I know her birthday will not always be so completely intertwined with sadness and longing, but I imagine it may always be bittersweet. Sweet with the gift of knowing her for 22 years, hearing her laugh, seeing her beauty, feeling her love. And yet missing her tangible, bodily presence.
I am gathering with my mother, sister, brother and close friend/godmother of Elizabeth for these days preceding and bringing us to Elizabeth’s birthday. I knew in my head and my heart that this would be, and is, one of these heart-breaking-open times, her first birthday without her here to celebrate in person. But we are finding ways to celebrate and honor her.
We’ve been planning our tattoos, my sister creating a heart, with 2 Es woven into it, just as she is woven into our hearts. Preparing a tattooing ritual in her honor, in sacred circle, with food, flowers, candles… We each celebrate and mourn in our unique ways, some quietly, some alone, some with beloved community, some unaware of what we do until much later – all potent and important, all seen and acknowledged by Elizabeth herself. I know she is close by, I feel her presence today as I buy flowers for her, eat some of her favorite foods, walk in the Berkeley Hills with my mother, awed by the extraordinary beauty of this place, and taking Elizabeth with me, everywhere I go.
Happy birthday my beloved daughter. I trust that you are walking in beauty, surrounded by beauty, and feeling a radiance of love from all of us who knew you.
Right now I’m feeling energetic, hopeful and enthusiastic about being alive, and what’s to come. A few days ago was one of the most intensely emotional days I’ve had, ever. So many tears, such depth of sadness, to the point I couldn’t really use my left brain at all, couldn’t write, could just barely find my center… And while intense emotion doesn’t bother me in itself, I realize the fear that comes up is “what if it’s permanent?!” What if I’ll never be able to think clearly, get grounded, look at anything in my house without being reminded that Elizabeth is dead, and just keep crying all day…Thank goodness some part of me could see outside of this place just enough to remind me that nothing stays the same forever. Nothing. I believe whenever I’m in something that is uncomfortable, the real fear is that I don’t know how long it will last. The not knowing is the hardest part. That’s where faith comes in – trusting that this too shall pass, and even if it doesn’t, if I question my beliefs (i.e. is that true? can I absolutely know it’s true?), I realize I’m fine.
I’m learning that grief is so many things. It is sadness beyond imagining. It is crying so hard I feel like throwing up. It is rage so great I want to break glasses, plates, and big glass doors (haven’t done that yet!). It is memories so sweet and so sad at the same time – like on Thanksgiving, remembering Elizabeth sitting at the table with us last year, having just had her first chemo treatment, with her usual attitude – sweet, polite, gracious, and also a bit above us all, in her ladylike, queen Elizabeth stance. Remembering her making an entrance, so beautiful you’d never know she had cancer or was going through chemo. I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner with her every one of her 22 years, and this first one without her was hard. Grief can also be this comfort I feel today, trusting that all is ok. It can also be delight, warmth in my heart from small things, like a compliment or an invitation.
On the days when I wake with that depth of sadness, it feels like I might as well just embrace it and do some of the things I know would bring it on anyway. One day last week that meant attending to a few details like the simple act of finally cancelling Elizabeth’s Spotify account. It was heartbreaking – it also meant logging in to her Facebook account and then I was compelled to read her wall, and I felt her reading it, as though I was seeing the posts through her eyes along with my own, seeing all these diverse friends, parts of her life I wasn’t part of. At the same time, I couldn’t feel her presence around me as I usually can. Everything felt so close, so inside me, that I couldn’t get any perspective. Today I can see the same things, the photos, her clothes, and not be deluged with tears…so much is grace.
The tears, the sadness, the gratitude and the excitement – I never knew grief had such range.
I am surprised as I look back, at how few emails I sent out last November and December (2011) to my family and friends during Elizabeth’s early days and months of dealing with cancer. There was relatively little drama going on, and we both tried hard to keep our outer lives looking relatively unchanged. We were both so certain that she would be fine, would fully recover as predicted (85-90% chance of full recovery) and live a long life, that we really took it in stride (and perhaps were in denial to a degree) and wouldn’t allow ourselves the possibility of this being the last year of her life.
I’ve been thinking all this time that it was mainly Elizabeth who didn’t want her life to change, she didn’t want people to know, didn’t want people to worry, pity her, treat her differently, have negative thoughts that would impact her energetically from a distance…as I reflect, I see that I was very much aligned with Elizabeth, not simply supporting her, but really not wanting the attention for myself either. I didn’t want to be pitied, to have the negativity I imagined coming from others, to be judged. I watched my own judgements come up around cancer, as I imagined what others would be thinking – it’s always our own thoughts if we are truly honest. I became aware of unconscious beliefs I held: that people with cancer hadn’t made healthy choices, either physical or emotional ones; that the parents of children with cancer were somehow responsible; that there was some shame in having cancer, or having a child with cancer. It’s hard to even write this now, as it no longer feels true.
