Vickie's Lesson

No one will ever see Vickie’s beautiful blue eyes. She died on Valentine’s Day in 1979. Seventeen years old is just too young to wage a war against brain cancer.

Vickie was the first young woman to greet me when I began my ministry at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Working at a nearby church, I was assigned to visit the hospital, and to bring comfort to the children and their families as they embraced hope in search of a cure. Truth be told, I always felt as though they gave me so much more encouragement and support than I could ever share with them, Vickie in particular.

She was fifteen when the headaches started. Her mom and dad proudly told me that she was the youngest homecoming queen in the history of St. Mary’s High School as a sophomore.

When I was introduced to Vickie during the Christmas holidays, she shook my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Vickie. The cancer treatments are not working, and I’ll probably die soon. Please don’t feel sorry for me. I had a great life. And I believe that Jesus has a special place in heaven for me when I leave this earth.” I just stood there for a few seconds, searching for an adequate response to her depth of openness and honesty.

We visited and talked a lot in the two months before she went home to God. I remember asking her one afternoon, “If there was a single, most important lesson that you learned in your life that might help me in mine, what would it be?”

After carefully considering my question, Vickie looked up at me and said, “Well, since I have been here, I learned that the Golden Rule begins with a verb.” At the risk of appearing shallow, I requested an explanation.

“Most people,” she replied, “wait for others to be nice to them. They say, ‘Well, if she’s cool with me, then I’ll be cool with her,’ but the Golden Rule says, ‘DO unto others; ’ so the way I see it, we can't wait to find out if other people will treat us well. We have an opportunity to make the world a better place by just doing it first.”

Vickie also shared that it was a lesson she learned from the doctors, nurses, and patient care personnel in her unit, who always took the initiative to make her feel as though she was the the most remarkable person in the whole world.

Many of those staff members were at the funeral to grieve and to support her family when Vickie died in February. I recall the minister standing in front an overflowing congregation, quoting the writer, Kahlil Gibran, "When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that, in truth, you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

As I sat in the church pew, tears streaming down my typically stoic face, I cherished the healing presence that I found in room 331 on that cold December day. Then I made a solemn promise to Vickie that I would always remember --- the Golden Rule begins with a verb.