Dying cancer warrior was best teacher
I left her story unfinished.
LOUISVILLE The morning Jill Brzezinski- Conley died, I was writing about her experiences with hospice care — one of dozens of stories chronicling her journey with incurable breast cancer that I’ve written for USA TODAY and The Courier-Journal over2 ½ years. I got as far as the first two sentences. Cancer cut short her life story. But Jill, more than anyone I’ve ever known, made the best of her 38 years, inspiring others despite pain, exhaustion and frailty. She defeated cancer, even in death, because she never let it define her or her extinguish her light. And through her example, I learned many lessons about myself, my craft, and life.
Live your purpose. One of Jill’s dying missions was to spread her belief that true beauty is defined by kindness, confidence and love. She shined with that beauty, so brightly that you never noticed she had only one reconstructed breast. The other was destroyed by radiation, and she refused to wear a prosthetic because she knew she was beautiful without it.
Jill gave talks around the nation, encouraging everyone to “Rock What You Got.” She reminded me to ignore the new wrinkles of middle age, to love my body, cherish my health and tell my 14year- old daughter not to believe all the shallow messages about beauty out there. She renewed my resolve to never waver frommy own mission — touching lives through meaningful stories.
Life happens in this moment. Jill refused to wither. She would sometimes forgo chemotherapy if it meant she’d be too sick to give a talk or get together with friends or family once more. She traded the possibility of more time for living fully in the moment. She danced in the kitchen to her favorite song when she still could dance. She cracked jokes even in her last week.
Watching her, I realized how much I worry about the future— meeting next week’s deadline or weathering the turbulence of the journalism business or getting my two kids through college. Or I concentrate on fleeting news or trivial things and put off the important stuff.
Jill knew her time was too limited to let moments pass. I need to know that, too.
Be generous. We’re all in this together. Jill connected with the beauty in others and put them first. Even when I sat at her bedside the day after she went home on hospice, she asked to see photos of my children and my latest trip to India.
She sent thank- you notes to doctors and nurses. She kept journals filled with life advice for her nieces and nephews. She called and wrote messages to other patients, and founded a charity to raise money for families facing cancer even though she and her husband Bart never had much money themselves.
Perhaps the ultimate act of generosity was to live so transparently — to let me stay with her as the cancer spread from her bones to her lungs to her liver, as her breath grew short, her voice raspy, her body thinner.
She shared her waning life with strangers to give them strength through their trials.
You must live within some stories
in order to tell them. With Jill, I couldn’t help but become a close friend and make cancer a common enemy. I admired Bart’s love for her as he drained fluid from her lung or curled beside her when she was mostly confined to their bed. I got goosebumps when Jill’s mother told her it was a privilege to have her as a daughter. I cried in the arms of a church volunteer at Jill’s funeral, as her coffin was wheeled to a hearse.
Looking through my iPhone less than a week after Jill’s Feb. 2 death, I saw one of her last texts, letting me know about her latest hospitalization and ending with the words “love u.” She said it a few times, and I told her the same.
Following Jill’s story meant losing a friend, and being reminded that love’s cost is pain, but is worth it anyway.
Use your gifts to be an instrument of God. At Jill’s visitation, cancer survivor Kristina Peter approached me, saying stories on Jill gave her the strength to “rock what she got” while recovering from surgery, losing her hair and eyebrows and living with scars. She told me I’ll never know how many readers also found hope and kinship and felt they lost a friend when Jill died.
Reader Barbara Curran, who lost her first husband and a son to cancer, called Jill “God’s instrument in giving hope, strength and love to others …”
To play a part in that, to use my gifts and the stage I’ve been given, is humbling. Such stories are why I’m a journalist. Just as there’s a universe in each person, there’s a big story in every personal one, and Jill’s struggles reflect those of nearly 600,000 Americans lost to cancer each year.
Too many of us leave this world with our stories unfinished.
But when we inspire and give of ourselves like Jill did, others carry our stories forward and finish them for us.