In memoriam
ETA: I am making this open to everyone, not just my flist, so if you know someone who was a friend of hers, feel free to point them here. The same will apply to FB people.
This was published on FB by Lisa McLeod, and I share it here with her permission. tx_cronopio was a lovely human being, vibrant, caring, intelligent. All of us who knew her have lost someone special.
This is long.
My friend Pat died on December 11, 2021 … I knew her almost entirely from online communities, and we bonded over academia, fandom, and political orientation. For years, I have been so angry about how the world treated her - she was brilliant and had a huge heart. She was a natural teacher - I mean, her online handles often included “Cronopio”, which turned out to be a sort of human/being in the writing of Julio Cortázar, an Argentinian who moved to France. Pat was a Texan, a committed Texan, like Ann Richards. She traveled! I don’t even know where all she traveled - I know she spent several months in India, probably as part of administration for a study abroad trip. She was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. She loved music - Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson, of course, but also all kinds of 70s singer-songwriter stuff that we both loved from our childhood/youth. She loved dogs, so much, and always wanted to adopt the ones that no one else would take. She didn’t regret this policy, although she had a lot of heartbreak for the elderly ones, the troublesome ones. She got to know them and did what she could to see that they got to enjoy the time they had with her. I’ll just name Zelda and Zeke here, as they were the last two. I won’t recount the heartbreaking story of how she lost them, as I don’t know all the details and that’s not what this is about. I will say they were very lucky to have been plucked from the shelter by such a big-hearted dog lady.
She should have had a long and happy career in university teaching. However, very smart women who speak their minds don’t always get that opportunity. I don’t know all of these details, either, but I am certain she deserved that long career at least as much, and even more than many of the white men I know who have screwed up and screwed up and not even known it, or considered it a funny little foible, and kept their job and their retirement and even family around to make their last days comfortable. But that’s another story.
Pat loved camping, real camping, in a tent; it was hard for her to find folks to camp in TX with who understood what camping really meant - it doesn’t mean sleeping in an RV, for example. We had such plans for a camping trip that got scuttled, by her father’s health problems, then depression - first me, then her, then me again, then money problems. Then COVID. Fuck COVID.
She loved reading, obviously. She loved watching the LOTR movies. I loved Pat so much I would have even watched them with her. I was counting the weeks until March or April so I could make a trip out to TX and we could go camping - real camping! Hoping COVID and workloads would cooperate.
Last spring and summer she got sick and finally figured out it was COVID and then long COVID; she would get out of the hospital and then had to go back in. She fell and hurt herself, then had to go back in. She hated it. She lived by herself, was as bad as I am about understanding the stupid world of smart phones and so getting information was hard. Finally we heard that she’d gone into hospice care.
When I had finally given my last grades I made a last-minute decision to go sit with her in hospice. Because her family was more or less estranged and her friends were scattered to the four corners, etc. I just wanted her to have a friendly presence, even if she was non-responsive. She died the day before I would have gotten there. Probably a kindness, really, but I’m so sorry to have missed that chance.
Her dying and her death left me so sad and angry. But I’m almost ready to focus on the happy memories, the rich lives and friendships. The good times and great dogs and the jokes that had me laughing out loud, really, in front of my computer.
We had plans to be irritating crones together on yearly occasions; to take trips with Road Scholar and make life hard for mansplainers and bigots. I miss her online, I miss having plans. I am so sorry not to have been a better friend, but mainly I want to hold her up and say, Pat was so great.
She was indeed.
This was published on FB by Lisa McLeod, and I share it here with her permission. tx_cronopio was a lovely human being, vibrant, caring, intelligent. All of us who knew her have lost someone special.
This is long.
My friend Pat died on December 11, 2021 … I knew her almost entirely from online communities, and we bonded over academia, fandom, and political orientation. For years, I have been so angry about how the world treated her - she was brilliant and had a huge heart. She was a natural teacher - I mean, her online handles often included “Cronopio”, which turned out to be a sort of human/being in the writing of Julio Cortázar, an Argentinian who moved to France. Pat was a Texan, a committed Texan, like Ann Richards. She traveled! I don’t even know where all she traveled - I know she spent several months in India, probably as part of administration for a study abroad trip. She was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. She loved music - Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson, of course, but also all kinds of 70s singer-songwriter stuff that we both loved from our childhood/youth. She loved dogs, so much, and always wanted to adopt the ones that no one else would take. She didn’t regret this policy, although she had a lot of heartbreak for the elderly ones, the troublesome ones. She got to know them and did what she could to see that they got to enjoy the time they had with her. I’ll just name Zelda and Zeke here, as they were the last two. I won’t recount the heartbreaking story of how she lost them, as I don’t know all the details and that’s not what this is about. I will say they were very lucky to have been plucked from the shelter by such a big-hearted dog lady.
She should have had a long and happy career in university teaching. However, very smart women who speak their minds don’t always get that opportunity. I don’t know all of these details, either, but I am certain she deserved that long career at least as much, and even more than many of the white men I know who have screwed up and screwed up and not even known it, or considered it a funny little foible, and kept their job and their retirement and even family around to make their last days comfortable. But that’s another story.
Pat loved camping, real camping, in a tent; it was hard for her to find folks to camp in TX with who understood what camping really meant - it doesn’t mean sleeping in an RV, for example. We had such plans for a camping trip that got scuttled, by her father’s health problems, then depression - first me, then her, then me again, then money problems. Then COVID. Fuck COVID.
She loved reading, obviously. She loved watching the LOTR movies. I loved Pat so much I would have even watched them with her. I was counting the weeks until March or April so I could make a trip out to TX and we could go camping - real camping! Hoping COVID and workloads would cooperate.
Last spring and summer she got sick and finally figured out it was COVID and then long COVID; she would get out of the hospital and then had to go back in. She fell and hurt herself, then had to go back in. She hated it. She lived by herself, was as bad as I am about understanding the stupid world of smart phones and so getting information was hard. Finally we heard that she’d gone into hospice care.
When I had finally given my last grades I made a last-minute decision to go sit with her in hospice. Because her family was more or less estranged and her friends were scattered to the four corners, etc. I just wanted her to have a friendly presence, even if she was non-responsive. She died the day before I would have gotten there. Probably a kindness, really, but I’m so sorry to have missed that chance.
Her dying and her death left me so sad and angry. But I’m almost ready to focus on the happy memories, the rich lives and friendships. The good times and great dogs and the jokes that had me laughing out loud, really, in front of my computer.
We had plans to be irritating crones together on yearly occasions; to take trips with Road Scholar and make life hard for mansplainers and bigots. I miss her online, I miss having plans. I am so sorry not to have been a better friend, but mainly I want to hold her up and say, Pat was so great.
She was indeed.