Tributes to David

David Schneider moved many in his young life

The Toronto Star, Tuesday, June 23, 1998

Young David Gregory Schneider fought a giant battle - and nearly won. The 11-year-old Oshawa boy, who loved to draw and act, died Saturday, just one year after his cancer's last remission date.

His family and friends cried when asked to remember how David touched their lives. "He was enchanting, he was endearing, and anyone who came to know him, came away a changed and better person," said Janet Gammon, a nurse co-ordinator at the Hospital for Sick Children.

The St. Christopher Catholic School student died at Oshawa General Hospital, after being admitted with breathing problems. He suffered from non-Hodgkin's large-cell lymphoma.

David was devoted to the two cats that he and his 13-year-old sister Mary raised for four years. "Butterscotch used to sleep on David's head when he was first diagnosed. I guess he was protecting him," said the boy's father, Michael Schneider. "Now he's all out of sorts. He keeps on going around, puts his paw up on the dinner table and just looks at us. He can't find David."

Schneider plans to finish the Internet Web site that he and his son were building together. "His voice is recorded in the introduction, and there are lots of pictures of his cats," Schneider said. "He never believed that he was going to die. He began to understand it more and more, but he always wanted to try new things to cure himself." David was featured in The Star ( see article ) last April when he acted the part of the blanket-toting Linus in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. It was his dream to act but he soon became too ill to carry on, his father said. Schneider and his wife Joyce both work in the drama department at [the local Catholic High School] in Oshawa. "He was born on Remembrance Day - I'll never forget it," Schneider said. "I was being evaluated by the superintendent to see if I was a good teacher" he recalled. "When I found out my wife was in labour, all the kids cheered because they could leave class early."

Good humour was David's trademark, even when he was in pain, his father said. "He thanked the priest who came to see him on Saturday. Even when the hospital did a test that hurt him, he said thank you," Schneider said. "He fought so hard. But on Saturday, he said

'This is too much,' and then he looked at my wife and he passed away." David used to comfort his friends in the cancer ward at the Hospital for Sick Children, hours before they died. "He was way beyond his 11 years of age, and had wisdom and insight and courage that takes a lifetime for others to achieve," Gammon said.

In the 20 months of his illness, David endured eight chemotherapy regimens, and had just begun another. "He tried stuff that no other kid at Sick Kids had done before," Schneider said. David, a talented cartoonist, was sent to Disney's cartoon studios recently by the Children's Wish Foundation.

One of David's last drawings, "A Nurse's Nightmare," hangs in his old ward at the Hospital for Sick Children. "It's such an amazing picture," said Schneider, trailing off into sobs. "That's how he'd like to be remembered, I guess." David's funeral will be held 10 a.m. Friday at St. Gregory the Great Church, 194 Simcoe St. N., Oshawa.

Your Earth Syndicated Column - Friday, June 26th, 1998 by Suzanne Elston

"Who was that boy, Arthur?" "Nothing. Nothing but a drop in the bright blue sea. But by God, some of those drops sparkle." T.H. White, The Once and Future King

David is gone.

Anyone who reads this column regularly might recall David. He was my courageous young friend who had been fighting against the ravages of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for the last two years. Sadly, he lost his battle Saturday night. I was talking with his mother late Saturday afternoon and David was resting after his latest round of chemotherapy at Sick Kids. He'd lost a tooth the night before, a perverse reminder of the adulthood he wouldn't live to see. His mother was concerned that the bleeding wouldn't stop and she wondered out loud if they should take him to our local emergency room to have his gum packed. Suddenly, she had to go. David was in distress. She'd call later. When she did, I wasn't prepared for what she had to tell me. The tumors on David's liver had begun pressing against his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe. He died within hours of being taken to emergency. He was 11 years-old. If there is a perfect time for a child to leave this world, then David chose it: the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, filled with hope and new life. He died before the sun went down, in that eternal twilight that is endless summer. We should all have as much style and grace as that little boy possessed in his short but magnificent life. My own children had known David since he was born, and so for them, acknowledging his death has been their first experience at coming to terms with their own mortality. They cried, they railed at the Universe and then they played, late into the night. They danced on our lawn until midnight, always watchful of the night sky, looking for the Star of David. In the very second between his last breath of life and his death, all that was David ceased to be. His form, his mass, remained constant, and yet there was a flickering of a candle and he was gone. Perhaps this is David's last gift to me. Everyday our lives hang by a tenuous, gossamer thread that is only ever a heartbeat away from non-existence, but most of the time we motor along, totally unconscious of how truly fragile life is. One breath and it's gone. Now, thanks to David, every breath is precious. In the days since his death, I have wandered around looking at life in absolute amazement. We are, for all we know, the only living beings in the entire Universe, and yet we are made of exactly the same stuff as the stars. The elements that fuel the sun and make up the cosmos are also what make up our personal shrines. That we alone have been given the gift of consciousness is both a blessing and a curse. A rock will never know the joy of holding a newborn baby. It will also never experience the pain of losing someone like David. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart, The secret anniversaries of the heart." This week I have vowed to remember that we alone are the custodians, the record keepers. We alone have the gift of remembrance - the ability to record and commemorate. "But there is never enough time to commemorate what we cherish, unless we pause to observe, when they occur, the holiest of all holidays," wrote Sarah Ban Breathnach. Today we bury David. His funeral, I am quite sure, will be a holy celebration of life, and joy and great pain. It will be a declaration of that consciousness that separates us from the rest of the Universe and a celebration of the gossamer thread that binds us all together. "I am a part of all that I have and that has touched me," wrote Thomas Wolfe. David touched me and I am a better person for it.

