Young Cancer patient gets rare opportunity to meet Dalai Lama
17-year-old Cancer patient gets rare opportunity to meet Dalai Lama
By PEGGY TOWNSEND
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
Two days before he was to meet the Dalai Lama, 17-year-old Greg Melendy of Soquel lay in a bed at Dominican Hospital.
His immune system had crashed because of the drugs he took to stop a cancer that had roared into his body like some evil space invader.
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is what it was called.
Because he had no immunity, an infection had settled inside of Melendy. He was running a fever. Everyone wondered if the boy who had bought a grand piano for his high school choir as his Make-a-Wish gift would make it to the meeting that had been arranged by the Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition in Watsonville.
Everyone except Melendy.
“I cared so much about seeing the Dalai Lama, that I said: If it comes down to it, and they tell me I can’t leave, I will walk out of the hospital,” says Melendy, sitting under a knit afghan at his Soquel home, a watch cap on his head to ward off the chill.
He would have hitchhiked, he says.
But his immune system began to rebuild itself, tripling, then quadrupling in a recovery that was remarkable even with the drugs he had been given to combat its decline.
Last Sunday, he, his mom and girlfriend, along with Lori Butterworth and Devon Dabbs of the Children’s Hospice program, were able to drive to Palo Alto to meet the man who had come to talk to Stanford University professors and hand out awards, but had made time for Melendy with a coveted private audience.
Melendy wondered what he would say to a man considered to be one of the holiest people on earth.
He had questions about life and about death. Questions about whether it would be possible to leave one’s fragile earthly body and become part of everything around you. Questions about compassion and his idea of being able to help other kids with cancer.
He knew there would not be enough time to get answers for all of them.
The Dalai Lama stood at the end of a hallway at his hotel in Palo Alto and waited for Melendy to come forward.
Melendy wore a suit coat and a yellow kata — a silken scarf that had been given to him by the lamas at the Land of Medicine Buddha Monastery in Soquel. It represented a human’s imperfections, they told him. He was to give it to the Dalai Lama to bless.
The Dalai Lama wore a red robe.
When Melendy saw the man who has met kings and presidents, he stopped and the Dalai Lama had to motion for Melendy to come forward.
“I could feel his energy and my energy,” Melendy says.
Melendy had thought a lot about the Dalai Lama and how he had given his whole life to loving people even if they had acted badly toward him; even if they had persecuted him.
So he came up to the Tibetan Buddhist leader and put his hands on the lama’s shoulders.
“I love you,” Melendy told the holy man.
The Dalai Lama looked into Melendy’s eyes.
He laughed.
Then he took Melendy’s hand and led him into the room.
They talked for 20 minutes.
For details about the work of the children’s hospice visit www.childrenshospice.org or call 763-3070.
Contact Peggy Townsend at ptownsend@santacruzsentinel.com.