A Texas highschool valedictorian gave a strong, emotional speech devoted to his father simply hours after attending his funeral.
Alem Hadzic, 18, nonetheless sporting the muddy footwear he wore to bury his father, Miralem, revealed the tragedy when he stood on the podium for his speech to his fellow graduates of Early Faculty Excessive Faculty on Might 16.
“I’ve yet another factor to say, I wish to see if I can get by this,” Hadzic stated earlier than delivering the gut-wrenching information. “My father died yesterday, Might 15, 2024, and I attended his funeral immediately proper earlier than commencement.”
“That’s why my footwear are muddy, that’s why my arms are shaking as a result of I needed to carry him into his grave and bury him,” he stated in a video posted to Fb.
Hadzic’s revelation, which got here after encouraging his classmates, shocked the whole viewers as cries and empathy crammed the room.
Miralem Hadzic was recognized with most cancers solely 5 months earlier than the ceremony and his son solely shared the information of his dying to a couple of his closest associates.
“Hadzic selected to maintain this a secret from his friends, not wanting anybody to deal with him in another way due to it,” the Carrolton Farmers Department Impartial Faculty District stated.
Early Faculty Excessive Faculty is positioned 15 miles north of Dallas.
The graduate, who will likely be attending the College of Texas at Austin to check chemical engineering within the fall, says he went forward with the speech as a result of his father was the explanation he ended up high of his class.
“I can’t arise right here and fake I wish to be doing this speech proper now. However I can’t toss stuff away he labored so onerous for me to realize,” Hadzic stated. “That’s why I’m going to go to varsity and I’m going to spend each hour of daily working as onerous as I can to realize all my targets.
“As a result of that’s what he needed and I’m going to do it for him,” he added.
Throughout his highly effective, uplifting speech, Hadzic was shocked to see how many individuals moved by his father’s dying.
“I acquired up there. I stated my speech. I seemed within the viewers and I didn’t count on to see so many individuals crying,” Hadzic informed Fox 4.
Following the ceremony, Hadzic was met by many individuals — principally strangers who gave him help on his extraordinarily emotional day.
“I didn’t know any of them however they got here as much as me. They made me really feel higher. They needed to take photos with me. They informed me how sturdy I used to be and it made me really feel so significantly better. It made me really feel so good on such a darkish day. It was actually what I wanted,” he stated.
Hadzic says he made a last-minute change to his ready remarks as a result of his life dramatically modified since he initially wrote it.
“I used to be scared as a result of I actually didn’t know. I went to my dad’s funeral proper earlier than,” Hadzic informed the outlet. “I couldn’t simply discuss what I wrote as a result of a lot extra had occurred since then. And so, I acquired on stage. I began studying the script and after I acquired to the half about my dad, I couldn’t simply learn off a script anymore. I needed to discuss my expertise, and I needed to discuss from the guts.”
A relative of one in all Miralem’s co-workers created a GoFundMe web page following his prognosis.
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