The Reeve family suffers another loss

On my way home from work today, I heard on the radio that Dana Reeve has died. I don't remember if I had heard previously that she had lung cancer; apparently she was diagnosed with it last summer. In reading a few news stories, it looks like she had been receiving treatment and felt good about her progress in beating the disease, but she lost the battle.

I have no personal connection to the Reeve family. I became a fan of Christopher Reeve, like millions of others, from the Superman films he did. He embodied the characters of Superman and Clark Kent so well, especially in the first movie, that I will always feel like he should have been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the first film. I always hoped that I would have the opportunity to tell him that personally, but I never did.

When Mr. Reeve had the accident that paralyzed him, I felt great sympathy for him and his family. I saw how he fought to keep going, even when he wondered if it was worth it to do so, and marveled at everything he accomplished after becoming confined to his wheelchair. His untiring efforts to promote research into spinal injuries and help other people who had conditions similar to his were an example to all of us. When he died, I felt that the world had lost one of its heroes.

His wife carried on in his commitment to further the cause of helping people with disabilities, even as she became a victim of a different disabler, lung cancer. I just watched on line an interview with Dana Reeve that Diane Sawyer did in November. In it, Mrs. Reeve said something that sticks with me. Diane Sawyer asked her about all the charitable work she had done, and her reply was, "It's the rent we pay for living on this earth." Now she is gone too, and we are all the poorer for it. I hope that their son, who has lost his parents much, much too soon, will grow up to be as strong and brave and generous as the two fine people who brought him into this world and nurtured him.

I think I will go out and pay some rent very soon, in her memory.