<p>^^ Marite, thank you for so graciously handling this contact on behalf of our community. It is appreciated by many, I am sure.</p>
<p>As are epistrophy’s contributions, and all the caring posts here.</p>
<p>Thank you marite for being a spokesperson for this community and relaying our sympathies and admiration for LTS to her daughter.</p>
<p>Epistrophy, that is a really nice poem, and it perfectly captures LTS spirit.</p>
<p>Here’s a good “bookend” for it. Just read this in Crazyhorse:</p>
<p>She</p>
<p>She’ll be slow coming,
they tell me.</p>
<p>I know, I reply.</p>
<p>She comes
from far away.</p>
<p>(by Ivan Onate, translated by Steven J Stewart)</p>
<p>“I have a feeling that LTS is still reading this thread on her heaven-issued BlackBerry…”</p>
<p>You know, so do I…</p>
<p>This thread really puts the college stuff in perspective, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Yes, it does…I thought that when we found out that we’d lost her. </p>
<p>H’s father (and a man of the most integrity and all-around-wonderful-awesome person I’ve ever met) lost his fight with cancer in April 2005. When he was diagnosed in November, 2003 began my significant anger at this cowardly disease. </p>
<p>Our mantra since then has been “life is too short”, and we’ve been living that to the max. D1 graduated from hs in 2007, D2 will graduate in 2009. We’ve spent some unconventional traveling and other time together with them…I have no doubt that the extent of the things we’ve done would never have been what it has, without that blow-to-the-gut reality check that their wonderful grandfather taught us all.</p>
<p>On a different note, the author of “1000 things to see/do before you die” died this week, in an accident I believe. The article H read said that he’d completed about half the entries on the list. </p>
<p>One of the things that struck me (hard) back in 2005 was the realization that in a split second…whether it’s a diagnosis, sudden death, or even an expected one, your life can change in so many ways it’s hard to go on. I still think frequently of LTS’s daughter.</p>
<p>I still check this thread daily, and often wonder why I am doing so. I miss LTS’ spirit. I guess I really believed that she would beat this dread disease. My Dad passed away 30 years ago this week from lung cancer. He was only a bit older than LTS. A non-smoker. I still cannot comprehend that there is no cure. Marite, please pass along the thoughts and prayers of this community to her DD.</p>
<p>I’m also finding it hard to let go, hard to accept that LTS isn’t here to post anymore. Only a few days after her passing, Leroy Sievers passed away (see post #3563). His NPR blog is being continued, at least for now, by his wife and his doctors at Johns Hopkins. Some very interesting posts. I felt a very hard to explain connection with both LTS and Leroy Sievers and I still can’t let go.</p>
<p>I still think of her every day, too!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>–Morikawa Kyoriku (1656-1715)</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death: Yoel Hoffmann: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Death-Poems-Written-Monks/dp/0804831793]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Death-Poems-Written-Monks/dp/0804831793)</p>
<p>I too have a hard time believing she is gone. I also kept checking, thinking that, with the way she had everything in her life planned out and organized, she would somehow have left us a note on her computer or blackberry that would somehow be found and posted. It’s like we didn’t get to say goodbye. </p>
<p>In some ways, I also can’t yet say goodbye. We had PM’ed in the beginning as I assisted in getting her the name of a collegue that could give her alternative treatment opinions on the type of lung cancer she had. He was a specialist in her very cell type. But even though I am in Florida, I can’t bring myself to attend her service. She was anonymous here, as was I. We exchanged names, as I have done so with several folks over the last 1-2 years. But we spoke only a little on a first name basis and mostly behind our screen names. I am afraid that I can’t handle the emotions, as she was one special women. Yet who am I, this relative stranger to attend and ball my eyes out. It’s weird feeling so close, yet really being almost strangers.</p>
<p>sunnyfla, if you change your mind and go, you can view it as crying for all of us!</p>
<p>^^ I was thinking the same thing, although I do understand your reluctance to go.</p>
<p>I understand your reluctance to attend, too, sunnyflorida. I exchanged PMs with her early on, as well, because I helped her find a specialist in NYC. She had an appointment with this person at one point, but later cancelled in favor of the DC oncologist. It would be very strange to attend her memorial service, with the people from her real life, when we’d never met. It would only feel right if the people there were all of us.</p>
<p>OK, I absolutely do not get the people who are local and do not feel like going to the funeral. I am in Utah and I wanted to go! But nobody would take my call at the hospital, since it is a long weekend!
So on the day of LTS’s memorial service I will be serving cancer patients. Maybe it is better this way?
But I need closure.
So I encourage all of you local people to attend. If you are afraid of tears, just put on sunglasses. And a big hat 
LTS would love to see us there!!!
She was one of us, still is (I have actually had a very, very bizzare thing happen to me the night after I found out she is gone, PM me if you want details, I do not want to post that online).
Marite - I send you a PM but no reply yet. I wanted to send flowers, is it not too late?
My dad was a lung cancer patient. He died suddenly several years after diagnosis. One of the best things that I have ever done was to fly my whole family to the funeral.</p>
<p>I hope I don’t offend anyone by briefly politicizing this thread but at the moment I’m smiling, thinking of LTS up there proudly wearing her “Republicans for Obama” button!</p>
<p>LTS in Post #3547:
</p>
<p>I also check in…missing her voice, taking comfort in her circle of CC parents. She was indeed, one of us, but perhaps a little more quick, lucid and vibrant in her posts than most…so she stood out. Her stories about her own concerns were as amusing and fulsome as her quickness to offer a word of response to the concerns of others.<br>
I wasn’t ready, but perhaps those who were with her have more closure and experienced something when her condition became critical that helped them let her go on. Her last words here were brave indeed, and clearly hopeful…</p>
<p>I, too, keep checking in. Sunnyfla, if you have any thoughts of attending the memorial I encourage you to do so. Your emotions don’t need explaining. Any affirmation of LTS’s importance to you or anyone else (including all of us who think of her and her daughter) would only be appreciated by her daughter and others who knew her. In times of devastating loss, people take heart from knowing that their loved one was respected, cherished, appreciated, cared for by others. It could really help LTS’s daughter to know how many others thought LTS was really someone special.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But LTS’s voice is still here - *all over the place.<a href=“Hey,%20if%20there’s%20one%20thing%20that%20girl%20could%20do,%20it’s%20%5Bi%5Dtalk%5B/i%5D.”>/i</a> </p>
<p>Someone who could talk, or write, in such a lively, spirited way doesn’t ever really die. </p>
<p>Sure, they may quit saying new things. But their words, their voice, their spirit (a word that relates to breath, which in turn relates to voice) - they all live on.</p>
<p>Kelowna, I tried to PM you to find out about your “bizarre thing” that happened to you. Apparently, so did a lot of people—your PM box is full…</p>
<p>Kelowna, I also tried PMing you and your inbox was full. I’d love to hear about your experience!</p>