Light of Christmas shines...
despite struggle for Foxes, O’Leksys

By Sharon Hall
The Dahlonega Nugget
Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Photo courtesy of Photograph Unique

Holiday cheer can be difficult to come by if you are facing the emotional pain of loss. Millions of people each year succumb to depression during the holiday season, especially when there has been a loss or change in a person’s life, because many of our best memories are formed around holiday celebrations. We want the familiar traditions to remain the same, and sadness creeps in when that is no longer possible.

For Therese and David Fox and their seven children, two sons-in-law and Therese’s parents, Bill and Carol O’Leksy, this Christmas will be a little different. They plan to enjoy most of the family traditions – watching their youngest in the Christmas pageant at St. Luke’s Catholic Church, attending midnight mass, and being awakened to the sounds of carols from the piano played by the Fox children while mom and dad get to stay in bed until the recital is over. But Therese won’t be doing much of the Christmas cooking – or shopping, or wrapping of presents, or setting them under the tree when they return from church on Christmas Eve. The physical drain of the inoperable cancer that was discovered in early February will keep her from accomplishing those traditional Christmas activities.

But Christmas (and Chanukah and Kwanzaa) share the common theme of finding and creating light in the darkness of the winter months. The seven candles of Kwanzaa, the Jewish menorah, the candles lit during weeks of Advent and the Christ Candle lit at the birth of the baby Jesus in Christian churches are powerful metaphors for what has happened in the lives of the Foxes and O’Leksys. They have found that light, and a powerful source of healing, in the acceptance of God’s will.

In fact, says David, “‘Thy will be done’ has become sort-of a theme.”

“For all of us,” O’Leksy adds.

Therese was diagnosed with terminal cancer Feb. 2, 2007. She was told she had only six-nine months to live.

Her first thought, she says, was how her husband would handle the news. But the revelation also brought back the memory of a near-miss head-on collision that happened in July.

“I thought I was going to die. I thought, really God? Right now? Miraculously, I survived. It gave me an appreciation, a recognition, that at any moment we could die. So, [finding out about the diagnosis] it was like, well, I’ve already been given six months. I didn’t die July 21.”

That close call had an effect on the whole family, O’Leksy says. “It reminded us that in a very real sense we are here at God’s will.”

Resting in God’s will became Therese’s signature response to her cancer early.

“I was in the hospital for the first test. I didn’t yet know my diagnosis, but we were pretty sure,” Therese says. “I saw a friend in the hospital with a T-shirt that said ‘Cancer sucks,’ – her dad had had cancer for a year-and-a-half. I thought, what a shame to walk around with such a negative message. Life gives you challenges, and it’s what you do with them. I thought, I don’t want to portray that image.”

In the mall the next day she found a T-shirt with the words, “Thy will be done” on it.

“I thought, that’s the antidote. Taking something negative and finding the good in it is how you find peace.”

There is good to be found, both Therese and her father say.

For one thing, O’Leksy says, Therese’s illness has given people in the community, and all over the world, “an opportunity to do what God has asked us to do – pray for one another.”

People who never met Therese, or any of her family, are praying for her because of a Web site set up by her friends, Amy and Andy Schmalen. Amy met Therese and David when she was a student at North Georgia College in 1990, where she was active in the Catholic group on campus, where the couple acted as liaisons between the group and St. Luke’s.

“We shared a common interest in learning more about our faith and began sharing books and tapes. You always hear that people lose their faith when they go to college. Well, I found my faith, and I owe that to the graces of God and the friends I made in Dahlonega yeas ago that I hold so dear,” Amy says.

Amy married and moved to California, but kept in touch with Therese and O’Leksys, with whom she had also become friends. She and her husband, Andy, returned to Dahlonega in 2003. When they learned of Therese’s illness, she says, “Our first reaction besides shock was, we need to do something. Andy suggested [the Web site] and ran with an inspiration on the design. Web sites are an easy way to get information out fast and to mass volumes of people. We called them to share our idea and they agreed, under the guidelines that it was just ‘beseeching prayer.’”

Totally unforeseen, EWTN Global Catholic Network picked up on the Web site and spread the word, asking for prayers of the faithful for Therese and her family.

“How cool is it not only to have our local community come together – Catholics, Methodists, Baptists – but to look through the Guest Book and see intentions from all over the world. It is a testament to the power of prayer. Most people have never had the privilege to meet Therese and her family, yet they are inspired to write a short note to let her know that they are thinking of her and praying for her. That’s Holy cool,” Amy says.

“I have felt the grace of these prayers, especially in the way the children have handled this,” Therese says.

Ironically, the day the Foxes found out about Therese’s prognosis was their youngest son, Dominic’s, sixth birthday.

“All of the family came over for the celebration, then we had Rita [their 11-year-old daughter] put Dom to bed and told the older children,” Therese says. “We told Rita the next morning, and mom and dad that weekend.”

“Things changed. It was like a kick in the gut for both of us,” O’Leksy says, speaking of himself and his wife, Carol. “But that’s when you call on faith. The first question in the catechism is ‘Why did God make you?’ And the answer is, to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him, then to be happy with Him in heaven. It all fits. You pray to know His will, and ask for His help to follow that will. But you need help to do that, and we appreciate all the help we’ve received through the prayers from this community and from around the world.”

Some of those praying for Therese and her family have also shared their problems with her, and asked for her prayers.

