When Christopher Williams talked about the robotic lobsters on his co-op, “Yes,” I said, emphatically pumping my fist, ushering in laughter. I heard rumors of this robotic lobster when I visited the Marine Biology Center in Nahant. Just picture it in your mind right now. After introductions, I asked Christopher for more details and someone else asked if he ate seafood while in Nahant. He remarked that he did on occasion, but that spending his lunches on the beach was the real pleasure of his co-op.
The reflection session was less than three months before Christopher Williams passed away from Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Now I think back to the power of that light-hearted moment – completely free of the stigma of disease and fatality, free as the summer breeze on Nahant’s rocky beach. Just days after Christopher’s untimely death, Karyn Rosen – the co-op advisor of the math and physics departments – spoke at the Lawrence Awards dinner on behalf of Christopher Williams. She remarked that while Christopher Williams took interviews for co-op, he never let employers know he was suffering. What a statement: It was his will to be judged on the merit of his passion for work, not by his remarkable ability to overcome adversity.
It would be a sore understatement to say that he overcame adversity in his life. He conquered weeks of absences from class amid long stays at hospitals – and never mentioned a word of it to his employer. He represented defining qualities in a person that transcend his existence: Courage, perseverance, positivity and the unshakable desire to become greater than the sum of his parts. He did not carry a tendril of his suffering on his path to Nahant while seizing the opportunity to be free of the stigma of being a patient.
He recognized something so subtle about co-op: It lets us be a part of something greater than we are. As children, we assume a greater identity naturally, as an instrument player in an orchestra, an athlete on a team, perhaps as an actor in a play, we can all play a role in life. It is less often that we become one. As a boy, Christopher became a CF patient. As a young man, Christopher became a marine biologist. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for Christopher, and he is a person that I will not meet again in this lifetime.
Among so many other things, he was a senior biomedical physics major set to graduate this summer. I owe great thanks to Karyn Rosen for putting me in a room with Christopher and The Huntington News for spreading the word about CF. His family asks that we honor his life by making donations in his memory to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 220 N. Main St, Natick, MA 01760.
– Mathew Chamberlain is a middler physics major, cancer researcher at Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Nanomedicine Science and Technology, and a Promoting Reflection and Individual growth through Support and Mentoring mentor.
