Edited by author 02-12-2002 08:36 AM
 Hi All
I was fortunate enough to have been able to take part in Menya's care team. This message board (Pete, you rock) has been a great help over the last year. I don't think I've added anything though, so here goes. I made this addition to the blue book last summer, and it's about last Feb 13th, the day Menya died.

This is written months later of the day that Menya died. When I stepped off the elevator that evening to visit, the ward felt different. Ian met me in the hall and asked if I would go into the quiet room with him for a moment. I could see his news on his face, mingled with the desperation to do the job of informing people right. I stood my ground outside her room and asked him to just tell me what I already knew. She had passed away barely 10 minutes before, that Pete was with her right now, that he'd called her family and said Menya had taken a turn but not how sharply because that's just not the sort of thing you hear over the phone. I told him he'd done very well, that the news had been perfectly delivered.

I stepped inside the curtain drawn around her bed to see Pete kneeling beside her, holding her hand, looking at her face. His eyes held a mixture of relief, longing and love. In the coming hours many friends and family came by. With the generous and competent care of one of the nurses (and while once again listening to "Woodland Harp") I helped to change Menya into some clothing picked out earlier in the week for just that purpose; black skirt, burgundy batik top. Brushed hair, new lip-gloss. Perfume. I left her with a silver chain with an amber apple pendant - apples being the symbol of the Norse goddess Idun, the eternal maiden - I felt that was somewhat appropriate. I was amazed at the temperature changes in her body, at a newly added weight, but most of all by the look of peace and total joy her face had settled into. Seeing her then dressed in her own cloths was extremely important. She looked the perfect and powerful queen. There was a strong sense of clan around her, which I will always feel privileged to have been a part of. The funeral home was called and her father and brother waited with her to attend her out of the building; Menya's body therefore skipped the standard trip to the hospital morgue. As a devout non-conformist, I know this would have pleased her.

Some felt her presence, others her absence, but I think all felt the beginning of a hole in our lives that would be made by Menya's death. How we fill that, I think, will be a reflection of all she taught us and of our love for her.