Nicole Xylouri Osborne

Maybe a couple of you have met my former student Nicole, who came with us to the Recovery on Water fundraiser a couple of years ago. Nicole studied fiction writing at Northwestern and then left Chicago to get a master's in education at U Penn, then returned to work in administration at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
She got in touch when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I decorated her head when she was bald the first time. My mother visited her when she came to M.D. Anderson in Houston. (Her own mother embarrassed her, she said, by accosting young doctors who weren't wearing wedding rings in the hospital elevator and introducing them to Nicole, who invariably was wearing a hospital gown, ) Recently Nicole was on the comedy circuit: Breast cancer patient Nicole Osborne turns illness into punchline
A mutual friend just told me that Nicole died two days ago.

Now is the point where I should say something about lifting a pint and saying something or other. The best I can do: In her honor, tell a joke, a joke with a hard edge, one that acknowledges death peeking around the corner, but makes you laugh nevertheless. .