Randy Pausch, Inspirational Father and Lecturer

Cancer is all around me, and so are truly inspirational stories of those living strong. My father is a cancer survivor, so reading about other fathers' struggling with cancer hits close to home.  I have been living with the reality of his cancer for years, and it is almost something that I have just accepted. Yet when I read about father of three and Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, who died July 25 from Pancreatic Cancer, it brought up lots of emotions I have been trying to hold in check. It also made my husband curious about why I was crying while watching a YouTube video, until I told him the video was the last lecture of Randy Pausch. My prior video choices were more like the mom song...

I found Randy Pausch to be inspiring not only as a father but on demonstrating strength and being positive in the face of adversity.  I first read about his death in a New York Times blog post written by Tara Parker-Pope, but I always seem to go back to watching his famous YouTube video (viewed 4,382,149 times to date) :

My geeky side (a fan of open-source software) hopes that open-source science may someday help find cures for cancers like Pancreatic. That would be a tribute to Randy Pausch, who openly shared his inspirational lecture with communities around the world by loading it to YouTube.

Original Silicon Valley Moms Blog post. Beth Blecherman is a Co-Founder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group and has a personal blog called "Techmamas".