Canzano: This Jack keeps giving back

Jack Schumacher died at the age of 14.

Jack Schumacher, 14, died seven years ago from bone cancer.

I’ve written a few columns over the years about Jack Schumacher. He was a 14-year-old kid who loved baseball. He died seven years ago after an ugly battle with osteosarcoma.

Jack endured months of radiation treatments, multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and had a surgery to remove a portion of his pelvis. His mother, Tammi, told me she crawled into the hospital bed and cradled her son’s body in the final minutes of his life.

She was clutching Jack when he died — 6:36 a.m. on a Friday in late May. I have three children. That scene hit me like a bag of bricks.

I spoke with Tammi this week. We talk once a year, usually near the anniversary of her son’s death. I’ll tell you more about that in a moment, but Tammi told me one of the things she remembers most about the final weeks of Jack’s life is how strong he was for those around him.

He spent time with his two siblings, giving them peace. He devised a campaign to purchase LEGO sets for children at the hospital. And he instructed his family that he wanted his vital organs to be donated so that others might live.

“He fought like crazy to beat it,” Tammi told me. “Once he was told there was nothing more that could be done, it was a moment of despair and intense grief. It was, ‘I’m not going to live.’ Then there was acceptance and old-school wisdom and maturity that came out of him that was incredible to watch as he lived those final four or five months after he found out he was terminal.

“He was quite the kid. I’m proud to be his mom.”

Jack was a star pitcher on his youth baseball team. He was also skilled at math and might have studied to be an engineer. He’d have been a junior in college this year, and the trajectory of his promising pitching career might have put him in a uniform at Oregon, Oregon State, or some other school.

So what’s got you down today? A stiff neck? A bum knee? Annoying neighbor? An ongoing family squabble? A toxic co-worker? Lousy boss? Pick your petty ailment. I’m not here to tell you those things don’t matter, but I am here to say that Tammi would probably trade your grief for hers.

It’s partly why she’s channeled the pain into an annual campaign to provide LEGO sets for kids at area children’s hospitals. Before his death, Jack noted that there weren’t enough sets to go around. He set a goal of 100 LEGO boxes.

He got to 300 before he died.

“My kid — my kid — did that,” Tammi said.

Every year, Tammi spends a few weeks setting up an Amazon wish list. The LEGOs are shipped to her home, then delivered to the hospitals. Every June, she comes home from her work shift as a nurse to find stacks of boxes and packages waiting on the porch.

“It’s an instant smile,” Tammi said. “It’s an instant distraction from all the pokes and prods and surgeries and pain and doctors and nurses. It’s a light coming into the room. It did that for Jack, and he understood that.”

In the last seven years, Jack’s campaign has provided more than 6,500 LEGO sets to kids who are sitting in hospitals battling ailments, doing lab tests, facing uncertainty, and fighting monsters such as cancer.

Part of my job deals with the legacy of others. Sports are built for it. We track statistics, compare careers, and vote on postseason awards, and have elevated discussions about things such as the Hall of Fame.

Jack’s story is one that stuck with me. He was filled with hope, promise, and wonder before his life was cut short. Rather than sit around feeling sorry for himself, he got busy carving out a purpose in his final weeks.

Lots of us wander around the world, wondering what difference we might make. I suppose part of the life lesson this 14-year-old boy provided is a reminder of the urgency, fragility, and power of it all.

We frequently talk about death as something that happens in “the end.” As if it’s a clean and tidy final chapter of a long, full life. But death, as I once heard it described by author John Green, frequently comes in the middle of a sentence.

Jack’s life got interrupted.

So he got busy living, as they say.

“We don’t forget our child,” Tammi said. “We don’t want anybody else to forget our child.”

How could any of us forget Jack Schumacher?

He lived deep.

He made an impact on others.

His mission continues, even after his death.

“That’s what we want,” Tammi said, “for our kids to have mattered and be important to somebody, and know they lived and existed.”

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