Emily

[flea]

My coworker, Emily, died last night. She started having health troubles in October of 2006, but the doctors didn't figure out it was cancer until January of the next year. She was Stage IV at diagnosis, but underwent chemotherapy to slow the progress of things; "palliative" I guess they call it. I think she was initially expected to survive only 3-4 months, but she was a very determined and dutiful woman. She was coming to work as recently as two weeks ago; she'd take the chemo weeks off, but come in the rest of the time. She had been getting steadily weaker, however, and was in the hospital earlier this week for a CAT scan, since she'd been having aphasia. She went home yesterday and I guess that was that.

She was youngish - in her later 40s or early 50s. He daughter is a junior in college and is in Spain this semester; her son is 15. Her husband is an artist, and not a practical man; Emily was the breadwinner, the insurance-carrier, and the organizational force in her family. I'm worried about them. The flip side of her husband's profession and personality is that he has a lot of friends; I hope he'll let them step in.

Emily was a serious woman; she was deaf in one ear and used to pass off her failure to get tossed-off jokes on that account, but I think it was really more a personality thing. She was dedicated and responsible and patient and gentle. She was also very private. She kept her illness as quiet as she could (given that she wore a headscarf starting last spring and was visibly sick) and spoke about it practically, but she would rather have just kept working and not talked about it. The family stopped accepting help of meals from friends several months ago, and we've had to almost pry to get news, even from the people she was closest to.

We will miss her.

Comments

[gchick.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry -- I saw the puppy's all-hands email in the middle of my last meeting, and I thought of you right away; I've gotten a powerful sense since she got sick of how much she meant to people who knew her better, but I never really knew her well myself.