A very touching and heartfelt tribute, one that could only be penned by one who has loved and shared laughter and tears with the departed. Strength be with you in your time of loss and to her family also.
Farewell, Liz.
may her memory be eternal.
Yesterday, I went to the Highland Fling near Lebanon, PA, where I met with Liz’s remaining family, and watched her niece, Samantha, dance.
We celebrated, talked about, mourned Liz yesterday, both at the Fling, and at her brother’s house. While there wasn’t a drop of alchohol present, we none-the-less held a wake. I learned a few things about her from her family that I didn’t know, though only a few things surprised me. I told a few things that they didn’t know, and managed to surprise some of them, once or twice.
Liz dearly loved Samantha, and supported her dancing almost religiously. Sam dances VERY well, and was an endless source of pride pride to Liz. Samantha is crushed, and sleeps with Liz’s Navy ring locked in her fist now. Liz had, in her last weeks, sunk so low that she no longer hid her using from Sam. I tell you this to show just how low her addiction had pulled her… She adored both Sam and Drew. I have a wonderful picture now, of Liz holding Drew when he was just hours old. God, but she looks delighted! She always did love her ‘kids’, neices, nephews. And yet, so powerful was the monster eating at her life, that it managed to reduce her in the face of her pride and love for Sam and Drew. Sam had become Liz’s surrogate mother, and the kind, nuturing old hard case I knew became the child. How that must have eaten at her! No petty demon could slay this towering little woman. No, Liz’s demons were made-to-order, and cut-to-size. Nothing less could’ve so diminished her.
Liz’s first, best, destiny was to mentor and teach. Oh, God, how good she was at it! Bereft of the Navy environment in which to do this, she still found a way, and her program (AA/NA) gave her, to sponser, the hard cases. Just like her Navy days, Liz ‘turned to’ with a will, and the church in Squirrel Hill was filled with people from her program, many of whom she had helped get clean and sober. She was always willing to help and lead, even if it cost her dearly.
People in the programs have a tendancy, natural, I believe, to think of some addicts as “cured”, though this is never really the case. Had someone with less time sober said some of the things Liz said before her plunge, they would’ve been been leapt upon with all the care and support possible. Liz, though, was an ‘old hand’, and everyone believed she was invincible; Sadly, even Liz herself, until too late.
I learned that Liz adored me, and my wife, and my daughter. Well, I knew that she adored my daughter and wife, but to find myself adored by my hero… This is a surprise, and I don’t quite know how to handle that thought. I think, perhaps, I will tuck it into the hole in my heart, where it can warm me when I go to visit that lonely, empty place.
I have talked ‘Liz’, thought ‘Liz’ and lived ‘Liz’, this last week. Now I have something precious, an anchor that belonged to Liz, to hold. I will find a plank of Hornbeam (Iron Wood), and I will set Liz’s anchor into it, to show the wood, and the world, what ‘tough’ really means. I will have a small piece of Liz where I can reach out and touch her, and remember, myself, what it is to be tough, and what follies, lessons, and graces are to be found in that state.