Losing Lisa

Tomorrow, in the early evening, those of us who knew and loved Lisa, will congregate at the Mililani Mortuary to celebrate her life. It is not hard to remember the pretty young lady who walked into the meeting room one support group meeting night. She is gentle on the eyes and a delicious whisper to the mind. What was hard to swallow was that she wasn’t accompanying a parent or a friend that night; she was there for herself. It is often politically correct to want disease to be an equal opportunity predator but we always bite our lips harder when the victim is one so young, so vivacious, and so full of promise.

And one so full of questions:

Does Britt feel pain in his legs?
Are you able to sleep through the night?
Does Britt need to be turned side to side?
Does he have gas after a meal of formula?
How does he form his words?

And on, and on, and on.

In the later years of her illness, I would visit Lisa at home. At every visit, I had come to expect Mom Jane to greet me at the door with, “She has prepared a list of questions for you, you know.” Lisa wanted to know everything about the illness and how it impacted me and Britt and our family. It was a way, perhaps, for her to gauge how she herself - mind and body - was responding, reacting, behaving. And what to expect of the enemy, as if by having answers, she could better understand what she was going through and what was yet to come.

In the end, because she couldn’t or it was too difficult to communicate, she would only look at me, her face reddening, large teardrops falling from the corners of her eyes, still inquiring but knowing that my finite knowledge - ANY earthly knowledge, for that matter - was no longer enough.

Sometime early August, Lisa decided she would no longer ask questions of mere mortals. She was going to her Maker, in whom there will no longer be any doubts, any fears, any half-answered questions. There will only be peace.

Godspeed, Lisa.