Jill's Story

I "met" Lissa in the summer of 1990.  She lived in Houston, Texas, and I lived in Elk River, Minnesota.  Through a stroke of wonderful luck (or was it fate?), we became pen pals.  From another pen friend, I had gotten a "friendship book" (scraps of paper stapled together upon which you could write your name, address, and some of your interests - then send it along to someone else).  Lissa had entered her information, and I decided to write to her.

It turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done in my life.

We exchanged letters for a while.  Every time I saw an envelope from her in my mailbox, it gave me such great excitement and joy.  Eventually, we added phone calls to our letters.  This was back in the day when long-distance calling actually cost money - one month, my phone bill was $400!

She moved to Minnesota in 1991.  On Halloween, a blizzard began which lasted about three days and left us with three feet of snow.  I still remember her asking me if that happened *every* year.

We lived with my parents for a short time before getting an apartment together.

In December 1995, Lissa wanted to move back to Texas to be closer to her aging parents.  We packed up our stuff, our two cats, our Beta fish named Benny, and began the trek to Tyler, Texas.  Her two brothers came north to help us move and all went well until we neared Oklahoma City.  The moving truck broke down, and we wound up at a truck stop in OKC.  While her brothers worked to get the truck fixed, Lissa and I hightailed it to Texas.

Our life in Texas had its ups and downs, as anyone's life does.  But we remained strong in our best friendship/sisterhood.

She met someone online with whom she would fall in love and marry.  He lived in Michigan so she moved there to be with him, and I moved back to Minnesota.

We started up with letters and phone calls again.  She and her husband Dan came to Minnesota a couple times, most notably in 2005 when they were witnesses for my marriage to my husband Eli.  Eli and I went to visit them in Michigan a few years later.

A couple years ago, I thought about going to visit her again.  It had been too long since I'd spent time with her in person.  But I never got the chance.

In mid-February 2023, she was diagnosed with cancer.  While she was in the hospital for testing and pain management, she contracted Covid.  She was sedated and placed on a respirator.  She never regained consciousness and died on March 6, 2023.  She was 54 years old.

When I heard the news, my world shattered.  It was 5 a.m. and I just started moaning "NoNoNoNo."  Eventually, my anguish transcended words, and all I could do was howl my pain.

Around the Christmas holiday in 2023, Amazon aired a commercial that showed three elderly women sitting at the base of a sledding hill.  As an instrumental version of The Beatles' "In My Life" played, these women watched the activity with expressions of melancholy. One of the women ordered seat cushions, which she presented to her friends, and they were again able to experience flying down a hill on a sled.

At some point, I finally figured out that the reason I was so affected by that ad was because it showed me a future I would never have with Lissa.  We should have been able to sit side by side as old women, reflecting on our lives together. We should have had more decades in which to make new memories.  But that desire came to a sudden, painful end on March 6.

After her death, I had used the phrase "silver lining" multiple times.  There was something about the phrase that resonated with me.  When someone dies, people want a "sign" from their loved one - seeing a white feather or a cardinal.  I chose the phrase "silver lining" and was almost astounded by the number of times I heard or read those words - on a TV commercial, spoken by a coworker to another coworker, in a book, in places I would never expect to hear or to see it.

My friend Janet (who had also been friends with Lissa for over 30 years) and I wanted to do something to honor Lissa - to keep her memory alive and to share her light with more corners of the world.  We knew we wanted to use "silver lining" in our project, but we were stumped as to what form her legacy would take.

Each year, Lissa chose a focus word.  Her word for 2023 was "rebuild" - and she unfortunately didn't get to see it through.  Janet and I have taken up the mantle from her, choosing "rebuild" as our word for 2024.  As she and I were noodling around with ideas for our project, she mentioned something about helping people rebuild from tragedy.  As soon as I heard that, a lightbulb went off, and I knew we had found the ideal focal point.

She was my best friend for 33+ years. I had no birth siblings, but I considered her my sister in all but blood.  She was a good, kind, compassionate person, and it's not fair that she was taken from this life at such a young age.  I still have moments where I'll be going about my day and I'll suddenly remember she's gone, and it's a horrible jolt.

I'm not okay with it, and I'll never be okay with it. But I knew I needed to do something to make sense of her loss and reaching out to help other people seemed to be the perfect outlet.  I needed to turn pain into purpose.  I think she would be glad to know that she's continuing to inspire and to uplift people even in her absence.  She was such a brilliant light in my world, and it's my honor to share her light with others.