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The Journey With Frosty

Strength - Noun: the ability to resist being moved or broken by a force.

Courage and nobility make a person strong; being physically adept makes a person strong. But real unmovable strength comes from somewhere else.

What makes a strong human even stronger is when they can brush themselves off and come out of a darkness stronger than when they entered it; stronger still when they can create something beautiful from earth-shattering events, events that would send most people into darkness forever.

Strength is moving forward when all odds are pushing you back.

Mr. James Hanmer, an English teacher, is a wonderful example of strength. His son, Avelino, was young when he was diagnosed with cancer. The Hanmer family didn’t let that stop them, and Mr. Hanmer made something beautiful from it.

At just shy of two years old, Hanmer’s youngest son, Avelino (Nino for short) was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, malignant cancer of the eye.

Two long years passed: years of chemotherapy, shots and vomiting, of trying to also raise an older son, of trying to teach high school students, of trying to survive. It wasn’t easy on any of them, and it wasn’t easy to keep their lives running normally.

“I think that was the one time I ever lost an assignment. I lost someone’s essay, in twenty-two years

little something extra. The will to survive is what makes a person crawl out of bed and simply go through the motions of life, not really living. But strength, pure and honest life force, like that of Avelino and the Hanmers, that is what it takes to make life worth living, even if all of the odds are against you. They kept going. They keep going. They are making the most of awful situations. And that is what strength is all about.

Nino turned the page with his chubby little fingers. He waved

goodbye, saying, “Don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.” My stomach convulsed as my little

boy asked me to sing the story again. I will sing

with you forever, Nino…”

James Hanmer “Before He Melts Away”

“of teaching, I lost someone’s essay,” Hanmer said.

Then the Hanmer family was faced with the hardest decision of their lives: they could remove the eye that was killing little Avelino, or push forward with the chemotherapy, the vomiting and the shots.

They made a tough decision and removed the source of Nino’s sickness, his eye. Now, six years later, Avelino is a happy, incredibly healthy eight-year-old cancer free boy.

During the two years, though, Hanmer kept journals. He was teaching creative writing in Palo Alto, Calif., at the time. He would ask the students to write in a journal, and he would do the same.

“It’s a way for me to experience what the students experience, which to me is very important. It was natural for me to write what was happening,” he said.

It wasn’t until seven years after writing them that he gave the journals a second thought. From those journals, Hanmer created a story.

Later, his collection of journals was edited into a telling of his experience with Nino and became published in a meditation magazine, “Shambhala Sun” in January 2014. But getting published wasn’t the original reason he began the journaling so many years ago.

“It was something I found as a release,” Hanmer said.

One particular bit struck him: through everything Avelino went through, Hanmer would always read to

him the story of Frosty the Snowman. This became his inspiration to write his piece and is also the reason he titled it “Before He Melts Away.”

“It was a very poignant, very powerful, wrenching experience,” Hanmer said. “Interesting that it took me almost seven years to write it, so that should speak for itself. I couldn’t really reenter the story until [then].” It’s amazing, being a reader – just an innocent bystander – reading the story of another person’s family and really feeling something from it. We’ve become so numb to feeling things. This world we live in, full of awful happenings and occurrences, has stripped humanity of our yearning to feel. Mr. James Hanmer’s “Before He Melts Away” makes you really feel. He wrote in a way that takes the reader on his journey: the moment his life was turned upside down, the moment they found out Avelino was free of cancer, the moment the family could breathe again. Hanmer shared the story of how his family was nearly torn apart. But he also shared the story of how they were put back together again, and are stronger than ever because of it. He made something beautiful out of a darkness that would have made most people give up on everything. There is something more to just living. The Hanmers never let Nino’s cancer stop them from moving forward. And they proved that the will to survive takes a

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Lounging, laughing, playing and comforting, the Hanmer boys turned to each other to get through hard times. Now,

a cancer free family, they will lounge, laugh, play

and comfort for many years to

come.

Danielle C

rawforD features eDitor

Photos: James Hanmer

Danielle  Crawford  Papillion-­‐La  Vista  High  School