I nervously sat awaiting a video conference call to begin with a gentleman I’ve never met – Paul Carroll. At this point, I’ve been through many, many interviews during the application process, and I have the feeling that *this* call could mean I’ve been accepted to join the select group of individuals on an adventure to Peru.

The video blips on and Paul Carroll is warm and has the best Irish accent (which I wasn’t expecting)! We make small talk, and he beamed through the live video at me. It was incredibly contagious – I beamed back.

At the time of the call I had very limited knowledge of who Melissa Carroll had been. I knew Melissa was Paul’s daughter, and that she had traveled to India with the first AFC group. And I knew she had died of her disease. I also knew the Carrolls (Paul and his wife Cecilia) were offering scholarships in Melissa’s name to assist individuals to pay for the Program Fees required to take part in A Fresh Chapter.

Paul Carroll gleefully tells me that I’ve been accepted into the next AFC tribe and that I am going to Peru this November. He says that they have chosen me for a Melissa Carroll Legacy Scholarship because he’s sure that I’m ‘going to do great things’.

I cry.

This has been one of the most emotional processes I’ve allowed myself to venture into in years. I tend to hold in the emotions of cancer. I tell myself that everything is ‘fine’ and that everyone has challenges. I diminish. I move forward. I don’t dwell. I don’t think too much. But something changed when I learned about the opportunities that AFC provides. I think I have cried in every single interview along the way. Not for self-pity, but for the possibility I can see in this experience. For the gratitude I feel in the release of this immeasurable burden.

Paul also cries. Wanda (the AFC Scholarship coordinator) cries. I laugh nervously between wiping my tears and quickly remember to thank him for this incredible opportunity. I make quick, broad, and rambling promises. ‘I will do great things, I swear!’

Over the last few weeks I’ve begun to wonder more about who Melissa Carroll was. I’ve seen her pictures on the AFC website, and she’s in some of the videos from the first AFC trip. She is effervescently beautiful. It’s almost breathtaking.

I dove into research about Melissa Carroll, the woman in whose name I am able to have this incredible experience. The woman who is helping me go on my own journey.

Melissa was a young artist living in New York City. She was working as a painting assistant for internationally known painter Francesco Clemente and her paintings were beginning to show at galleries. After a foot injury that wouldn’t heal, the uninsured Melissa visited a clinic where the physician found a bony mass around her third metatarsal.

Melissa’s mother Cecilia tells the story, “The doctor called and said, ‘The good news is, it’s not melanoma. The bad news is it’s Ewing’s sarcoma.’ ” It was June 2011. Carroll was twenty-eight years old.

While in treatment, Melissa continued to paint. Her medium changed from oil to watercolor because the chemicals in the oil paint made her sick.

After a year and a half of chemo and radiation, Carroll thought she had completed her treatment. “How do u pick up your life after everything you’ve been through and you’re not sure about the future?” she wrote on her blog. “No one tells you what life’s going to be like after cancer treatment. After 17 cycles of chemo lasting a full year, 12 weeks of radiation, and multiple surgeries, the world asks you to be a normal young adult again, to start where you left off. It’s impossible! Ewing’s sarcoma not only messed with my body it messed with my head and broke my heart. Slowly I’m trying to pick up the pieces.”

And then Melissa found A Fresh Chapter’s website, a nonprofit that funds volunteer trips for cancer survivors with the intent of finding new meaning and direction after their battle with the disease. She applied and met with Teri from AFC and immediately gelled with her.

One month before she left with 11 other survivors for the inaugural AFC trip to India, Melissa discovered her cancer had returned – this time in her lungs. “That whole day was the worst day of my life. It felt like a fucking nightmare… harsh reality punched me in the face that day. After that, I was like ‘I feel like I’m going to die soon. I am going to die from this.’ I didn’t think that before. I thought it’d just be a year of my life that sucked and I’d think back at it and be like ‘Whoa, I had cancer,’ but after that it just changed, everything changed after that.”

After completing just one cycle of chemo, Melissa boarded a plane to India. There, she taught art classes to third and fourth grade boys in the slums. She went to the Lotus Temple and said a prayer. She went to the Golden Temple and visited the Taj Mahal at sunrise. The country inspired her. She took photos and enjoyed the culture and people. She painted a portrait of another teacher and gave it to her.

I told myself, ‘You’re not going to die in the next two weeks of cancer.’ I took a break from my life for a little bit, and lived in the moment as much as possible.”

In March of 2013, Melissa returned to Brooklyn and started to paint more seriously once again. She painted many of the self-portraits from bed. Frida Kahlo’s work and story resonated with her. Kahlo, after suffering a severe life-threatening and debilitating injury – a bus accident left her in a full body cast – painted self-portraits from her bed using a portable easel and a mirror attached to her bed canopy’s underside.

Melissa’s Recurrence series sprang forth which included self-portraits, as well as portraits of friends who have battled or were still battling cancer. She was granted a one day show at the prestigious Andrea Rosen Gallery.

“I used to paint other people, but being so isolated all the time and going through cancer has made me focus on myself more and express what it’s like to be in this insane cancer world,” she says. “It’s completely different than my old life. I think a lot of my friends see me with a wig on and makeup when I’m not feeling so sick. I wanted to show the reality of what it’s like and not glamorize cancer.”

The night of her show for the Recurrence series, dozens of friends showed up, including her childhood art teacher, her nurses, fellow artists, musicians, designers and former co-workers from her early days as a swim instructor in New York. With the port still lodged in her chest, an anti-nausea patch affixed behind her ear and a compression stocking wrapped around her left leg, which had developed lymphedema, Carroll did not sit down once. Her mom FaceTimed the event with her iPhone so that her father, Paul, an Irish balladeer who was in Ireland for work, could watch. Each painting sold. Salman Rushdie purchased a self-portrait that references her time in India.

“It was epic, a dream come true. It was like a wedding to myself, ” she said after the show ended.

On the night of March 31, 2014, the world became a darker place when Melissa passed away – she was 31.

Melissa is a testament to the fact that each of our lives matter. In the middle of the mess that is cancer – we still have the ability to use our talents to serve the world. We can make a lasting impact on someone else’s life. Melissa’s story ended far too soon, but she is my example and inspiration for how to make my fresh chapter really count.