I remember when I was doing Reiki as a volunteer at the local hospital in Tucson two years before Elizabeth was diagnosed, synchronistically working with people with cancer in the same units where Elizabeth would be a patient a short time later! Some part of me was guided to volunteer there – not only working at the same hospital where she would be, but working with patients with cancer, including children, young adults her age, and people in the ICU. I’ll never forget the first time I encountered a baby, just 2 months old, being treated for cancer. As I watched the thought appear: “this baby is too young to have done anything to cause his cancer”, I realized painfully that that was the belief I’d been carrying for so long, that people with cancer are responsible for their illness through the choices they’ve made. Once it came to consciousness, I was able to work with it and that belief changed.
Over time, I’ve come to see that we can make choices that may make it more likely we’ll be healthy, but they will not change whatever our soul’s destiny is. I believe we have some free will, but I also believe we are not the ones in control. I believe anytime we have some major shift, such as a cancer diagnosis, it is a great opportunity to look deeply at what is not serving, how I am not aligned, not following my heart, and dive deep into healing from that place of awareness.
Elizabeth was very private during her fist round with cancer, from diagnosis in November 2011 to her last chemo in March, 2012. She only told her closest couple of friends and promised them to secrecy, not even telling the man she was dating. Her greatest concern, besides surviving, was living as normal a life as possible, and that no one treat her differently. She completed her junior year at the University of Arizona in the Honors College as an English/Creative Writing major, taking a full course load and getting straight A’s both semesters during her treatment. She did tell her professors, as she had to miss some days of school with each chemo treatment and occasionally for doctor appointments or tests.
Elizabeth Blue with her beloved cat Blue, with her own hair
She grieved deeply about losing her hair and some of the most dramatic and emotionally challenging days were spent trying to find her the PERFECT wig that looked so much like her real hair that not even her lover knew she had lost her hair. We spent several days searching every wig store and cancer organization in Tucson with no success, as most women who lose their hair are over sixty and don’t have long, brown hair with bangs! We then spent hours online before finding the website that sold (expensive) wigs in styles for younger women, and made of real hair, that looked very realistic. It also, of course, had to arrive before she lost all her hair, which she’d been told, accurately, would happen fourteen days after her first chemo.
Elizabeth – as beautiful as ever, with her wig
She did not write publicly and barely even privately, about having cancer until she completed her treatment and was declared in remission.
I found only a few emails I wrote to individual friends and family from that early time. I share them here.
November and December, 2011
11/13/12
to Alexandra
yes, we are feeling quite optimistic as well. so glad she’s had her first treatment, and today is feeling well, though still very swollen. she was in the best spirits I’ve seen her all week, and tomorrow we go wig shopping, so we’ll see how that goes! she’s determined to have hair that looks like her own, but we’ll see once she loses it if she’s as attached as she is now…
my main worries right now are to do with insurance and financial, but I’m just trusting that it will all work out. the wig may be a big expense, but we’ll see what we can find! 1st stop is the American Cancer Society, as they sometimes have gently used wigs free…
much love
L 11/19/11
to a friend who is a social worker at the Cancer Center:
thanks for writing – yes, that is my daughter Elizabeth, who is 21 and was diagnosed a week and a half ago with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s been a huge shock, of course, and she started chemo last Friday, and is doing really well. The prognosis is excellent, with only one lymph node affected (mediastinal), and she was back in school 2 days after chemo…
I think the emotional part of it is immense and is hitting each of us in different ways – it’s strange since right now things seem fairly normal, but at the same time not normal at all! Elizabeth’s hugely concerned with the fact that she’s going to lose her hair soon, and doesn’t want her friends and everyone in her life to know that she has cancer – she’s aware also of how attached she is to her looks and is already able to see some of the gifts and benefits of going through this, which is amazing…So she’s ordered some very expensive wigs and is hoping one will look real enough to be able to go to yoga (unfortunatelyit wouldn’t stay on well enough, and she chose to forgo yoga, one of her great loves, during her treatment, rather than go to class without hair) and go dancing in. I’m hoping both that she’s going to feel better with that solution, and also that she can make peace with losing her hair and be ok with that for this period of time…and not need to hide any part of herself, moving into a deeper experience of life.
12/2/11
Hi everyone,
thank you all so much for your prayers, good wishes, emails and phone calls – they are hugely appreciated and I believe making a real difference.
Elizabeth is sleeping next to me while receiving her 2nd chemo treatment. She is doing extremely well, both in terms of her past three weeks with relatively few side effects from the treatment, and in terms of the measurable results we heard today. The blood work from today showed a huge, wonderful response to her first treatment, the doctor and NP who are working with her were very pleased. The main indicator of the tumor has already decreased to normal levels, (meaning that they are certain the tumor has already shrunk considerably) and all her blood counts are normal or above normal, which means her body is not only responding well, but also her immune system is strong and healthy.
She has mostly felt well, with some fatigue and not great appetite, but she’s managed to eat well, getting back to her usual weight and looks wonderful.
She is hoping all this means she may have only a total of 6 treatments, as they’d said 6 – 8, and no radiation, which is a (small) possibility once the chemo is done. She is already doing some wonderful writing about all this…and continues to have a great attitude, seeing this as a rite of passage, which is amazing to me. (Seeing it in other ways as well, i know!)
Please continue to send your positive thoughts, prayers and energy. Thank you.
