfriend were returning from a ski trip when an unexpected \u00a0blizzard struck. They became hopelessly lost in the freezing cold, the car battery died, the snow was at thigh level and they were stuck in their mini-van for eleven days. No water. They had to melt snow. One cinnamon roll. One frozen six-pack of Coca Cola. No cell phones. No heat. No blankets. They were nearly dead when a father and his son on sno-cats found them and called 911. Jami lost both of her legs below the knee to frostbite and went on to become a champion runner, a world record holder and a Paralympic gold medal winner on prosthetics called \u201cCheetah legs.”<\/p>\n
I was moved by her courage and her resilience, but what\u00a0really made want to write her story were the ten days that she and her friend\u00a0were stranded in the middle of a blizzard, freezing cold, with no idea where\u00a0they were or if they would ever be rescued. I wanted to know how it felt to\u00a0face the likelihood of death together day after day, and I took the job. Jami\u00a0was a joy to work with. I interviewed her parents, her friends, her lawyer.\u00a0Everyone cried. She had touched them all with her warrior-like attitude and our\u00a0inspirational book, \u201cUp And Running: The Jami Goldman Story\u201d came out of the\u00a0collaboration. We both loved it. (Order it. It\u2019s a great read.)<\/p>\n
Jami and I became fast friends. We still are, even though\u00a0she just died from cancer three days ago at the age of 54. I was aware of her
battle with the illness over the last several years but when I heard that she was\u00a0gone, it stunned me. I had watched her walk down the aisle with her father on\u00a0prosthetics. I had run beside her on a track as she left me in the dust. I\u00a0followed her journey as she ran marathons, gave motivational speeches and\u00a0I was her guest on Career Day for her fourth grade class. Jami\u2019s greatest\u00a0desire was to have a family and to be a school teacher and she accomplished
both of those. And now she is on her way back home. How vulnerable we all are.<\/p>\n
I guess I didn\u2019t think Jami would ever die. She was so\u00a0alive, so vibrant and always ready to laugh at herself. She once told me, \u201cWhen\u00a0you get home, you take off your shoes. I take off my legs.\u201d Jami could have\u00a0been the inspiration for Nike\u2019s campaign, JUST DO IT! I guess I forgot she was\u00a0a human being like all the rest of us who live and die when it\u2019s our time. By\u00a0the way, I take issue when people describe death as \u201closing the battle\u201d or when\u00a0they say, \u201cThey succumbed to an illness\u201d as if dying constituted a failure. Jami\u00a0was a super-hero and a warrior every single day. She fought, she fell and she\u00a0got up, but she never lost. She always won. Even when she died.<\/p>\n
Jami\u2019s greatest gift to me was allowing\u00a0me to write her story. I feel proud that she trusted me enough to tell her truth\u00a0in the way that she wanted. And that was also my greatest gift to her. My\u00a0editing, collaborating and ghostwriting work happens behind the scenes so I
don’t get the credit but my work with Jami reminds me that my contribution is\u00a0powerful and there are a number of important books that would not have come to\u00a0fruition if I hadn’t written them or doctored them into shape. Jami\u2019s book is\u00a0part of her legacy, it will live on, and her children\u2019s children will know who\u00a0she was, what she accomplished and marvel at her indomitable spirit. I can\u2019t\u00a0help but wonder why one person has to go through so many serious challenges in\u00a0this life, one after the other. There\u2019s no answer to that. I just know how\u00a0important it is to be grateful for our friends and recognize what they mean to\u00a0us while we are still here.<\/p>\n
I wish Jami a smooth ride on her journey back home. She was so
close to her grandfather, Poppy, who died some years ago so I know she\u2019s in\u00a0good company. I don’t know if dying is a tragedy. The loss hurts like hell for\u00a0her loved ones, but letting go just might be a reward after an extended battle\u00a0of pain and suffering. No one knows, so I give thanks every night before I fall\u00a0asleep and every morning when I open my eyes and I\u2019m still here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG DEATH OF A WARRIOR: A TRIBUTE In the year 2000, I had a meeting with a woman named JamiGoldman who was looking for a writer to tell her story. Back in 1987, when she\u00a0was 19, she and a girlfriend were returning from a ski trip when an unexpected \u00a0blizzard struck. They became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2074,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions\/2074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}