Lanice Thorsteinson, A Memorial

Lanice is my step-cousin and the only member of my family who took the time to stay in touch with me.  She is a true and real friend.  I just learned today that three weeks ago, March 17, 2014, she lost her battle with cancer.  She was sixty-five years old.  The last time I talked to Lanice was on the phone less than a week before I went to Mexico March 1 for a month.  In the week since I've been back I have been dragging my south end giving her a phone call and waiting to hear from her.  I think that intuitively I knew she was already gone.  It always seems premature.  She sounded strong, hopeful and optimistic about the course of her chemotherapy when I last talked to her and I was expecting she would be around till at least August.  As if I could set the terms and time of her departure.  When I picked up the message on my voice mail today from her sister I wanted to protest that Lanice had till at least August and that she had died too soon.  How silly and irrational we can be in the face of death.
     Lanice is the only person in my family with whom I have ever felt that I have anything in common.  I must have been almost seventeen the first time we met.  She would have been twenty-four, I think.  The connection was instantaneous.  I saw in her a fellow adventurer.  Another artist, another pilgrim, another happy fool dancing out universal truths through our interactions with every day life.  A long time member of the BC NDP she was a dedicated human rights and social justice activist.  She always tried to work at jobs that reflected her values.  Like me she was always on the low income side of the spectrum.  I always saw her as an irrepressibly generous and passionate soul.  She always had a huge beautiful smile for me when we saw each other, the sort of smile that radiates from a very deep part of the soul. 
     She cared deeply and fervently about others, whether her family, her friends, or strangers on the street.  She had a love and hunger for life and a curiosity about new and unusual things.  We didn't always agree and even had a falling out that sadly lasted way too long but a few years later we ran into each other downtown while I was in transit between work assignments.  I had no time to stop and talk but I gave her my card and soon we were back in regular contact and frequently meeting in coffee shops to keep our dialogue and friendship going.  She also kept me up to date about the happenings in our blended families.
     After not seeing each other for several months I ran into her last August.  As always I was running between assignments at work but we had time to promise that we would get in touch and do coffee together soon.  That opportunity never arrived and that turned out to be the last time I would see her.  The cancer that she had been fighting so valiantly returned with a vengeance. She was too weak to meet me for coffee and I was either too busy at work or too exhausted on my days off to visit.  We stayed in touch by phone.  Always I found her integrity, her honesty and courage in the gathering shadow of death inspiring and simply amazing.
     The world has lost too soon a real light in Lanice and it saddens me that her art, especially her delicately rendered flower paintings, never received the exposure or notice that should have been her due.  I have lost a friend, a family member, and in many ways, a sister.  I will not be able to join with the rest of Lanice's family to celebrate her memory but I hope that this post in my blog will honour her as she deserves.  God bless you and keep you Lanice, and thank you so very much for your presence and for the amazing person whom you have been for me and for others.  God bless you and keep you always.
     I would like to conclude by paraphrasing one of the most meaningful things I ever heard her say.  I myself was just recovering from homelessness and we had run into each other in front of the same welfare office where, it turned out, we were both clients.  She said that the poor, the marginalized, the overlooked and despised of the earth are the very people who, because of their gifts of love, compassion and insight and wisdom are the very people whom the very society that despises them could never survive without.