By Mandy Feder — Record-Bee columnist
This week, in a period of four hours, I learned of four deaths ? two from strangers, one from a colleague and one friend. It seemed like the world should come to a screeching halt, but it didn”t.
So I took five minutes to hold my head in my hands and indulge in some silence at my desk.
I recalled the first time I met my friend, Cindy Silveira-Turner.
I was writing a story about her and the discovery that she was recently diagnosed with leukemia. She told me she had to have a bone-marrow transplant.
She didn”t look sick. Actually she seemed to have the energy and innocence of a co-ed.
Somehow she instantly decided we would be friends. We”re about the same age and both had daughters the same age. I don”t typically bond with people as quickly as I did with her. She called me her sister. I saw Cindy on good days and bad days. Sometimes she was physically spent from blood transfusions. But she always smiled, hugged and asked how everyone else was doing.
I saw her the night before she left for Stanford. We stood out in front of the Record-Bee and talked. It was cool and windy and beginning to get dark. She told me she was kind of scared. She talked about her parents, her daughter, her granddaughter and her brother. Instead of being concerned about herself, she was worried about her family. She told me that she admired her Dad, he was her hero. I told her I was the same way.
I hugged her for a long time and told her she was going to be fine.
That”s the last time I saw Cindy.
With hands that shook nearly beyond her control, she wrote me this in a Christmas card from Stanford:
“Dearest Sister Mandy, I”m so blessed for our much happy found sister connection. Gosh, I can”t thank you enough for all that you”ve done, and keep doing! You are so much in my thoughts and wishes everyday. Thank you for all the support and love you have given me, I am truly fortunate. Happy Holidays. I wish you and your daughters a happy, healthy New Year. God bless you. I love you, Cindy XOXO.”
I talked to her on the phone a few times. She still had a lilt in her tired voice.
It was Julie Kelley who called me to tell me that she was on her way to Stanford because Cindy wasn”t going to make it through the night.
I don”t wear jewelry with the exception of my grandmother”s wedding ring and a confirmation charm from a high school friend, but Julie made the three of us matching bracelets to wear before Cindy went away for her bone-marrow transplant months ago. I promised to wear it until Cindy came home.
But she never came home.
So I grip the little green flower on the bracelet and remember Cindy throwing her head back and laughing.
“She didn”t want to leave us. She wanted to be with us,” Julie told me.
That”s what was gnawing at me. She so desperately wanted to live. Some folks go through life and bemoan most of it. But she was elated even when she was ill, simply to breathe.
She lived Dylan Thomas” poem, she did “not go gentle into that good night, she raged against the dying of the light.”
Julie told me that she thought Cindy saw the “prize, not the process, the treasure not the trial, the joy not the journey.”
When I write people”s stories, I am privy to the insight of years of their history, emotion and challenges in a hurry. But Cindy is much more than a story on paper. She”s an inspiration and a reminder that we”re all connected, even if for a brief moment in time.
I am phenomenally sad that she”s gone. But I”m a better person for having known her and I intend to keep her spirit alive in my actions.
“Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks. Some doors are open, some roads are blocked. Sometimes you”re happy, sometimes you cry. Half of me is ocean, half of me is sky? some things are over, some things go on, and part of me you carry, part of me is gone. But you got a heart so big it could crush this town.
And I can”t hold out forever; even walls fall down.” ?Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Mandy Feder is the News Editor for the Lake County Record-Bee. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or call her directly at 263-5636 ext.32.
