Most of you know by now that Sean died at home with his family. I learned of his passing yesterday morning at work from The Oldest. His full obituary will run in tomorrow's Jacksonville (NC) Daily News and I will add a link to it as an update to this post as soon as it's available. The boys, Sean's college friends, are gathering in Wilmington and The Oldest drove up last night, arriving safely. They will go to Swansboro, North Carolina, Sean's hometown near Jacksonville, but I'm not sure when. The Visitation followed by "an Irish wake" is Sunday evening and the funeral mass is Monday.
The picture at right is Thomas (The Oldest, Sean called him Tommy) and Mike (left and right) standing in front of Sean. It was taken on their trip to New York with the UNCW Ad Club in November of 2005. I blogged about it at the time.
I have the most wonderful readers. The comments that have been left for me and the emails that have been sent have been loving and moving beyond anything I could have ever expected. I can't tell you how much it means to me, your comments, thoughts and prayers. A special thanks goes out to my dear friend Monica for her loving support through these last weeks. Also, if you haven't already, please take a moment to read RedHeadGirl's beautiful song left in comments to my last post, Going Home, and Liprap's amazing Misheibeirach prayer, written by Debbie Friedman, left in comments to the previous post, Wait. But I choose to close, for now, with a few lines from John-Ward Leighton's "We Are The Stories" written for Sean and posted on his blog as well as in my comments section. It is beautiful and moves me to tears:
Our hopes and prayers were not in vain
we can only pick our selves up and start again.
Fate has brought us together,
in our hopes for this fine young man
friendships have formed from shared concern
we are stronger and have a powerful karma.
We are here for such a short time dear heart
and in our stories Sean now has a part.
Thanks, y'all. Peace.
Update, Saturday morning 2/17 - The full text obituary is here and it's beautiful. In part:
His unbelievable courage and fervent desire to help others will live on in many ways, including the more than 1,000 new potential bone marrow donors who registered as a result of his efforts to help his fellow sufferers and to raise cancer awareness. Our family has only one request: that the positive example Sean set with his life will inspire everyone to "Dance like no one is watching, love like you've never been hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live everyday like it is your last day on earth."
They also ask this:
In lieu of flowers, the Williams family asks everyone between the ages of 18 and 60 to contact the National Marrow Donor Program at www.marrow.org to become a registered bone marrow donor, or to make a financial donation to The Eastern North Carolina Chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Wilmington, N.C. at (910) 779-0775 or www.lls.org.
I'm sorry that I can't go. I want to, but we haven't ever really considered it. Aside from being fiscally irresponsible, my presence would be interuptive for The Oldest. This is his time with his friends and Sean's family. If I was there, he would be distracted by concern for me. I stayed home last night with a fire and it was very nice. I had a good long cry, then I sent The Oldest, who has been asked to be a pall bearer, a text message, "Do you know how proud I am of you?" He answered, "Phone dying... yes."
UPDATES:
Go here, to Travis Shallow's MySpace and click on Sean's Song and listen. Take tissue. It was written and recorded a couple of months ago.
The obituary in the Wilmington Star News includes a nice picture and an online guest book.
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