This eulogy was written by Samantha Salazar, Elizabeth’s best friend for the last 4 years of her life. They lived together for a time, then far apart for a year while Elizabeth was in Seattle – I know she missed Samantha deeply during that time, and finally in studio apartments next door to each other. As you will see, they were soul mates, sharing many gifts beyond words, and sharing a common gift with words as well!
This brings another view into who Elizabeth was, and the beauty of her best friend and their friendship:
“First, I’d like to thank Lucia, Greg, Julianna and Jane for being so kind to me and truly appreciating the friendship Elizabeth and I had. I’m inextricably tied to all of you now, and very grateful to be so.
Trying to figure out what to say today has been one of the most draining and difficult things I’ve ever had to do and what I realized is that these mechanisms of my body, mind and language are too ill-equipped to portray with justice the gravity of the loss that I feel.
Elizabeth Blue was my soul mate. When I met her, I was blown away by the bizarre and beautiful world that was wrapped up in this tiny whimsical creature. Everything about Elizabeth was unique. Everything about Elizabeth was complex. She wasn’t only beautiful, she was so captivatingly beautiful that no eye could avoid her, and once she had hooked you, you were blown away by a beauty which was at once confident, sultry, innocent, inviting, and biting. I’ve always described her as a siren of sorts, I used to tell friends, “wait until you meet my girl Elizabeth Blue, you’ll fall in love with her, everyone does.” And I was never proven wrong. We have all been in love with Elizabeth Blue.
Elizabeth Beautiful. Elizabeth Bizarre. She had stories which grabbed you by the throat and choked you until tears ran from your eyes. She loved to dance and was infamous for a move she patented which we called the worm. She would write never–ending canons about CATS and sing them all day long. She was a muse to photographers and painters. She wrote poetry and developed complex character voices which reflected the subject matter to perform them with. She drew hilariously uncanny images of human-nosed alien cats, the queen of hearts, and bear shaped balloons. She listened to Angela Davis speeches as she cleaned house and walked around town. She read constantly about social justice and feminism. She loved the Black Panthers. She wanted a white kitten to name Lil Elizabeth. She cherished her own cat Blue over most anything else in life, and he her.
She was the most loyal and dedicated friend I or anyone could fathom. We spent countless hours milling over ideas for our project of creating a network of sisterhood amongst Tucson’s women, a group we appropriately called the Grown Ass Women, or GAW. The tenets of GAW were that we understood it’s hard to be a female bodied individual in today’s society and through sharing experiences, providing emotional support and friendship, curbing girl-on-girl envy and hatred, we can make it a little easier and safer. We wanted to show girls it’s okay to speak out, you must be confident, and each and every one of us is sickening and strong. Although we never got to take GAW to the heights we imagined, one of the most interesting things about this experience for me in particular has been the number of times I have heard from friends and strangers alike that they mourn my loss with me because when they would see she and I out and about, they saw all of the things we wanted to portray, that our friendship inspired them through our confidence, loyalty, and love. I know this would make her so happy to know.
I can’t talk about all of the lessons and character which my tiny wonder imbued within me, it would take as much time as we were friends. But there is one thing I’d like to share with everyone today. Within our friendship, we always tried to make a practice of turning negatives into positives, and that is what I would like to try to do right now. Know this, the passing of Elizabeth Blue is a tragedy no doubt, but there are some wonderful things to come of it. There has been a phenomena occurring since Elizabeth went into hospice which some of my friends and I have talked about and referred to as “The EB Effect;” 2012 has been by far and away, one of the most difficult years for the people I know. But as of recently, I have seen a change in the people who surrounded Elizabeth and loved her and cared for her. For some, it had been a surge of creativity, a revitalization of their artistic identity. Some have written songs about her. For others, it has been the security of finding a home, or a job, or deciding to go to school, the opportunity to go on tour or star in plays and movies. Some of my friends have found companionship with very special people. And I have come out of this situation with unshakeable confidence and urgency to keep reaching out to people, keep being strong for people, and to never hold back any amount of love. Even though Elizabeth has left this earth, I know she left knowing with a certainty that I loved her, that she was the best friend I’ve ever had. Our whole friendship, we dedicated so much energy to letting the other know how much we loved each other, there were no words unspoken, no feelings left to express. And I hope it provides some comfort to you to know, that Elizabeth being the celestial, other-worldly, alien goddess that she was, seemed to know her whole life that something like this would happen to her. She was born an old soul and she was too big of a person to be contained in any human body. She documented herself through countless journals, short stories, voice recordings, videos, poems, planners, and pictures. Before she went into the hospital for surgery, she confessed stories to me which she had never told anyone, made me a painting which I had been asking for for years, and left a note on my door in the morning just to say hello. She was at peace when I visited her thereafter, and had the depth of the universe in her eyes. I lost the person that understood me the most, and the person I understood the best and I do know this: Elizabeth WOULD want you to cry, because it’s flattering. But don’t let those tears only be of loss, let them be tears of enlightenment and appreciation and inspiration. Let them water whatever arid planes lie within your soul and carry on.” ~ Samantha Salazar
Luminous Blue 