Long before she died 3 days ago at age 45, Lisa Bonchek Adams wrote about her death.
Her post is typical Lisa. Tackling the tough topics. Simple direct words. Strong opinions about how she wants to be remembered. It begins:
When I die don’t think you’ve “lost” me.
I’ll be right there with you, living on in the memories we have made.
When I die don’t say I “fought a battle.” Or “lost a battle.” Or “succumbed.”
When I die don’t say I “passed.”
That sounds like I walked by you in the corridor at school.
When I die tell the world what happened.
No euphemisms, no flowery language, no metaphors.
She wrote to the end, publishing an update on her blog just a few days before she died.
Remember me and let my words live on.
Her death was covered by media including TIME Magazine and the Boston Globe. And her words are a powerful legacy.
Thousands knew Lisa as the name and story attached to metastatic breast cancer. She made a huge difference in how people understand and think about it. She inspired, she educated, she told her truths, often in tweets: 176,000 of them.
Beyond the incalculable loss to Lisa’s 3 children, her death is devastating for her large, loyal and loving community of friends, many who never met Lisa in person, including the writer of this exquisite post explaining their virtual relationship and Lisa’s impact.
I met Lisa on Twitter a few years before she developed metastatic cancer in 2012. Twitter was in its infancy in 2009, So maybe it’s not surprising that two breast cancer survivors, one from California and one from Connecticut, both with double mastectomies, managed to find each other and naturally found common ground.
In one way we were polar opposites. Lisa was an early riser, I’m a night owl, prone to late late nights on the computer. Often Lisa’s first tweet of the day from Connecticut was my cue that it was time for me to go to sleep. Almost always it was the same message:
Remember me and let my words live on.
All of us who #rememberLisa will never forget her words, or her.
(To read more of Lisa’s words, here is a link to her blog)
Why is this still happening! How many more walks and runs and ribbons will it take. When I was diagnosed in 1981, I cried for my young daughters and the realization of what I might now pass along to them. My oncologist comforted me by telling me by the time it could be an issue for them, it would no longer be.
Well it is. We all spent the day following my daughter’s law school graduation at St Vincent’s Hospital in New York while she had a biopsy. Thankfully, it was benign.
So, it is just as much an issue 34 years later for my young granddaughter.
Rest in peace, Lisa.
It is hard to accept that it’s still happening for the next generations; and it gets harder as the years pass to continue seeing the loss of so many young women to this disease. What you touched regarding the walks and ribbons is an important issue. More of the funding for research needs to go toward metastatic disease, which currently receives a fraction of the funding. That’s a tragedy in itself.