I never returned from summer break with a sprained wrist or a spiderweb of stitches, and I always refused to step foot near a rollercoaster. But to my misfortune, my family made a trip to New Jersey each summer, with Six Flags being the most anticipated stop for everyone — except me.

I dreaded the morning I would wake up to my sister exploding with excitement for chocolate chip pancakes from iHop, and for all the different roller coasters she wanted to ride. I never possessed that same kind of excitement, and the day devoted to Six Flags would repeatedly prove to be the most anxiety-provoking eight hours of my life.

Out of our whole family, my Uncle Dane was consistently the most optimistic person in the room when it came to anything. He kept a childlike appreciation for his life in every appropriate circumstance, and I admired him for that. On the family’s annual Six Flags getaway, he even managed to convince me that if I tried at least a few roller coasters, I would not be as terrified of them anymore.

Yeah okay, sure.

I reluctantly took his advice, pushed through the bar that separated me from my personal version of hell, and fastened myself into a burning-hot sticky seat. I glanced over at my uncle, who, per usual, had a Cheshire cat grin painted across his face.

Who was really the child here?

Climbing the hill in what felt like slow motion, the roller coaster eventually began to peak over the first drop. I held my breath and closed my eyes, preparing for the roller coaster to detach from the tracks and send me one-hundred-feet down to my death. Uncle Dane grabbed onto my wrist and said through clenched teeth, “The louder you yell, the faster it will be over!” So we both screamed until our voices were hoarse.

Uncle Dane went through life viewing his experiences through the eyes of a child. He openly embraced the good, the bad, and the ugly. I was never explicitly told to live my life like he did, but I was shown why I should. Uncle Dane unexpectedly received a diagnosis of a stage four cancer that aggressively robbed him of his health. He understood his illness was terminal, though he never showed any fear in front of me or my sister.

And through his battle with one of the most life-threatening diseases around, he maintained the same light-hearted spirit that made him scream with me at Six Flags a few months prior.

I believe in approaching life with the open-minded, optimistic perspective of a child. Simply stated, my life has been a cluster of random, though sometimes ironic, experiences that I have interpreted in a multitude of ways. By interpreting select events from a child’s point of view, I have been awarded the ability to live an adventurous and continuously surprising life thus far. I credit my uncle for teaching me how to love and appreciate life through how he lived his own.