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Letter to the editor

A fulfilling life despite her cancer

By STEPHANIE HAYES, Times Staff Writer
Published January 13, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT Photo gallery Kimberly Greene, 1981-2008 [Greene family photo] Kimberly Greene was a junior at Countryside when she started to feel tired. It was cancer. But in the next eight years, she married the boy who made her laugh and gave birth to a son. [Jack Rowland | Times (2000)] As a high school senior at Countryside, Kimberly Greene was focusing on getting her life back on track after a bout with leukemia.

CLEARWATER - She had silky auburn hair, a flair for fashion, a half-moon smile. She had unblemished skin the color of milk.

People compared her to a porcelain doll, not knowing how fragile her life actually was.

Kimberly Zareczny was 17, a junior with good grades at Countryside High. She had just taken her SAT. She dreamed of one day being a wife and mother.

She got sick for three days. A sore throat and a fever that turned out to be much more.

Leukemia.

She spent the summer going through chemotherapy. Kids at school made her a big banner and put balloons in her yard. Sometimes, people acted strange around her. They'd gawk or ask if her wig was her real hair.

She didn't want pity. "Can't I just be Kim, and not Kim with cancer?" she'd ask.

Senior year, she took classes at home and went to school for one period a day. In 2000, she graduated with her class.

She went to prom. Her parents, Tom and Nancy Zareczny, bought her an expensive brown wig. She clipped butterflies behind the bangs and painted her lips the color of ice. She wore a black strapless dress.

Reluctantly, her parents let her get a hotel room with friends for the after party.

They were letting go.

* * *

In an eight-year window of remission, she did a lot of living.

She went to college. She met a tall, dark-haired boy named Bryan Greene who made her laugh. She liked him right away. But so did one of her friends.

"You get your high heels on, and you walk right up that girl's back, and you get him," said her mother, Nancy Zareczny.

She did. In a white halter dress with a ballroom skirt at a Presbyterian church, Kimberly Zareczny became Mrs. Kimberly Greene.

Finally, she was a wife.

There was a sobering reality. Chemotherapy had wreaked havoc on her body, and she knew she might never have babies. But she still had to try.

Against all odds, she got pregnant instantly. Tyler Greene was born on April Fools' Day.

"Joke's on who?" she asked.

Finally, she was a mother.

* * *

She was 25 when she started to feel sick again. When the same doctor called. When he said the same cancer came back.

Mature matters suddenly swirled around her. Power of attorney. Living will. Donor. Bone marrow transplant.

She wanted to look bright. She wore bold head scarves and multicolored wigs - purple, pink, lime green, fuschia, black, red. Once, when a hot orange wig drew whispers, she pointed to her head and said, "Bad batch of chemo."

She had a bone marrow transplant in September. She moved into an apartment near Moffitt Cancer Center with her mother. She needed a controlled environment to avoid infection.

They wore matching pajamas and watched Judge Judy. They planned the business they hoped to start - a bakery called Mommy and Me. On every cake, they'd hide the letter "M."

Steroids had changed her size 2 body to 170 pounds. But Mrs. Greene loved the weight - before, people always said she was too skinny.

At 2 a.m., Mrs. Green and her mother would make towering ice cream sundaes with layers of cookies, potato chips and pasta, just to see how much they could eat.

On Dec. 30, Mrs. Greene's birthday, she went home to watch Tyler open his Christmas gifts and have cake.

She was in tremendous pain, but she made jokes about it. She knew she didn't have long, her mother said.

She kept preparing everyone, leaving little notes, making comments.

She reflected.

"I got through the first cancer so I could find Bryan and show him what love is and give him Tyler," she told her mother.

Mrs. Greene developed an infection. On Jan. 5, she died. She was 26.

* * *

Tyler Greene is almost 3. He grasps bits and pieces of what's happened, but he's just a toddler.

He looks like his daddy and has boundless little boy energy. He bounces from couch to couch and sometimes settles down to look at books.

He is fascinated by the moon.

Once, Tom Zareczny sat with Tyler at the computer to look at pictures of the moon online. A photo of a moonlit city building came up on the screen. To Tyler, it looked like the hospital.

He pointed at it.

"Mommy."

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or 727 893-8857.

BIOGRAPHY

Kimberly Greene

Born: Dec. 30, 1981

Died: Jan. 5, 2008

Survivors: husband, Bryan; son, Tyler; parents, Tom and Nancy Zareczny; brother Andrew; grandmother, Elizabeth Zareczny; grandfather, Jerry Maurer; aunts, uncles, cousins.

Services: 10:30 a.m., Saturday at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 705 Michigan Blvd., Dunedin

[Last modified January 12, 2008, 22:09:41]