Supra showed us how to live while dying
Ian Supra once loved to step outside his mother’s town house to feel the sunshine caress his face.
In the end, as he grew frail and his body betrayed him, he would spend his last days with the curtains drawn, in darkness, where he found comfort.
Ian Supra finally saw the light again early Tuesday morning.
The once vibrant, engaging star water-polo player and swimmer at Dr. Phillips High
School died too young, at 20, fighting to the very end. Just a few days ago, he sat up in his downstairs bed, asked for water and tried to get up. His body was too weak to accommodate.
Stage IV esophageal cancer.
It’s not supposed to happen to a kid such as Ian. He had plans. College, career, maybe Olympics. Cancer took him on a tragic detour, indiscriminate as always. Good and bad, healthy and frail, young or old.
Ian Supra was good, healthy and young. And he had no time for cancer. Despite the challenges, he still dreamed — and dreamed big. He also fought like crazy, but not only for himself.
That was Ian, too. The best part of him. Like a pied piper, Ian rallied an entire Central Florida community behind him. We all became cheerleaders, not just family, friends and teammates, but cranky columnists such as myself, so moved by his compassion.
In the throes of chemo and other treatments, he connected with Ryder Snow, a local 4-year-old with an incurable brainstem tumor, to help the family with its fundraising efforts. Ian also became involved in the fight of Theo Menswar, a 16-year-old with leukemia. At a school blood drive intended for Ian, he asked that all donations go to Theo because he had a more immediate need for those transfusions.
His friends dubbed him “Supra Strong,” an acknowledgment of his strength and courage. A superhero to all.
“Aside from all the bad, there’s still so much good, positive things that I have to be thankful for,” he once told me. “Sure, I may be battling this disease, but I still have a roof over my head, a loving family and friends, an amazing support group.”
He had all of that to the very end. There came a point when Ian, his mom, Jackie; and father, Chris, realized that they had to stop fighting. When the cancer continued to spread, they decided a few months ago to turn to hospice care.
Ian stayed home with Jackie, a registered nurse. She set up a room for him downstairs to make him as comfortable as possible. His dog Penelope would be his constant bedside companion. She loved cuddling next to him, oblivious to the dynamics.
Jackie knew better. She held a minute-by-minute, courageous, honorable, loving and unbearable bedside vigil behind those dark curtains, waiting for her only son to die.
The end came around
Friends dubbed him “Supra Strong,” acknowledging his strength and courage.
3 a.m. Tuesday. When he passed, Jackie gathered a few family friends at the home, stood around the bed and toasted to Ian. Jackie then picked out an outfit he wore to the Breakers in Palm Beach a few years ago on a water-polo-tournament trip. He will be buried in that.
That trip was on one of his best days.
I went to see him a few weeks ago on one of the bad ones. They were all bad by then. He could barely talk above a whisper, with an oxygen machine pumping air into his lungs and a cocktail of drugs to manage the excruciating pain. He may have weighed 100 pounds.
It was one of those unspoken things, saying hello but really saying goodbye.
We clasped hands, along with Orlando Sentinel photographer Red Huber, not so much in prayer as an acknowledgment of our friendship and bond.
And as we gathered to leave, he held out his fist. I didn’t get it at first. Fist bump. I left him hanging.
Sorry about that, my friend. You deserve plenty of fist bumps, high-fives and hugs.
You did good in this world. To sunshine, smiles and Supra Strong.