Dear Joanie,
Your brother called while I was planting a garden for you at your home away from home. As he spoke, I heard his flute accompany his gentle voice. He took the red-eye from Sacramento, he said, and the musical tones grew louder. All at once the purples and the yellows of the garden blurred before me and my brain began to spin. I gripped the phone with dirty fingernails and all I could think to say was, “She’s in real trouble now, isn’t she.”
The next day, he called again…
Some four weeks earlier when Dana wrote to tell me what he termed “difficult news,” I couldn’t wrap my mind around how the flu and then pneumonia could turn into lung cancer. To me, you were always so healthy, so upbeat, so darn clean! You didn’t smoke! You didn’t work with toxins! “There is no cause,” he said. “The cancer just picked her.”
Gilbert Family Christmas card
He said you were on oxygen and that speaking on the phone would be too difficult. And so I sent you photos. Photos of what I knew to be your favorite place. I think of you every time I’m in and around this place, Lakeview Lodge on Amber Lake. When I’m on the vast green lawn before it, I think of you and your children playing croquet. On the sandy shore, I think of you all playing whiffle ball. Looking out at the lake, I think of your tribe paddling kayaks wearing your hats, your sunscreen, and your bug spray. Or how you conducted business in your kayak office while your sweet Ellen, my “toe-e-o-e-o-ee,” would be swimming, swimming, swimming from raft to raft to raft. I think of your family tradition of tying the sheets and how you always left the Lodge even cleaner than you found it. And I think of your silly sense of humor. I still have your mini bailer, “For either a small boat or a dry summer.” Tee-hee.
Best View in the World: by Ellen Gilbert
Oh, how I’ll miss you! I’ll miss our Friday afternoon chats, where you shared so much with me about your kids and your work at the church, and how you were the one who guided and comforted those who had recently experienced the loss of their loved ones. And how you helped me every summer to sort through the psychology of my life as a mother, wife, and business owner. You always had a way of making me feel so heard and so special. And you stayed in touch throughout the year with newsy letters, funny anecdotes, and Christmas cards with photos of Sandy Point. You were like a friend from camp, who became a Pen-pal during the cold and silent winters.
My dear friend, I suppose I’ll never understand why cancer “just picked you,” and I feel your loss so deeply. Mostly, I ache for Dana, and Tommy, and Bobby, and Toe-e-o-e-o-ee, and, of course, for Uncle Bob. But they will go on. They will live on as the strong, vibrant, intelligent, and loving souls they are because of all that you gave to them in this life.
Please say hello to your mother, Barbara, for me and thank her once again for bringing you to Sandy Point for the first time, and into my heart forever. I will always cherish our friendship.
Love, Michele