Zander's Story

Zander Cameron Smith was born on June 13, 2003, seven weeks early and facing real challenges from his very first hours. His mother and I spent those first seven weeks at his side in the NICU, around the clock, getting to know our son before we ever got to bring him home. His sister waited too — pressing her face to the glass of the NICU door until the day she could finally reach in, touch his hand, and give him a kiss. That was the start of a bond between them that only grew stronger over the next twenty years.

Zander grew up with special needs, and what we learned is that's exactly where love shows up the most. He brought his whole self to school, to his activities, to his hobbies — especially his love of science and computers — and to the friends who came to know and love him along the way. People fell for him almost on sight. His smile did that. So did his eye contact, his soft whisper, the way he'd reach out a hand. Everything about being near Zander pulled you in.

He loved horseback riding, taekwondo, Scouts, his gaming club, boating, fishing, swimming, art, and — in his last few years — magic, which he'd fallen for completely. He was a fast reader who could find almost anything online, and he was fascinated by AI. He loved Taco Bell more than any other food on earth, and Christmas more than any other day on the calendar — the moment one Christmas ended, he was already looking forward to the next. His favorite color, it turned out, was purple. He never told us himself; we found out from a friend's parents at a school dance. That was Zander — quietly building a rich inner life while the rest of us caught up.

He was generous in a way that still humbles me. When he saw the St. Jude commercials on TV, he'd turn and ask, without hesitation, "can we donate?" During one hospital stay, we brought a bag of candy kisses for his nurse, Sam. Zander was in distress, masked, on a respirator — and still, the moment he saw her, all he could manage was to point at that bag. We handed it to him, and with what little strength he had left, he pressed the call button just to get her attention, so he could hand her the candy himself and smile at her under his mask.

He was becoming a young man with real momentum — the quick thinking he learned from horseback riding and taekwondo, the independence from Scouts, the focus from his gaming group, the caring from his MyFace group. His training at BOCES had him on a path toward real, gainful work. Life was opening up for him.

Three years before we lost him, when Zander was 17, he went in for an eleven-hour spine surgery — top of his neck to his lower back. He woke from it into severe pneumonia. The surgery had also damaged his ability to swallow, and he would never eat or drink normally again. It left him vulnerable, for the rest of his life, to the kind of aspiration pneumonia that comes from that damage — a vulnerability that never should have been his to carry.

In December 2024, I came down with the flu. Zander, whose body had no defenses left to spare, caught it from me — so did his mother and his sister, Amberly. For the rest of us, it passed. For Zander, already carrying years of damage from a surgery that was supposed to help him, it didn't. He was hospitalized, and after nine days, on December 28, 2024, he couldn't fight any longer. He never got to open his Christmas presents that year — the holiday he loved best of all.