The Journey Ends and The Journey Begins

I read the news today.

Oh boy.

I learned that on Friday evening one of our ferocious fellow bloggers, Lisa Kelly of Clusterfook, left her physical pain and her suffering behind this past Friday evening and passed on.

I would be remiss if I didn't pay my respects, but I cannot possibly write anything that hasn't already been written as a tribute to this fine woman.

Instead, I will offer up a Thoughtful Thursday piece from a few weeks ago.

Be in peace and comfort, dear Lisa.

My heart goes out to your husband and your daughters - may they soon come to a place where they feel your presence rather than your absence.

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Many among us make difficult decisions; sometimes daily, sometimes only once.

But how many of us must make a decision that will potentially forever effect the life we have known for all of our years on the planet? And not only our life, but the lives of those who love us dearly, of those whose lives have only ever known our love?

This past Tuesday, Lisa Kelly did just that.

After a series of critical setbacks, Lisa, who openly and bravely writes the blog Clusterfook, decided that she would finally stop her latest series of chemotherapy treatment. It was killing her faster than the ovarian cancer she has been dealing with.

The ovarian cancer she has faced down two times before.

Lisa has made a decision that I cannot begin to fathom. She has recognized that her time to leave this plane is drawing near, and she has weighed the options of continuing a course of medication that pummels her into submission versus gracefully readying for what is to come. She has said in the past "It is what it is"; she now has acknowledged that it is indeed so. It is her time.

Her time to leave her husband, who she refers to as Dude, and her two beautiful young daughters, Cam and Teenie.

I began reading Lisa's posts when she began her latest go-round. While I could gush at length of her many, many attributes, let me instead give up the highest of praise and gratitude for her willingness to take us on this leg of her journey, and her unwavering openness in exposing the sheer ugliness of this disease.

I urge everyone to walk back through Lisa's steps for an eye-opening experience of what really happens. This is vitality and struggle and pain at its most organic level; this is a woman's life - and a journey she chose to share with us.

It is research into this insidious cancer that we must raise money for. Let that damned pink machine run on it's own steam for awhile. It's time to feel the teal.

And heal the teal.

The comment section of Lisa' "Hospice" post is overflowing with soothing words and wishes for days free of pain and filled with love.

One commenter shared a Robert Frost poem which seems appropriate when honoring a woman whose bravery shines like a glowing aura around her, and spreads her precious warmth far and wide through her vast readership:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn does down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

"It is what it is"
~Lisa Kelly~