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Leora’s funeral service – I finally watched it

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

Just when I thought I knew myself so well…

I have a MySpace – okay, I have THREE MySpaces – for three different purposes.

I have my personal friend page and my business page, where I sell my products (www.myspace.com/boobease).The most recent page is the newest phase of my grieving process. I didn’t know it was, but [my higher power I choose for simplicity's sake to call] God led me to it. I have been compelled for the better part of the last four years to raise awareness that Leiomyosarcoma (the cancer that killed my daughter) exists. Because it is a rare cancer, it does not receive funding for research like the more common cancers do. Those of us who have been affected by this disease are driven to help find a cure.I suddenly became ready, about a month ago, to post my page. I called it “Leora’s Legacy”, and gave a little background and info. WOW- what a response the page has received!

During this conversation with Fran, I knew right away that God was doing what God does best – working through other people. If God was sitting across from me, he would’ve said, “DUH!” It WAS divine. This power is something I have never experienced before. I feel a connection to the whole Universe in a way I never imagined. This “power” does not belong to me. It is coming through me. I blocked the flow at first, because it was so powerful that it frightened me. I am now making a conscious effort to let it flow. My mind is now calm, and all of the ideas I have been rolling around in my head are becoming complete.I am asking for guidance through this stage of healing. I didn’t realize how much I had stopped feeling until this hit me. Part of the trauma of losing my daughter, I’m sure must have caused certain parts of me to shut down somewhat. It wasn’t enough for anyone who knows me to notice. It wasn’t even enough for me to notice myself. In fact, I didn’t realize this until just now as I am writing this (ahhhh, the power of writing…) I have been just as loving and affectionate as always. I am still attentive, and open. All this time we all thought I was doing so well after I lost Leora, who would’ve known that I was so different on the inside? I was Me, only a different Me – but not THAT different.

These things I “could not do” have turned out to be the things that are suddenly accelerating my healing. When I posted the page on MySpace, I was immediately befriended by people with this rare and cureless cancer, and their friends & families. I couldn’t help myself. I was compelled to love them back, and I can’t stop. 

So how do we know when we are truly healing? Maybe it is when we are willing to risk it all and love someone we know we may lose, just because it would make life so much more empty if we didn’t do it. And that, as Fran said, must be divine.