<p>At the suggestion of one of our posters here, I am checking with the rest of the Mod/Admin team regarding how best people can print off this thread, other than doing it page by page. I will report any suggestions offered.
It is hoped that we can make a full copy of the thread for eventual delivery to LTS’ daughter.</p>
<p>I just awoke to this news. </p>
<p>It will take a while, I’m sure, for it to settle.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I’m reminded of two things:</p>
<p>–Toward the end of his life, the much admired British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott wrote a note to himself: “Oh, God, may I be alive when I die.” As her posts to this thread demonstrated, repeatedly, LTS was always - to the very end - very much alive.</p>
<p>–The New Orleans tradition of “funerals with music” (or “jazz funerals”) would, I think, suit LTS. On the way to the cemetery (as most here may already know), the band plays music that is mournful - dirges and hymns. But then on the way back, in celebration of the life that was lived, the mood brightens, the band begins to swing, folks start to dance. For LTS, yes, there should be mourning; but there should be dancing, too. [Jazz</a> funeral - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_funeral]Jazz”>Jazz funeral - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>(P.S. to LTS’s daughter [if she should read this]: Your mother’s life, though cut short by this illness, touched many people, deeply. Not too many lives do that - no matter how long they last.)</p>
<p><a href=“Double-posted%20to%20the%20other%20LTS%20thread.”>i</a>*</p>
<p>Jem, I’m glad to know that you are investigating the possibility of a hard copy of this thread for LTS’s daughter. I just suggested the same thing to marite in an email. It will be a valuable part of the healing process for it to be available, when she is ready to read it. Thank you.</p>
<p>I feel like LTS gathered us all together as her army of supporters and brought out the best in us.
I really really would like to take on the cause of lung cancer research and treatment but I am woefully ill equipped to start a campaign.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get a lung cancer fight going the way the Susan G Komen fund has done for breast cancer??
How could we do this?</p>
<p>From ADad (4026, 4031):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>–Vincent Van Gogh</p>
<p>epistrophy- Thank you so much for all your beautiful and inspiring posts of hope and determination, I know they became a great source of strength for us all here, and we know how LTS treasured them.</p>
<p>marite: if you are in contact with LTS’ daughter, and if you think she would talk about it, I’m wondering what finally caused the end. When she started on the asthma inhaler, I worried about lung tumors. When the clot discussions arose, I worried about several things. </p>
<p>also, if her funeral home/newspaper posts her obituary, I know the CC community would appreciate a copy or a link.</p>
<p>Thank you marite, I know this has to be so much harder on you.</p>
<p>I already posted my thoughts on the “Rest in Peace” thread. </p>
<p>But I want to also say here a big thanks to epistrophy who continually posted inspiring stories that I know LTS treasured and that helped her during her fight. Others also shared inpiring quotes/stories, thank you.</p>
<p>I want to thank the entire CC community who came together to rally behind a member whom most of us have never met. I could tell that LTS relied on this support and that it meant a lot to her. I also feel it has brought out the best in the CC community. </p>
<p>I want to thank marite for being a liason with LTS’ daughter and for sharing this very sad news with us as we all were worried in the past couple of days and came together for a huge prayer last night in what became LTS’ final hours. </p>
<p>Hopefully this thread and the Rest in Peace thread will be printed documents that will be given to LTS’ daughter. Perhaps her story can be shared at some time in a bigger way. Her battle was chronicled here and the support has been overwhelming. It is a story with telling to a larger audience.</p>
<p>Beauty in more ways than one can ever know.</p>
<p>At the end of my post #4390, there is a mistake and it should read:</p>
<p>“It is a story WORTH telling to a larger audience.”</p>
<p>I just re-read the first post on this thread. It has been exactly 11 months since LTS was diagnosed. We have been so privileged that she allowed us along on this journey of hers.</p>
<p>LTS…how we will miss you valiant and vivid presence among us! What a loss. As a Virginia resident CC mother with a son in her daughter’s college year class, I have followed her brilliant, pithy, wonderfully amusing posts for years with pleasure and in the past year, often with wonder.<br>
I am just so sad, and also so inspired by LTS.
My heart goes out to her lovely daughter, who has lost a magnificent parent and friend.</p>
<p>It has truly been a blessing to have shared LTS’s spirit on this forum. I stumbled upon CC out of interest in my child’s college application process. But LTS caught my attention and my heart, and her posts and news quickly became what I looked for each time I sat down at the computer. Her pithy humor, her outraged determination, her thoughtful advice, her sharp intellect, her delight in her daughter…what an amazing woman. This is a person who I’ve never met but will never forget.</p>
<p>I too just read this sad news. </p>
<p>Thank you one an all for the community that came together during the last 11 m.onths. Obviously LTS benefitted from the thread and everyone here, but I think we all benefitted from each other. I will miss this group of funny, smart, loving and concerned people.</p>
<p>We lost LTS and now the thread connection too. Sadness all around.</p>
<p>I’ve had a few phone calls this morning and it’s impossible to explain to people what has happened. “A woman I ‘know’ through an online discussion has died after an 11-month battle with cancer.” </p>
<p>They don’t get it. But I am feeling so hollow inside with a terrible headache. </p>
<p>But I know you all get it.</p>
<p>We’ll never forget your fighting spirit, LTS.</p>
<p>Is it too bizarre to say that I have had a premonition that something sad was going to happen? I have been compelled to listen to a couple of very sad songs on my iPOD in the past 5 days… Ashokan Farewell from the Ken Burns The Civil War soundtrack…and the Theme from Schindler’s List… Itzhak Perlman plays on it…and it is just hauntingly beautiful…I cry every time I listen to it… the lack of postings from LTS seemed ominous… I did wear red shoes to a dinner party Sunday night…and thought of LTS every time I looked down… </p>
<p>personally, I remain the most influenced by her total commitment on whatever it was she did… I have thought that I was pretty much in the game in whatever game I was in… reading her posts however, made me realize that I am a novice… and while I may not strive for the same commitment level she did…I owe it to myself and others to be more focused and I am thankful for her inspiration…and example…</p>
<p>Mary–I know what you mean. I’ve been trying to look/act normal at work, because I don’t even want to try explaining.</p>
<p>Fortunately, my H has been aware of LTS’s story through my regular updates and questions (he’s a dr, so I looked to him for answers, which of course he couldn’t positively give), and he has been very patient with my phone calls home all day today. He gets why I am sad.</p>
<p>maineparent, my D danced to the theme from Schindler’s List this year. If I turn my iPod to that song I will definitely begin crying right now. </p>
<p>Operamom, thanks so much for the “Gone From My Sight” poem. I have copied it onto my computer to save.</p>
<p>Thank you to all the posters here, your words of support for LTS have been wise and kind, and I have shared some of them with my mom, who is in her 4th year of battling Ovarian cancer. </p>
<p>Someday LTS’s daughter will appreciate having this thread and knowing how many lives her mom touched.</p>
<p>I also just went back and read the 1st post. I was so struck by her comment</p>
<p>“I am no Randy Pausch and I do not possess his grace and class.”</p>
<p>How very wrong she was! People from these boards may think ‘I am no LTS’ in challenging situations before they think of Randy Pausch (no offense meant toward him but LTS is probably much closer to our hearts.)</p>
<p>I also loved the “Gone from My sight” poem - I may print it off for my daughter who still grieves for her 1st love who died at age 16.</p>