Posted by
Compassionate Conservative on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:04:53 PM
I learned the other day that
Burt Prelutsky, one of the most popular columnists on this site was recently
canceled. I was going to write a farewell column to him which I was going
to jokingly call "R.I.P. Burt." Then, Sunday morning, I had a
reality check in the form of some very bad news about a friend of ours, news
that suddenly made the R.I.P. for a canceled column seem like a very hollow and
inappropriate jest.
There are a few outstanding individuals throughout history whose lives have
truly changed the world for the better - Newton, Einstein, Washington, Lincoln, among many others - but probably the best
epitaph most of us can ever aspire to is for people to say that we were a nice
person who positively impacted their lives. Our friend Laura was one of
those people. Laura was a good friend of ours for probably most of this
decade. A lifelong diabetic, she eventually, before she turned 40, wore
out her kidney and pancreas and required a double transplant to continue
living. Fortunately, a blessed donor appeared in time to save her life,
but the transplants were a mixed blessing. Following the surgery, doctors
advised her that the anti-rejection drugs she'd be required to take for the
rest of her life also carried the risk of causing cancer later on.
That warning turned out to be prophetic. A little over three years ago,
she did in fact develop Merckel cell skin cancer, which eventually spread everywhere
else. About two years ago, when it began spreading, her oncologists gave
her three to six months to live. She fooled them not once but several
times, as the cancer continued its march through her body. Each time
she'd have a new treatment and/or surgery to remove tumors from their latest
site, the doctors would again give her three to six months, and they were
always wrong. She bounced back again and again, all the while taking time
to enjoy the good things life has to offer with her husband. They cruised
and vacationed all over the world, living life the way it was meant to be lived
before her disease inevitably finally took her.
Then, the final blow fell. She discovered her husband betrayed her when,
a little less than a year ago, she caught him e-mailing his new girlfriend,
whom he met at his cycling club. This distressing turn of events left her
one surviving aunt as the only family member she could rely on in this ultimate
crisis. Because of her diabetes, she was never able to have children, and
most of the rest of her family had predeceased her.
Still, Laura soldiered on, fighting the cancer while living life to the
fullest. Instead of cruising with her husband, she cruised with her
friends. Friends, you see, was one thing this remarkable woman had plenty
of. Her positive attitude towards her life, in spite of the bad cards
she'd been dealt, set an amazing example for the rest of us in her life to
follow. She had even bounced back as recently as three weeks ago
when the cancer caused brain tumors that made her temporarily incoherent.
The doctors predicted then that she'd never leave the hospital again, but just
over a week later some of her friends took her on a shopping excursion to one
of the local craft shops. She'd fooled the doctors again, one last time,
and began radiation treatment to try to shrink the tumors in her brain.
Finally, though, over this last weekend, Laura hit the wall. Never
physically robust, in spite of her huge heart, she had shrunk in size to not
much more than a wraith, and her body finally began to shut down. She
finally died Tuesday afternoon, a fighter to the end. She was surrounded
by her friends, one of whom was her beloved aunt Chris, who took care of her
for the last 8 weeks of her life with help from many of those other
friends. There's no doubt in my mind that she then quickly ascended into
heaven, where we'll all eventually see her again.
Even knowing that, though, doesn't make it any easier to lose her, in part
because she left all too soon. Neither does the certainty of knowing that
her passing was inevitable, as it is for all of us. It's never easy to lose even someone who's
elderly, but Laura was only 50 years old, the youngest person in the hospital
room where she finally passed. And it doesn’t even make it easier knowing
that we're not grieving for her, because she's in a better place, but for
ourselves, because we miss her. It still hurts.
P.S. I'll get to Burt's departure shortly.