When he was a boy, Dr. Pausch said, he had a concrete set of dreams: He wanted to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity; he wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the World Book Encyclopedia ("You can tell the nerds early on," he joked); he wanted to be Captain Kirk from "Star Trek"; and he wanted to work for the Disney Co.
In the end, he got to tackle all of them, he said -- even if his football accomplishments fell somewhere short of the NFL.
And even though his football career ended in high school, he said, he probably learned more from that experience than all the other childhood goals he did achieve.
Among other things, he learned the value of the coach yelling at him for his mistakes, because an assistant coach told him after one particularly brutal practice: "When you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."
"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."
As I always tell my 5-year-old, it's not 'unfair' when you don't get what you want. We all run the risk of getting hit by the cancer dart."
My oldest won't even be in high school when I turn 46. Give that cancer hell, Dr. Pausch.
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