Lisa's gone…

It’s funny how you can read someone’s blog and feel like you know them, even though you may not have exchanged more than a handful of words with them in their comments or in an e-mail. Lisa at Clusterfook was one of those people. Hers was the second blog I ever read, back when she called herself the “Rock Bitch” in 2005, when she had recovered from cancer the first time. 

There were to be two more cancer battles. I gave the timeline of her struggles in a previous post. Her battle is over now — she died last night at about 10:30 p.m. CST, after choosing a couple of months ago to forego continuing chemotherapy that wasn’t working and choosing instead to spend her remaining time at home with her husband and two young daughters. I think she definitely made the right decision, even though some would regard it as giving up. She did not give up, not in the least! I think she made her choice so she could concentrate on showing and telling her daughters how very much she loved them. She wanted to take care of as many details for the future as she could, wrapping up the myriad of loose ends that are part and parcel of being an adult in our society.

She even gave thought to what would become of her blog after she died, and appointed a fellow blogger and close friend, Karl, to inform her readers of her passing. They called it “Power of Blog” (as in power of attorney), so he could speak for her when she could no longer do so. Karl visited Lisa two weeks ago to go over the details of passwords, databases, hosting, and all the other things that go into the technical end of running a blog. She had already paid for her hosting in advance for at least the next two years, so the archives would be available online for others (including her children) to read her own words and remember what a vibrant and intense spirit she had shared with all of us.

By doing those things, she showed how much she cared about her online friends, in addition to her family. She knew we cared about her (although she wondered about that at times), and knew we’d want to know the end of the story. She kept us up-to-date when she could, and provided us a way to tell her in overwhelming numbers how much we loved her, while she was still able to receive that love from the online strangers who became her friends. She allowed us to say good-bye, before she was gone. And now we can still pay tribute to her life and send condolences to her family on her blog, as well as on our own blogs in posts such as this.

The Power of Blog idea is something I need to set up for myself, and I’ve already talked to someone about taking on that responsibility. Being a single woman with no children, and being “of a certain age”, I wonder how my online friends would know if something happened to me. To them, I would just disappear with no explanation, leaving them to fret and wonder with no hope of ever finding out. Their only connection to me in most cases is by e-mail, and there would be no one there to receive their communications. I wonder the same thing about some of my online friends, too — how would I know that something had happened to my dear Kenyan penpal, for example, who is halfway around the globe? This Power of Blog is definitely something I need to look into, and leave instructions with my designated friends so they’ll know what to do.

Lisa approached her impending death with the same tough practicality that she brought to the other, more mundane issues of everyday life. She very rarely felt sorry for herself, and sought out every possible avenue that would allow her to remain with her family just a little longer. She stood toe-to-toe with cancer and stared it in the eye, and when it no longer made sense to fight the battle, she laid down her weapons and wrapped herself in the love of her family.

I’m very thankful to have known Lisa, even from a distance. I know that if I’m ever stricken with a life-threatening illness, I have a fantastic role model to look to, who showed me the way to fight it with grit, class and grace to the very end. I hope I’m able to carry it off half as well as she did.

Tags: relationships