<p>Thank you LTS for sharing your life with all of us. I will never, ever forget you.
Thank you CC posters who have shared wonderful tributes, recollections and poems and writings with the rest of us. You are all so wonderful.</p>
<p>LTS’s DD. Please know that the physical pain of losing your mom will slowly dissipate and you will be able to go through the day without hurting so much.I’m so, so sorry you have lost your mom. She fought as hard as she could to beat this thing for the two of you.</p>
<p>Oh, LTS, I am so so sorry.This just really really stinks. I can’t get past the anger and frustration that you worked so hard, fought he battle of all battles and even you could not win this time.</p>
<p>I felt all of you last night as we came together and lifted our voices as one. I just have to believe LTS heard us and knew we were giving it our all. I hope we softened the trip.</p>
<p>I miss you LTS. I miss knowing you are with us.</p>
<p>epistrophy, these poems are amazing, touching, piercing. At times like this, I feel that “the other side” is just across a transparent, shimmering curtain that we can almost see through.</p>
<p>Thank you , Marite, for letting us know. I too feel that I’ve come to know LTS after 4 years of correspondence. What an incredible woman and mother she has been. She has been an inspiration and a shining light.</p>
<p>Oh wow. I just checked into CC right now and looked for the LTS thread first. Then I saw the sad faces and then checked and saw this thread. I’m just stunned. I really believed that she would somehow beat this disease. I’ve never “known” a person with such determination, such charity, such humor, such humility, such defiance and such brilliance all combined into one kick-a** package. She was truly a force, and I thought it impossible for her to die. I resolve to never take my life for granted again, in honor of her abundant spirit and her will to live.</p>
<p>sax Thankyou so very much for thinking of a group prayer for all of us. I like others had no idea that things had changed so quickly for LTS, but at 10pm I found myself praying not for health and healing, but for peace for LTS and her precious girl. It seems in the end her passage was quick and thats a blessing for her and especially for her daughter. One time I posted to LTS that I am one person in my small little town that she had a profound affect on. sax again I say thank-you from one person in my small little town who appreciates what you did. Prayer is a comfort not only for the person we are praying for but for those doing the praying. Maybe we all helped ease her passing. In the coming days and long term we must pray just as hard for LTS’s daughter that she loved so dearly.</p>
<p>I did not participate in the Support for LTS thread, but I read it, and have been around CC since 2004 and have seen some of her other posts. She seemed like such an optimistic person and I could really feel her smile and warmth coming through every post.
RIP LTS</p>
<p>I just found out.
I have to pray in my native language:</p>
<p>Wieczny odpoczynek racz jej dac Panie,
a swialtosc wiekuista niechaj jej swieci na wieki wiekow,
Amen.</p>
<p>Marite - thank you so much for bringin the news to us. Please let me know how I can contribute to anything that is decided in LTS’s name.
I like sending flowers to funerals. Maybe we can do that?</p>
<p>LTS is happy now. I will meet her one day, I am sure of that.
LTS, please introduce yourself when I arrive THERE.</p>
<p>On vacation… I checked in to see how LTS was doing, and I found this thread. </p>
<p>To LTS’s daughter: I am so very sorry for your loss. Your mom was a remarkable woman. All the loving thoughts and prayers that have surrounded her for the past year are with you now.</p>
<p>Courage</p>
<p>It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.</p>
<p>Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.</p>
<p>Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.</p>
<p>Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out. </p>
<p>I also would like to contribute to whatever we decide to do, but agree with others that it is too early to be approaching LTSs daughter with anything else to think about and deal with.</p>
<p>momkaes: I find it difficult to pray sometimes because I find that I want to direct the outcome…I know, of course, that that never works nor might it be a good thing if it ever did. I do pray for strength and guidance. I admit I focused on a miracle for LTS with high hopes.I felt that if we only all yelled at the top of our lungs that maybe, just maybe, it would come to be. I too will hold her daughter in my prayers and thoughts… for losing her mom at her young age will be so very difficult. And the loss of LTS’s ability to hold her daughter in her arms strikes way to close to home. I am glad you are here to be a part of our collective voice.</p>
<p>sax, I was also praying (for the first time in 40 years) for a specific outcome - that LTS’ health be restored. I am grateful to you for the idea, because even though the outcome we all hoped for was not achieved, I’m sure that someday it will be a comfort to LTS’ daughter to know that we were all with her in spirit at that time. I’m wondering what prompted you to suggest this - did you have a feeling that there was a crisis, as some of us did?</p>
<p>Maybe the prayers did create a miracle for LTS…but not the specific outcome or the one anticipated.</p>
<p>A prayer of sympathy, offered for LTS, her family, and all those on CC who mourn.</p>
<p>Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey.
A going, a growing from stage to stage:
From childhood to maturity and youth to old age.</p>
<p>From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps, to wisdom.
From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and often back again.
From health to sickness and back we pray, to health again.</p>
<p>From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.
From grief to understanding, from fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead:</p>
<p>We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage,
Made stage by stage…To life everlasting.</p>
<p>I woke up at 10:46 pm on Tuesday night. I had passed out early in the evening and when I woke up I remembered the prayers that were due to go out at 10pm. I thought about LTS before falling back to sleep. When I learned of her passing yesterday morning, I just had this sinking feeling that something had happened around the time I woke up the previous night.</p>
<p>sax thank-you for your kind words. I prayed this whole past year for LTS’s return to health but for some reason when you called us to pray I just prayed for peace for her. Over the past 10 years I have had many loses, some to horrible cancer including my own dear Mom. I am also an “older” parent and age does bring wisdom. Through my journey of doctor visits, scans, blood work, pain meds, and hospital stays with my loved ones I realized we fight the good fight but at some point we must say “thy will be done”. I believe it occured the day I told my sweet Mom it was okay to leave us. I still try to direct outcomes but not as much as before then. My prayers that night were mostly for LTS’s daughter, I know the pain of losing a Mom. Let us all pray just as hard as we did that night, now for her daughter. That would be my wish for my kids.</p>
<p>I was touched by her courage, honesty and profound determination- her complete humanity. </p>
<p>A few months ago my father passed away. It happened while my daughter was at school and she coincidentally wrote this poem, which was read at his funeral…</p>
<p>I am only Human</p>
<p>31st March 2008</p>
<p>I am only Human
I am what fills all hope
I am a grain in the sand of time
I am all I feel,
compassion towards less fortunate
anger of a forgotten assignment
the ground below as it moves
moonlight as it drips upon me like water
the fur of a creature, with life as important as mine
a friend’s hug goodbye
I am all I cry,
a life lost forever
lonliness slowly swallowing me whole
a sad ending to a movie
starting over
the fear of the future
a paper cut
I am all I understand
a broken heart
failed tests
a shoulder to cry on when nothing is possible
the universe surrounding us
I am all I dream
a better future, today
life given back to the lost
the death of Poverty
importance
No one can change me,
because, I am what I am,
Not another like me,
for,
I am only Human.</p>