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Leroy Sievers

My friend Leroy Sievers died on Friday night. I considered him a friend, but the truth is I never actually met him. I read his "My Cancer" blog on npr.com every day, and although I was never one of the many to post comments there, I read those, too, and considered the regulars to be my friends.

Leroy was a brave and distinguished journalist: He covered wars, went to dangerous places all over the globe and was the executive producer of "Nightline." But while he clearly had some fun covering the wars and going to the dangerous places, there wasn't much fun in the two and a half-year struggle against the recurrence of his colon cancer that ended Friday night.

But he made me laugh. And cry. And feel grateful. And silly. His description of "cancer world," his love of chocolate chip cookies, his commitment to Harry Potter, his debates about whether he would wear the new shoes and pants long enough to make their purchase worthwhile evidenced a level of openness, honesty and integrity that you don't find in many places.

In my experience, cancer is something no one wants to talk about. Dying is something we pretend isn't happening. People who are diagnosed with cancer usually find themselves losing friends — the ones who don't know what to say and secretly fear it's contagious or at least depressing — not making them. For Leroy, it was just the opposite. His cancer brought people to him. Being a friend of Leroy's — even, like me, an invisible virtual friend — was a blessing, not a burden.

I'll admit that I sometimes got sidetracked into the world of denial, and I think I wasn't the only one. Leroy's struggles with his spine reminded me so much of my old friend Judy's struggles with her leg. She was fighting lung cancer, and she got a clot in her leg. They had to amputate it, and she had to learn to function with the artificial leg. And the truth is, while all that was going on, even though we knew the cancer was the cause and that amputating her leg wouldn't do anything to stop it, the focus on the surgery and the recovery and the rehabilitation was sufficiently intense, and she was ultimately so triumphant in dealing with it, that it was easy to forget about the other battle, the one that wasn't a fair fight and couldn't be won.

When Judy was sick, I collected every story I could find about someone who, despite all odds, lived inside a body that could live with a curse of cancer that would kill anyone else.

I convinced myself, almost, that "incurable cancer" was sort of like diabetes, sort of like AIDS is now, the sort of disease that no one wants, that takes its toll, but that doesn't necessarily kill you. As if.

Leroy was supposed to live six months. That's what the doctors told him when the cancer that he thought was gone came back. The fact that he lived long enough to start the blog and keep it going two and a half years after the recurrence proved the doctors were wrong — at least about the timing. And if they could be wrong about the timing, why not also about the ending?

And then the cancer exploded, as it does, and the doctors ran out of possible treatments, as they do, and whether any of us wanted to face it or not, Leroy went home to die. But to the end, he wrote: about selling the Wrangler and giving up the secret wave; about the decision to bring in hospice; about the stuffed dog in his bed instead of the real one that he and Laurie never got because they traveled so much. To the end, he was very much there, present and alive, which made it all the more difficult to read the final posting.

Leroy taught me many things, some of them things I already knew, or should have, but would forget if I didn't check in with him every morning. He taught me to be grateful for what I have, to be brave in facing life's challenges, to find humor in the horrors, to treasure the connections with people that make life rich. He showed me how much of a difference, in so many lives, one brave man could make. His love for his partner, Laurie, lit up his writing every day. I will miss this man of courage. Rest in peace, friend. You deserve it.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.