'Last Lecture' widow rebuilds out of limelight

CHESAPEAKE

You may have seen her on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Or in People magazine. Or maybe with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America."

The quick smile, the short-cropped hair, the crystal blue eyes - often cast at her husband.

But many people here in Hampton Roads probably have walked past Jai Pausch in the grocery store or school parking lot and not known who she is.

She prefers it that way.

Jai, 43, keeps a low profile locally as she rebuilds her life after her husband, Randy, died of pancreatic cancer in July 2008.

He was the one who loved the limelight.

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor, became an Internet sensation after posting his final lecture at the Pittsburgh university on YouTube. The lecture featured his childhood dreams and life lessons, and revealed to his students he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

"The Last Lecture" went viral on the Internet, leading to scores of interviews with national publications: the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Parade magazine, to name a few. He followed that by writing a best-selling book - "The Last Lecture" - with Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey Zaslow.

Jai would have traded that fame in a second for a healthy husband and an ordinary life.

Sometimes you don't get to choose.

The couple had moved with their three children from Pittsburgh to Chesapeake shortly before he gave the lecture in September 2007. They wanted to be nearer Jai's parents and other relatives. Tumors had beaten Randy's year-long cancer treatment, and he had months to live.

Jai was against the idea of his return to Pittsburgh for the lecture at first, telling him she wanted all of him for herself and their children, ages 5, 2 and 1 at the time.

Part of his return, though, was driven by his inner showman. "An injured lion still wants to roar," he told her. He also wanted to create something for his children to remember him by, to put himself in a bottle they could keep until they were old enough to understand.

Less than a year after the lecture, the computer science professor died at age 47 in Chesapeake, where Jai and the children still live.

"I feel like I am healing, and that's a good thing." Jai says. "It gives me the strength to say, 'What am I going to do with myself.' The dream that I had built with Randy is shattered. I have to pick up the pieces and rebuild a window."

She sits in a Starbucks, where she has agreed to meet for an interview. National media is one thing, but locally, she protects her privacy and that of her children. She doesn't want her children or home photographed.

"People have been very, very nice, very discreet," she says.

They stop and tell her how much the book meant to them, as her children tug on her hands.

When her husband was alive, everyone recognized him in the local oncology ward, but not so much when they went out. In Barnes & Noble, his books would be flying off the shelves, yet people would walk by him without noticing who he was.

That privacy has given Jai (pronounced Jay) space to heal in the time since his death.

For months, she would watch the videotaped lecture, the recorded TV interviews, every night, just to see his face, to hear his voice.

She'd have recurring dreams of driving Randy to treatment, trying to save him, never quite getting there in time.

"Grief is like a huge, wet blanket on top of you; it can be suffocating. It colors so much of life. Just like love can color your life, so can grief. It's so constricting. For a time, I had a huge knot in my chest. I felt like I was on the verge of tears all the time."

Added to the grief was the task of being a single parent. Even at his sickest, Randy was her sounding board, the one who told her everything was going to be OK. Now she was alone.

But life has improved with time and grief counseling, with friends and family helping to raise Dylan, 7; Logan, 5; and Chloe, 3.

Jai no longer watches Randy every night. She's reconnected with friends from Great Bridge High School, where she spent 10th grade, and made new ones. She's gotten past the first-year milestones.

Valentine's Day, for instance, when Randy always bought her a dozen roses. Her brother bought them this year, and gave them to her children to give to her.

Her children are doing well. Dylan will occasionally ask her to read chapters of "The Last Lecture" to him. Her husband wrote letters for each of them, lists of his memories of their time together.

Some day, when they're ready, Jai will pass those along.

She's also continuing her husband's fight for pancreatic cancer research.

In March 2008, Randy testified before a U.S. House appropriations subcommittee on behalf of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. He'd just gotten out of the hospital with complications from chemotherapy, and was so sick he had to lie in the back seat on the drive to Washington.

Jai works for the cause from a different perspective - that of caregiver. She remembers sitting for hours in waiting rooms, both at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and at Virginia Oncology Associates in Norfolk, waiting for her husband to undergo another test, another treatment.

Volunteers would bring her sandwiches, say a kind word. She won't forget that.

So she has granted interviews with the national media, and appeared last year at a fundraiser of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network in Los Angeles. That's where she met Roger Magowitz, president and CEO of Mattress Discounters. He lives in Virginia Beach, but spends four months in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he organizes the Seena Magowitz Celebrity Golf Classic. The fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research was named after his mother, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2001. Jai will be honorary chair of the function on Dec. 5.

"For me, it's a distraction, and it keeps me in touch with Randy. I do not want to let him go. This is a way for me to hold on to him and his memory."

When Randy first suggested traveling to Pittsburgh to do The Last Lecture, she asked why he couldn't just put up a video camera in the living room and record himself for his children.

She now sees the providence of his hour behind the podium.

"You face a problem and make the best of it, instead of locking yourself in the bathroom and crying."

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com