A celebration of the life of Julie Miles of Walnut Creek, who died Jan. 6, will be held Sunday at the Pleasant Hill Recreation Center.

Looking back on the life of the 41-year-old will be bittersweet. She left a husband, two daughters, ages 8 and 11, and a multitude of friends and family. But she also left an incredible lesson about facing death while living life to the fullest.

Miles, who was 36 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, had “everything in place” for a good, long life. 

She graduated from UC Berkeley, traveled around Europe, honeymooned in Africa and did volunteer work there with Terry, her husband and the love of her life. She was happily married with two young daughters, says her friend Laura Halpin. She taught middle and high school in Danville for several years. She also gardened, worked out regularly and competed in triathlons. 

Miles helped to start the popular nonprofit Creek Kids Care with Halpin and Catherine Freemire — a program in which local school kids create art that is sold to raise money for people who are homeless.

It can’t be that bad

Finding a cancerous lump in her right breast was devastating, but Miles had an optimistic disposition and a thoughtful, organized way of looking at any problem and breaking it down into manageable parts. 

Miles had surgery, underwent chemotherapy and radiation and waited for good news from her doctors. But it didn't come for the Pleasant Hill native. The cancer spread  and in two years Miles was diagnosed with terminal Stage IV cancer. It seemed that every time she received news about her cancer, “It was always worse than we thought,” Halpin said. 

By January 2009, the cancer had spread throughout Miles’ body. Always a writer, she started to write about her cancer. She said in one of the first entries in her online journal at the website CaringBridge.com in early 2009: “I have to admit that the constant debilitating pain has worn me down. It’s difficult to see clear of anything amidst all this pain.”

Coming to terms 

Somehow, though, Miles did see something clearly — how to live even as she was dying. 

“Some people have asked how I cope with living with cancer,” she wrote in June 2009. “The short answer is that it’s not easy.”

Miles described sadness at not being able to work out or drive her children to school.

“There’s no doubt that this year has been the most difficult of my life,” she wrote. “When I think about it too much, my mind tells me how dramatically my life has changed since last fall.”

But as Halpin said, Miles could put aside the “what ifs” and focus on what she could do or enjoy. “I still see the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, casting the same beautiful light around our home,” she wrote.

Miles said that “this kind of noticing caught my attention when I came across the words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus." She quoted him: ‘We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens.”

This concept seemed basic but "slippery" to Miles: “However, I think it encapsulates exactly how I’ve been able to cope so well.” 

Friendship and Creek Kids Care

Halpin, also of Walnut Creek, became friends with Miles in 1993 when both were teachers at Charlotte Wood Middle School in Danville. Halpin taught seventh grade core and English, and Miles taught eighth-grade history, English and leadership. Miles also taught at San Ramon Valley High School. 

“Teaching was a perfect profession for Julie,” Halpin said. “It provided avenues for her love of the written word, cultural studies and especially her gift with teenagers. … Her students loved and trusted her. She provided them with a bridge to their inner worlds as well as the world around them.” 

The two women bonded over motherhood. Miles' daughters are 11 and 8. “Her oldest daughter is two days older than my youngest,” Halpin said. The two families became good friends.

It was Halpin's idea to start Creek Kids Care, and Miles had the organizational skills to put the idea into action with Catherine Freemire. The three women wanted to teach kids in the community about public service. So they held art worskshops at which kids painted note cards and knitted scarves, selling their work to raise money for Walnut Creek-based Fresh Start respite center for people who are homeless. Creek Kids Care also raises money for a project close to Miles’ heart: the JF Kapnek Charitable Trust, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children in Zimbabwe.  

Miles' respite 

From the summer of 2009 through the summer of 2010, Miles experienced what she called "a peri-remission." She returned to her favorite step class at Walnut Creek Sports and Fitness, participated in a triathlon and went ziplining on a family vacation to Kauai. She started a regimen of alternative therapies and shaped up her diet even more. 

Seeing her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, fly off to the United Kingdom last June for a three-week trip as a student ambassador for an organization called People to People filled Miles with pride. But it also made her think about not seeing her children grow up. In one of her rare entries about her children, Miles wrote: “My convictions about this role as a mother have been crystallized over the past four years as I’ve battled cancer. There may very well come a time when my children will have to make their way in the world without their mother." 

She seemed to come to terms last summer with the fact that cancer was her constant companion. “I don’t see it as any more treacherous than anything else that brings people down … In my mind, everyone has a cross to bear. … I can go from feeling pretty well one day to not being able to walk the next. The associated pain doesn’t follow predictable patterns. Answers uncovered at one doctor’s visit beg questions for another. My own family has a hard time keeping up with my medical condition.” 

Setback 

Soon after Miles wrote this entry, she noticed bumps on her head. An MRI of her brain showed an enlarged pituitary gland.

“Let me reassure you that I wasn’t always this in-control about it,” Miles confessed. “In fact, two days after the neurosurgeon and a UCSF oncologist confirmed it was most likely a metastasis, I lay down on my bed and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe.” 

After learning that the mass was cancerous and that cancer cells had invaded her spinal fluid, Miles wrote about her love and gratitude for her mother, Fran Sherwood, husband and daughters, Sarah and Gwendolyn, “who have been at the very center of the vortex with me and God do I wish it weren’t so.” 

But at the same time, she wrote, “They have been my absolute comfort in all ways, and I wouldn’t be sitting here today had it not been for my drive to get back to them as fully as possible as the wife, daughter and mother that they know. They are the very definition of comfort to me."

“Something beautiful” 

In early November, Miles struggled with the idea of ending treatment.

“It was a night like so many Terry and I have spent together over the last few months; midnight with me crying in pain, him trying to soothe me by stroking my forehead and taking slow deep breaths with me," she wrote. "Through my tears, I asked him if he would ever let me quit this agony, this world. He paused for a minute and said softly, ‘I don’t think you’d ever let yourself quit.’ ”

She vowed that when she decided she had enough treatment, she wouldn’t be quitting: “I’ll be carefully choosing to move on to something beautiful."

The decision to stop treatment brought Miles a newfound sense of calm and the chance to plan her death, as Halpin wrote on her friend's behalf.

Peace at the end

Acknowledging that she was dying made a huge difference to Miles and all who knew and loved her, according to Halpin. Miles set the tone for how she wanted to die, calling upon her friends to keep one another informed about how she was doing and accepting their offers to help mother her children. “It gave her a lot of peace that we would be there,” Halpin said.

Miles wrote letters in those last three months to family, recorded her voice, arranged her photos. She also took her girls on a picnic to Oakmont Memorial Park in Pleasant Hill, where she would be interred near her father. She wanted to demystify what was happening to her. 

On Jan. 6, at 5:56 a.m., she took her last breath, with Terry at her side. She was 41.

Death — the last sleep? No the final awakening.
— Sir Walter Scott 

This quote closed one of the hundreds of posts on the Caring Bridge website page that went up after Miles' death. Her page has received more than 12,000 visitors.

“So many people were healed by how she dealt with her own suffering," Halpin said.

A celebration of Miles' life will take place at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Pleasant Hill Community Center at 320 Civic Drive, Pleasant Hill. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to The Miles Family Fund to be used for her daughters’ college education. Send to Wells Fargo, in care of  Deborah Upshaw,, 1499 N. Main St., Walnut Creek 94596.