Goodbye, Libby

Elizabeth Jean Asher
Feb 3, 1967 - Dec 10, 2018

You’d think, as long as she was sick, I’d have been ready for the news of Libby’s death.  But, the heart has its way, and it always hopes the time is not yet, that there will be just one more day.

Libby ran out of one-more-days last Monday, and I wasn’t prepared.  It’s been a week, and I’m just now starting to accept the reality that I will never talk to her again. She won’t answer those last few texts I sent; there will be no gift exchange this Christmas.

She died peacefully, more-or-less free from pain; the drugs were still working.  **major sigh of relief**  I hear tell she waited for her husband, Scott, to leave the house on to pick up her daughter from school before she left us.  If she had a choice in the matter, I know she did this on purpose. She wanted to be home, but didn’t want her girls there at the moment she died. I like knowing she got her way.

I suppose it’s telling about her place in the family that when I went to find a picture of her, all I had were group shots, and I had to crop the photo to give her center stage. She came along seventh in our line of eight children. She was the youngest of us five girls. Just sixteen months older than Ted, she never knew a world where she was the focus of attention. If that bothered her, I never knew; it certainly may have contributed to her feisty and fierce side. (If she wanted your attention, she was not an easy person to ignore.) In my memories, her aura matched her blonde hair - she was sunny, one of the bright spots in our family.

I left home for college when she was still in middle school. I left town on the heels of my graduation, when she was still in high school. Some years passed, I realized she’d finished growing up. I liked the woman she’d become, and we started to talk more often. Sporadically, she’d take time out of her life to make the trek from Minnesota to Kansas City, to visit one-on-one. I always enjoyed these visits, the only times we had time to have in-depth conversations about life and God and love and children and, and, and… 

And it’s so hard to fathom we will never talk again. I knew when I left for home in November this might come to pass, but I'd held on to the hope I’d be able to get up there to see her one more time.

Goodbye, Libby.

I will miss your smile and your wicked sense of humor. I will miss your introspective emails – thank you for letting us get a sense of what living and dying with cancer look like from the inside out.

Your last mantra was:  Life: No one gets out of it alive. You died having won your battle with the fear and despair that can come along with cancer. You didn't view your death as punishment, for it comes to all. Rather, death is a doorway, and now you know what lies beyond the portal.

We talked before you died - I hope you were right about what lies beyond what we know. I hope you are seeing with new eyes, and have reunited with those you love who have been waiting on the far side of the door. 

You and Maria were once inseparable. I hope the best part of her is there – the part that wasn’t buried under alcohol – and that you have patched up your differences and the two of you once again have each other’s backs. (Don’t get into too much trouble now, you hear???)

I love you.

I will miss you.

Sleep in Peace, my dear sister.