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Leora’s funeral service – I finally watched it

March 8, 2007 on 2:52 pm | In LMS | No Comments

 

It’s been almost four years now.

Today I took the mini tape that Echo’s mom gave me of Leora’s service to the video store and had it converted to DVD.

It is an hour long. I came home, put it in the computer and watched it by myself.

This tape has been all over my house. Mostly, it has been in this little basket by my front door, where we keep the mail. I guess it was a good place to keep it in case I had some spur of the moment bug up my ass and decided to take it with and have the DVD made. Lately, it has been sitting right on the base of my monitor, staring at me.

On Monday, I made a list of all the phonecalls I have been neglecting – dental appointments for the boys, Sky’s glasses, doctor for Travis, paint job for my car, oh yeah – and find someone who can convert THE TAPE to DVD…

Every so often, somebody asks me if I have done it yet, and I say, “No, but I will soon.” Tara was the latest one. Coincidentally, I actually had called and found a place the day she asked. It still took two days to get it there, but I have done it! BIG step.

So there I was today, holding my breath, waiting to see all the things that I almost immediately forgot so long ago.

To my complete surprise, there were messages from many of you kids and other people who were there too. The first face was Scott Botting, our own personal family cop- Margate’s finest. There were Leora’s wish grantors, Bruce And Nancy, our channel 4 news friends, Lynne and Sean, the lawyer team and families from Tripp Scott, who helped us so much. I haven’t seen these faces in so long.

Then there were the messages from the kids. Dear god. I thought my heart would explode. So many of you were so full of emotion, you couldn’t speak, or you couldn’t finish the message. As the camera frequently pans around the sea of pink, I see faces I love, faces I don’t recognize, many faces I have met since that day, and some faces I had forgotten. I saw pain and love and smiles.

As I watched all of this, plus my best friends talking, then myself talking (on and on and on…), and the girls who tried to gather themselves together long enough to read the poems they had written, I cried harder than I have cried for a long time. But it wasn’t that gut-wrenching, agonizing crying that came so often back then. I cried over the feeling of overwhelming love and true, raw emotion that I could feel just watching this. It took me right back there to the time when we all hung onto each other, and nobody held anything back. We all felt everything that day.

I realize that I have recently come to a new place in my grief and my healing that made me ready to watch the service. I just couldn’t do it up to now. I was afraid to go back there. After the service, I literally forgot almost everything about that day. I honestly don’t remember the day after she died, the week between then and her service, of most of the first several months after she was gone. To be honest, my memory sucks! It’s never been the same since then. They say it’s trauma, and it’s common. It gets frustrating at times, but I guess it’s a protective thing. I mean, who could really stand to remember all that?

I am mentally exhausted after my viewing today. I did all I could for one day. Tomorrow I will see if I will be able to burn copies, and I will post a bulletin to let you all know.

I did actually have a point through all my ramblings here.

To all of you who were there through it all, I love you, and I thank you. You are so incredibly courageous.

To those who couldn’t be there when it was happening, be glad you can remember Leora the way she was. I am thankful that some people remember her before cancer.

To those of you who were there because of her cancer, bless you for the often heartbreaking choice you have made in life to help people like us.

To those who took her loss, and bettered yourself because of it, I am so very proud of you.

To those who fell back because of her loss, find a way to pull yourself up. Use her as an example of how to live. No one had it harder than she did, and she never gave up. Your body and your life are a gift. Treasure them.

To those who never knew Leora, there are a million stories out there about her, and how she fought to be happy all her life, then she fought to the death to live. She inspired us all, she made us laugh, and she made us all realize what really was important.

Just for a minute, we all had one heart, one mind, and one soul we shared with each other, with no walls and no defenses. We need to remember that feeling, because that is one of the many gifts this child gave us.

We need to tell her story over and over for the hundreds of others who are still suffering. The world needs to know Leora. They need to know that our enemy is Leiomyosarcoma. It killed my daughter, and it is killing others. But it isn’t killing enough people to get attention. So it is up to us to be Leora’s voice now that she cannot speak.

I have to believe that everything happens for a reason. Her death cannot be for nothing. As much of a lesson as we all learned about life from her, there is a higher purpose to her death as well. LMS has always been just a handful of adults who die. It never got attention. People pay attention when children die. Leora is the face of Leiomyosarcoma that I want to show the public. Funding is needed for research, and those suffering need a cure. They need Leora and her story to save them.

We know what happens to the friends and families left behind, and WE WILL NEVER FORGET.

I will be starting fundraising events this year. Any of you who are interested, let me know.

Much, much love, Jeri