A good woman has gone...

... by all reports, peacefully and with her friends and family around her. She was English faculty at BNCC.

She died of a recurrence of breast cancer. She was the 'other' breast cancer person at BNCC.. which is probably a wildly innacurate thing to say, but the other folks here who have had breast cancer weren't frineds of my friends, so I don't know about them.

The thing is, I didn't know her personally, yet I feel connected to her because she was a member of the brest cancer sorority.

From what I can tell, as cancer deaths go, hers was relatively good. Not long ago she was living her normal life. Very recently she was noticibly weaker, yesterday she lost consciousness and this morning she slipped away.

Her friends described her as elegant, fierce, inspiring and wonderful. These are women who don't give these kinds of accolades easily, so I'm sure they were true.

For all of us who teach -- think about how to be more like her -- it's a pretty big job to be both elegant and fierce, inspiring and wonderful.

I know that my friends will miss her terribly -- and I hope that they can see that their missing her is both the wonderful and terrible thing about being close to someone. I think it would be really sad if she'd passed and nobody missed her or if those who were close to her didn't feel loss and significant sadness at her passing. Those feelings are our indication that there was a sincere and honest connection to the person who has passed.

For the rest of you -- who, like me, didn't know her. Think about how to be more like her.


...and make sure you do breast exams every month and get your mammagram every year.