Yesterday, Susan Spencer-Wendel, author of Until I Say Goodbye, passed away from ALS. She was 47 years old and leaves behind her husband and three children.
I never met Susan. But I know her story. Both from reading her book and from losing someone I loved to ALS.
Though she was dying, Susan was able to live out her last years in amazing fashion. She traveled the world, reconnected with her birth mother, saw the Northern Lights, gave her family and friends amazing memories upon which to cling now that she has gone. As she put it, "I cannot lift my arms to feed myself or hug my children. My muscles are dying, and they cannot return. I will never again be able to move my tongue enough to clearly say, 'I love you.' Swiftly, surely, I am dying. But I am alive today."
Susan offered a bit of insight into what Mr. Franklin must have thought and felt as he was saying goodbye. This woman in Florida, whom I never met and frankly with whom I probably didn't have much in common, offered me a bit of peace five years after I said my own goodbye. For that, I am thankful.
Please keep Susan's family and her friends in your prayers. May God be with them all.
1 comment:
This gave me chills. I'm glad that she was able to do so much in her final time here on Earth.
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