Carnegie Mellon Prof Randy Pausch's Final Lecture

NYMomof2
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:22:53 +0000

I watched the lecture, and found it moving, inspiring and heartbreaking. This situation really puts things in perspective. From the article m&sdad linked:

'The treatments began in November and didn’t end until the following May. The low point, he wrote, was on Christmas Day of last year: “My wife and children were in Norfolk, and I was in Houston getting poison put in my veins. I was never depressed, but that was the day I was really squeezing the lemons hard to get lemonade.” '

and (text below from article):



“I find that I am completely positive,” he wrote. “The only times I cry are when I think about the kids – and it’s not so much the ‘Gee, I’ll miss seeing their first bicycle ride’ type of stuff as it is a sense of unfulfilled duty – that I will not be there to help raise them, and that I have left a very heavy burden for my wife.”

He is concentrating now on creating videos for his children. With his oldest son, 5-year-old Dylan, Dr. Pausch went on a recent trip to Disney World and to swim with dolphins, thinking Dylan may be the only child who will have strong direct memories of him.

His wife and children, he said, "mean everything to me. They give a purpose to life and a depth of joy that no job [and I’ve had some of the most awesome jobs in the world] can begin to provide.

“I hope my wife is able to remarry down the line. And I hope they will remember me as a man who loved them, and did everything he could for them.”