Last Wednesday I had a very odd experience, and since I have banished personal life posts from my own blog, I’ll blog about it here. Last Wednesday (the astronomical end of summer), I went to the funeral of a family friend, a woman who was possibly the nicest and most helpful of the many non-family volunteers who helped take care of my mother when she was dying from ALS. Her name was Sharon Norgaard, which won’t likely mean anything to you, but it will some day to Google.

The experience was very strange because it was rather like going back in time to see my mother’s funeral from an outsider’s perspective. I was in the same chuch for the memorial service part, with many of the same people attending. Eulogies were very similar in tone to those for my mother, to the extent I remember my mother’s funeral Sharon’s oldest daughter is a friend of mine from high school, but she was 3 years behind me, so she’s onlya year older than I was then. The minister even mentioned Sharon’s caring for my mother as a particularly noteworthy example of her generosity.

Sharon, like my mother, got the benefits and problems of a long decline. She first had her breast cancer nearly 15 years ago, put it into remission through treatment and, what seems likely for her, sheer force of will. But it came back, as the Grim Reaper sometimes does, and wouldn’t be denied this time. Sharon was a fighter, so she rode the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) as often as she could, and personally raised over $80,000 for cancer research. Equally importantly, she passed on her strength to her children, who all rode the PMC with her once or more, and were sad but stable at the gathering after the interment. (Yankee/WASP values of stoicism . . . )