As Heather Passed Away
January 14, 2012
There are some people who have seemingly undistinguished lives that, nonetheless, leave gaping holes when we lose them.
Heather Glidewell McDonald, my 58 year old sister-in-law, who is passing away, is one of those people. For over three years she’s been battling pancreatic cancer, and it’s about finished its dirty business. Her home has become not only a place where grief and sadness is palpable as we gather around her weak and usually asleep body, it’s also become a place with a aura of sacredness. We enter that sanctuary now with reverence.
She was just a teacher; just a mother; just a wife; just a hostess; just an animal/zoo lover—and that word “just” does not do her justice. She had a knack for letting others be the center of attention while her presence was a canopy over the good spirit of the occasion. She was the straight person to the group’s jokesters, until we began to talk about the bodily functions of humans and other animals, which was her own comedy routine.
January 15, 2012
Three hours after I wrote those paragraphs, Heather died. We wept together, made our phone calls, and began to reminisce. What kept coming up was how present she was to us all. She connected with everyone in ways that are fast becoming better understood.
I think that with good people they leave behind some virtue that won’t die, renewing in others the better part of our nature. Time will tell what we name as what Heather left us, for she is certainly one of those virtuous souls. What’s immediately being affirmed is that, as my brother, Don, her husband, said, “Heather didn’t know how to hate anything.” Or as daughter Rebecca said, “My mother was the best mother anyone could have, and no one didn’t like her.” Though we often speak in the negative when struggling with intense grief, maybe what we’ll eventually say will be “Heather loved everyone and all of life, and everyone loved her.”