Remembering Cathy

A week ago last Friday, a high school classmate of mine, Cathy Atchison, died after a long battle with cancer. My sister informed me that the funeral was scheduled for Wednesday.

Almost instantly, I decided that I would go. I don’t know why. I hadn’t seen Cathy in many years, so long ago that I can’t remember. Was it our 20-year class reunion? No, I don’t think so. The ten-year? Not sure. Her sister, Lisa, lived up the street from my parents for a number of years with her husband and family. I know Cathy visited Lisa on a few occasions; did I see her then? I can’t remember.

But I needed to go. I didn’t know her as well as others did (and I obviously didn’t keep in touch with her). We sang in the same choir for three years and had one or two classes together. That was it.

Why did I need to go? Did I feel guilty for not going to another classmate’s funeral two years ago? I knew Les better than I knew Cathy. But I made a feeble excuse for missing his funeral – something about misunderstanding the date or time or…

Maybe I needed to go because Cathy and I were the same age. She suffered through a long and often painful illness, going through it with grace and humor, maintaining her compassion for others and caring more about the well-being of her family, friends,co-workers, and other cancer patients she’d come to know than her own.

Listening to the pastor during the service and talking with friends afterwards (a strange combination of sadness, laughter, and reunion), I learned that she was initially diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it, but the cancer returned, spreading to her brain, where the doctors found 34 individual tumors. She beat that, too, thanks to aggressive treatments. Unfortunately, the cancer was also aggressive. It spread throughout her body – in more places than one could count. But treatments and medicine and prayer and faith and hope and love chased away the tumors yet again.

Finally, after seeming to be healthy and in good spirits (the latter, as usual) up until a few weeks ago, her body succumbed. After nearly ten years of fighting courageously, the God who watched over her and protected her and loved her all of her life, called her home.

Cathy died on Friday, May 18, 2007. She was two months shy of her 41st birthday.

I went to her funeral, hoping to see classmates who I’ve lost touch with over the years and whose names I barely remember. I needed to see them in order to remember Cathy. I needed to see Janine and Missy and Michele and Angie and Keri and Jan and several others who I faintly recognized but couldn’t quite remember.

I needed to remember Cathy, in order to remember myself. To remember that, once upon a time, she encouraged me to be all that I could and to live life to its fullest.

I left the church, and as I walked across the parking lot in the fading twilight, I promised Cathy that I wouldn’t just continue to exist. I would live.