Anyone wishing to remember David is invited to make a donation to the David Schneider Memorial Fund, c/o Paul Dwyer Catholic High School, 700 Stevenson Road North, Oshawa, L1J 5P5 or The Hospital for Sick Children, Oncology Department of New Agents and Innovative Therapies, 555 University Avenue, Toronto M5G 1X8.

Eulogies

Homily for David Gregory Schneider:

This day is very special for all of us gathered here…. We feel drawn together by a special power…. A power that unites us a family. And that power – which draws us close to each other – is the gift of love….The love of God for David and our love of David… love has been for all times and all seasons the gift which has enriched our lives…. Without love, there would be no life…. Without love, there could be no family, no children, no happiness. Were it not for Jesus’ total love… there would be no hope of eternal life. Love remains always a presence, a gentle and powerful presence that heals, affirms, strengthens, understands, accepts. Sometimes love speaks…. Sometimes love prefers to remain a silent witness. This morning that love speaks to our hearts… if we listen to the gentle voice of that love, we hear it speak to us…. ‘Let the children come to me and do not hinder them… it is to just such as these that the kingdom of God belongs!’ These are the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples as he tried to teach them the simplicity of heart they needed to understand the mystery of the kingdom…. Of God’s total love. These are the words Jesus addresses to Michael, Joyce and Mary, ‘let David come to me’….. and knowing their faith, they lovingly open their arms and let David into Jesus’ warm embrace….. Our love for David is still very much alive…. You can feel it deep down inside as we all remember how much David meant to us…. How much he enriched our lives…. Permit me a few personal remembrances of a boy I would be proud to call my son…… I remember a young man who was ‘all boy’ but never afraid to give or receive a hug…. And how I treasure them…. I remember a young man who loved all of God’s creation, especially his favorite cat Butterscotch…. I remember a boy who prayed one night, with his mom and dad and sister who spoke to Jesus….’Please don’t feel bad if you can’t answer our prayers…. So many people are asking you for something’…. I remember a young boy who was not afraid to tell his sister how much he loved her… to love is to remember… we might honestly ask the question this morning: Why Lord did David die so young?…… yet on the other hand… is the length of one’s life more important than the quality of one’s life? Would we love David any more if he were 29 or 79 years old? Could we have loved David any more than we already have? Do we not still love David at this moment as his love abides within us… and around us… and among us? David has now gone before us… into the kingdom… where some day we shall also be…. I could not stand at this pulpit this morning if I did not believe with all my heart and intellect that David Gregory Schneider is more fully alive than ever before….. God does not spare believers any of the pain that our world confronts us with… whether it be sickness, heartbreak, whatever… his son Jesus confronted the very same joys and sorrows that we do. What our faith assures us however… is that when everything fails, he still remains close to us, suffering with us and when the time comes he is there to embrace us and take us home, where in the beautiful words of the mass, ‘he will wipe away every tear and we shall become like him’…. Little David believed this with all his heart, that is why he is at peace this morning…. Yes, he lives on because we believe that love can never die. Michael recognized that love as Joyce held David in her arms for the last time, as Mary held her son Jesus in the ‘pieta’. I would be remiss in not taking a moment to thank the many care givers at Sick Children’s Hospital… for their dedication and loving care given to David’s and so many others. Let us pray for them and encourage them to use their God-given talents in bringing healing to others.

Jesus’ disciples recognized him in the breaking of the bread on the road to Emmaus. He is with us now in this Eucharist and will bring healing to all our lives… because David is now among the blessed, the holy ones, I close with a prayer not for him but to him…. A prayer for all of us…. ‘David, you will not be a child in our midst any more…. But you will now be young forever…. You will not grow up with your sister and wonderful mom and dad… but you will pray for them – your spirit will touch their lives… and one day you will welcome them…. Your life is now hidden from us… hidden with God… your life is what all the saints, all the mystics, the great thinkers and theolgians, and Jesus himself called joy! Eternal life and joy…. God bless you David… God bless you all!

Rev. Brad Massman - Church of St. Gregory the Great - Friday, June 26th, 1998

Michael’s address at David’s funeral

As I was walking the other morning thinking about the events of these past weeks, my shoe laces kept on coming un-done, a clear reminder of David who used to get so annoyed with me as I constantly bugged him to tie his shoes. It led me on a train of thought how the term we use "at rest" cannot apply to David. Yes his body is at rest and it is that we bury today… but his spirit, which existed with God before his birth and has now returned to the creative fold, is more active and busy than ever. The analogy the struck me is that of David being the yeast in my life…. Being active, making me spiritually grow, expand and rise. And even though I will be beaten down and kneaded into place from time to time, no more suitable way can I have to honour my son than to allow David to continue to work in me...

Joyce’s address at David’s funeral:

Over the past week, as the community has gathered around David and us, I have had the joy of listening to so many of you speak of David. In the course of conversation, I seemed to hear one word spoken over and over; the word inspire.

"David inspired me," said his oncologist.

"David was an inspiration," said his Uncle Dan, and so many, many others who knew him.

To inspire means literally to breathe in. To be inspired, then, must mean to be breathed in.

Last Saturday, David found it too difficult to breathe inside his body. His spirit, always so ancient and wise and large, needed more breathing space. And from the moment he breathed his last, I have felt his sustaining breath inspiring me.

And so, if you would remember David, know that his spiritual energy is now so available to all of us, and simply breathe him in. He is now pure spirit, more powerful than ever before, one with God the Source in the Universe where, with our every breath, he can continue to inspire us all.

David's Clinical History

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David's Monument