My beloved friend Liz died this morning, at Surrey Memorial Hospital, after living 2+ years with metastatic breast cancer.
I dropped everything to go see her in November 2019, when she was admitted to hospital with tumours on her spine and breaks in multiple places. We planned her celebration of life then. At that time, I don't suppose anyone expected she would live so long—I certainly didn't. That extra time was such a gift. And she defied so many odds. For example, in early Feb 2020, the docs gave her a 50/50 chance of being able to stand again. After getting home, she quickly mastered the stairs, rendering unnecessary the newly installed elevator to the 2nd floor. By the fall of 2020, she was taking long walks in the forest. In classic Liz style, she wrote a note to Rick Hansen to thank him for all the money he'd raised for spinal cord research, research that had helped her learn to walk again. She was delighted that Rick wrote back a personalized note.
She was discharged from rehab at the end of March 2020, just as the pandemic shut everything down in BC. She had some really good days, weeks, and months after that. On her favourite days, she was planning and executing new art projects, especially her original hooked rugs, and eco-dying fabric with her friend Sylvie.
Liz and I met in September 1987. I had just taken the train from Ottawa to Vancouver to start my dietetic internship at the Vancouver General Hospital. The internship director invited me to attend the graduation ceremony for the women who had just completed their internships. Liz and I met at the long buffet table in the auditorium where the ceremony was taking place. We both remember that there was a lot of light streaming through the windows that day.
If you are lucky, you've had the experience of instantly recognizing someone who is an apparent stranger, someone who becomes an immediate and lifelong friend. That was Liz and me. We shared an instant bond of familiarity. Standing at that buffet table, we fell into easy conversation that was outside time. Over almost 35 years, it never mattered how long it was between our phone calls or visits. We just picked up again, as if it were yesterday that we had last spent the day together.
This is exactly how the late Irish philosopher-poet John O'Donohue explains the Gaelic idea of anam cara or soul friend—someone whose friendship is an act of recognition and belonging, outside time and space. Someone with whom you can be yourself, without mask or pretension. Liz would listen deeply to me, and if there was something she was concerned about or didn't quite agree with, she would "invite me to consider" other possibilities or interpretations or actions in the kindest, most non-judgemental way.
How fortunate I am to have had such a friend.
In her professional life as a dietitian, Liz cared deeply about providing the best possible care for patients. She despised mediocrity. In one of her first jobs, as an ICU dietitian, the staff nicknamed her a "Rottweiler with lipstick" because of her dogged determination that patients would be as best nourished as possible, to speed their recovery. (She soon gave up the lipstick but never her passion for the best patient care.) I can imagine that she presented the ICU docs with research papers showing the evidence to support her argument. That's what she loved: learning the science that provided evidence for practice and then putting the research into practice. When she first began her career, she was horrified that so much of dietetic practice had little-to-no evidence to support long-standing protocols, and she set out to help change that. She earned her master's degree and set up a first-of-its-kind position within Fraser Health to support dietitians to learn how to apply research to their patient care and to do research themselves. She mentored hundreds of dietitians and dietetic interns. In December 2021, she was to be presented with a lifetime achievement award by the Fraser Health Authority, at a ceremony that had to be postponed because of COVID restrictions. And in classic Liz style, she has made arrangements to set up a foundation to financially support dietetic research within the Fraser Health Authority. She wants it to be named the "Someone Believes in Me" Foundation because of the support she got when she was making her own first tentative steps to do research.
Liz applied her endless determination to her personal life too. I don't know anyone else who worked so hard to overcome so many challenges, especially those resulting from childhood traumas. Even in the past year, working with a skilled counsellor, she successfully overcome lifelong claustrophobia, so that she could take additional treatments without anxiety and without medication. She was especially grateful to Dr. Paul Swingle for the neurotherapy treatments she received under his care, which helped her see and realize the possibilities of living a lighter, more joyful life. She shed as much "duty" as she could, made peace with her past, let go of things and people that weighed her down, and took up practices of gratitude, compassion, and finding and creating joy in everyday life. On my visit in November 2019, I watched her over and over again asking nurses how they were doing, and what they were doing for their own self-care. On a recent trip to the ER, while waiting on a gurney in the hallway, Liz spoke to the woman cleaning the floor and thanked her for her work. Classic Liz.
Liz's desire to live life to the fullest, with joy and compassion, intensified after her initial breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2017 (the doctors were confident that the cancer was banished; there were no signs of the cells that, in hindsight, must have escaped). She started experimenting with different art forms, including oil paints and sculpture. To my (untrained) eye, everything she tried looked professional. Liz would give credit to her teachers. But truly, she was an artist. I have many beautiful things that she has made for me over the years, including the gorgeous quilt that has become my "nap" quilt over these past months. (I think Daisy can feel the love in it too.)
I am so grateful for almost 35 years of rich friendship, and especially the many conversations we had over the past two years. Liz is part of me and will be with me until I'm gone. But I will miss her terribly, and I still can't quite believe that she won't be phoning again.
Here is John O'Donahue's Friendship Blessing from his book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam cara.
Liz leaves behind her devoted husband, Doug; their son, Cayden; her mother, Maria; her brother, Phil; and many heart-broken friends and colleagues.
