Blogger Leroy Sievers Succombs to His Cancer

I was listening to ABC's "This Week" and learned that Leroy Sievers passed away. Sievers worked for ABC News for many years, and in the past 4 years, he had a blog for NPR entitled "My Cancer."

Here's the statement from the blog yesterday:

Dear friends:

I'm so sorry to bring you this news. Leroy passed away last night. It happened very quickly.

You will hear from Laurie later. In the meantime, please let me tell you something all of you already know, how much this blog and all your comments have meant to Leroy. He felt all the affection and good wishes and strength you sent him every day. He told us that of the many things he had accomplished, he was proudest of My Cancer. The connection he felt with all of you made such a difference in his life.

--Maeve McGoran

Many of you probably remember that Elizabeth Edwards and Leroy appeared with Ted Koppel twice: last year on the Discovery Channel, and about a month ago on NPR, when they were both looking at their lives over the past year. As I expected, Elizabeth Edwards posted a comment on My Cancer last night:

Leroy has died. That great big man with a voice that could curl itself around you like fingers and comfort you is gone. Our blessing is that we felt that comfort. Our pain is for those like Laurie closest to him and for Leroy himself, who had so much more life in him than he was allowed. We put aside our private pains today, and we think about the gift that he was, and the gift that he will continue to be. I for one will always hear the timber in his voice as the soothing promise that we can face whatever comes if we remind ourselves not to be so afraid that it falls short of perfect.
In my last short words to him, I read the lyrics to something Leonard Cohen wrote, something someone sent to me when I discovered my cancer had never left.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

To the light that was and is Leroy.

Sent by Elizabeth Edwards | 6:29 PM ET | 08-16-2008

My thoughts and prayers go to the Sievers family for their loss, and my heart is with Elizabeth Edwards.