“I’m a very private person, and I didn’t really want the Web site, but it was something my friend wanted to do for me. I had no idea the site would become so public. But I think it happened for a reason; to show the need we all have for prayer. It has been turned out to be a blessing. God is reminding me that we are all one family, and how important prayer is for everybody,” Therese says. “It’s our opportunity to pray for them too.”

Theresa and her family even had a chance to meet one of her prayer warriors when they made a pilgrimage to Europe last summer. That trip, too, was a blessing, made possible by the generosity of good friends. Therese not only got to meet her email friend and visit places where she had spent a portion of her younger days (her father was stationed in Germany when she was a teenager), she also got to meet Pope Benedict XVI.

“We would never have gone on that trip to Germany without this happening, or gone to Rome,” O’Leksy says.

“And getting to meet the Pope, to shake his hand, wasn’t even on the radar,” Therese says.

Therese was in a wheelchair when she and her family went to the Vatican, where they toured the sites and attended the general audience of Pope Benedict XVI. The guards at the Vatican told Therese and her family that the Pope some times, but not always, personally greets those who are ill. She was placed her up front so that she would be able to get to the stage easily should that be the case.

It was the case, and Therese not only got a quick handshake, as she was instructed by the ushers to do. She held on to the Pope’s hand, kissed his ring, and made eye contact with the leader of the Catholic Church, a moment that still brings a gleam to her eyes.

Goodness has come, too, in the way Therese and her family live their everyday lives.

“We try to make and take more opportunities to make memories. We all fall into that hurry, hurry, there’s so much to do thing. When there’s only so much time, you take the time to do the things that count,” Therese says.

“We’re piling up some really good memories,” O’Leksy says.

It’s a lesson the Schmalens have also taken to heart.

“It’s strengthened our relationship as a couple. Andy and I are more in-tine to have ‘date nights,’ where we spend time with each other and not to take each other for granted – which is easy to do in the day-to-day grind of daily family life,” Amy says. “Most people do not expect to die soon – they expect to die at a ripe old age. What Therese’s diagnosis has done is allow us to put things into perspective. Make up with that family member, don’t hold grudges, treat others truly as you want to be treated, and most of all, treat this Christmas like it is your last, because it might just be.”

How Therese and her family have managed to come to terms with a terminal illness and remain positive has been an inspiration for others, O’Leksy says, and that, too, has been a good thing.

“I’ve met many people in Dahlonega over the 20 years I’ve been here. And many have told me that Therese and her family have been an inspiration to them. I’m not talking about people I’ve met in church, but in other venues.”

The O’Leksys’ friend Mary Owens couldn’t agree more. “Therese and David and the O’Leksys have been an inspiration to a lot of people, and I’m one of them,” Owens says. “It also, I think, gives you a sense of feeling connected to someone else in their struggles. It touches the empathy is each of us because we could be where this family is, it could happen to any of us. It’s a beautiful thing, how this community has wanted to be spiritually and emotionally supportive.”

“I could read the Bible or a million books from different religious authors and saints, but having a front row seat to this has humbled me,” Amy says. “It really is like Jesus on His way to Calvary. When I see Therese and she is carrying her cross with a smile on her face, it is very edifying,” Amy says. “And it is not just a witness of how Therese is handing her diagnosis, but seeing David and the kids. How do you handle watching your spouse or mother die? There is a beauty in suffering, and I am seeing it, and it is very humbling.”

Within her church, says Fr. Bob Frederick, Therese is “teaching us how to walk with faith. Through it all she has been unbelievable – a rock of faith. If you want to complain about something, all you have to do is look at the cross she is bearing and how she is handling it, and it makes you want to press on.”

One of the things that struck the priest the most, he says, is the “Thy will be done” T-shirt Therese found at the mall at the beginning of her illness and that she often wears.

“She has such a great attitude of surrender. You know, we pray in the Our Father all the time for His will to be done, but it’s easy to pray that when it doesn’t cost us anything. It’s when His will is difficult that it is hard to accept. We are all praying for a miracle, but Therese has surrendered to God’s will, whether it is convenient or not. Her faith has been an inspiration.”

“This whole thing has been an opportunity to strengthen our faith and belief that we should submit, and should want to submit to the will of God,” O’Leksy says. “We know what is asked of us. We just have to trust in His will, that it is the best for us, and if we do, there’s no room for despair or crying in your beer.”

It is through God’s grace that Therese has been able to accept her lot, and it is the prayers of so many that have afforded her the measure of grace she has received, she says.

“I’ve really felt the prayers and support, both through hearing from people and just through the grace I’ve received,” she says. “I believe God gives us grace to bear the crosses we have in life, but we have to ask for it. I have felt the community asking for that grace for me and my family. The outpouring of prayer support – it’s huge. Not everybody gets that. I feel almost guilty some times. There are a lot of people in need of prayer with heavy crosses to bear out there.”

Therese says the manner of her death has been “a huge blessing. It won’t be a messy, bloody death like it could have been July 21. I’ve had time to say goodbye – we’ve been doing that for a year. It’s a slow, loving, supportive death.”

And when the time comes, Therese says, she has no doubt God’s grace will be sufficient to see her family through. But for now, the Foxes and O’Leksys plan to make the most of the time they have together, continue to pray for a miracle, and celebrate the light of the Christmas season each and every day, resting in the will of God.