| Kate died 2 AM Saturday morning on September 29, 2012. Even
though she was slipping away, it was still unbelievable how fast it
happened. Friday morning, she was a little confused, but no more
so than she had been the prior week. She had breakfast, chatted a
bit. By noon time, she would respond if you said her name, but
only to say yes, not to answer any questions. By dinner time, she was showing all the signs of
a body shutting down and was unresponsive to anything but touch.
Weird things go through your head at that point. All I could think
about was that the Radiation Oncologist had said she had four to six
weeks to live exactly four weeks to the day before. At 2 in the
morning, with Patric at the end of the bed near her feet and me lying
beside her, she stopped breathing. |
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| It really had started two months earlier with an
unexpected seizure just before we were heading out to California to
spread the ashes of Kate's father at Catalina Island and visit with her
family. Kate seemed pretty dazed and, unlike her prior seizure,
didn't bounce back from it. I was on the verge of cancelling the
trip; Kate said, in typical fashion, she'd rather die than not go.
So we did. |
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| Kate wanted the fastest, easiest way to Catalina for the four of us
(her, myself, Brie and her sister Anne; Will was in Acton working and
taking care of the dogs). So we rented a helicopter and flew from
San Pedro to Avalon in about 15 minutes, flying over the same path
Kate's family would take in their sailboat but making the trip about 30
times faster. We took a full tour of the Island. Kate was
constrained to a wheelchair most of the time, but there weren't that
many places you needed to walk. The interior of Catalina was dry
and desert like and sported a variety of animals; a fox, raven, and
squirrel that were unique to Catalina, and Bison, who had flourished
after they had been moved there for filming a movie and then left to
fend for themselves. Near the end of the tour, we visited the area that Kate's family had moored in every year
when she was younger and scattered Hap's
ashes in one of the two coves, called Shark Harbor. Then we drove
back to Avalon, had icecream, and took the helicopter back. |
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Shark harbor on the left of the "whale tail," Little Harbor on
the right |
Brie and Anne head for a secluded spot to scatter Hap's ashes |
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| And there was family. Liz Stuart came up with her daughters
Caroline and Emily, along with Lisa and Bruce, Matthew, Cindy and Lulu,
Anne and Nick. The girls took advantage of the pool; Bill
took advantage of his beer. Brie took advantage of being 21 and
drank a fruity-little-drink-'cause-she-can't-shoot-whiskey. Kate
had to nap a lot and was unsteady on her feet, but enjoyed seeing
everyone. |
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| We flew back after a week, but Kate wasn't improving, leading
to a middle of the night MRI Wednesday. Friday, the Radiation
Oncologist, a very capable women named Dr. McKee who had supervised many
of the stereotactic sessions on Kate, gave us the news that there were
five new tumors in Kate's brain, and that radiation was no longer an
option given the number of sessions Kate had already endured.
McKee started weeping when she said that we had a four to six week
timeline, which I have to believe is unusual given how many times she
must give people that news, and was a indication of how brave Kate had
been the entire time and how much McKee thought of her. We had,
just a
few weeks earlier, been talking about a year or two before anything
seriously bad would occur with the head Oncologist, so it was a shock.
But that's cancer, a disease that is different for each person and is
impossible to predict.
Kate took it stoically, and that four weeks gave us a little time to prepare. I threw a
surprise birthday party for her on September 2nd, inviting over her DBH
tennis friends. |
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| Her family and her cousin Liz, who had been close enough to be a
third sister, flew out to visit. Many of her friends stopped by as
well, including Wendy Carpenter, Lori Dyre, Chester Li and his children
Sabina and Cadin, the Friedman's, Sheryl Fox, Alyssa Held, and Debbie
Clough (who stopped over many times, and actually sat with Kate that
Friday night to allow Brie, Will and I to have dinner together).
Many others brought over food, flowers, and other things to help out.
And the minister of Kate's church, Barbara Aiello, stopped by several
times as well and established a real bond with Kate even in the short
time she had left. And the dogs... Patric in particular... where
constant companions. |
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And then she died, brave until the end. We did a memorial service
in Acton on Friday, October 5th. There were well over 150 people from
all walks of life. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) rented a tour
bus and drove the entire Women's and Men's tennis team down for the
service. Kate's Uncle Tom and his wife Elizabeth drove from Minnesota
to attend and stayed with us for a few days, which was a real pleasure.
My brother Bill and his wife flew in from Abu Dabi, half way around the
world. People from work, our neighbors, both sides of my family,
and friends of the kids joined those more directly connected with Kate
to celebrate her life. We had a slide show, and at Barbara
Aiello's suggestion, artifacts from Kate's life, from a few pieces of
Katydid's jewelry to some of the shells we had collected at Turks and
Caicos islands at the reception.
After the service,
family and some friends of Andy, Will and Brie came over to the house to
drink and chat for a few hours. We had Saturday to pack, and
Sunday, we headed for the airport to fly to CA for the memorial service
there, at the church Kate went to as a child, where we were married,
where we had our children baptized, and where Kate's mom and stepdad are
still very active members. |
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| The service in California was slightly smaller, just short of 100
people, but it included many people from her High School and University
days (including Valerie Faris, Renee and Andria Portenier, Lori
Ann Badurek Fitch, Janice Johnson, Mark Leamy, and Carolyn Carpentar) with their own stories to tell, along with friends and neighbors
from when we lived in Altadena and worked at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Afterward the service and reception, we retreated to
Janet and Bill Garber's with a smaller group of people, ending the day
at Paco's Taco's. |
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| Wednesday the kids and I headed for Catalina island. Kate
wanted her ashes spread in Little Harbor near her father's. I
wanted to do something to make it more memorable for the kids and
decided to camp at Little Harbor campground overnight, despite a rainy,
stormy weather forecast. Everyone else was going to join us Thursday for the event. We headed over on
the Catalina Express (the size of the camping gear ruled out the
helicopter this trip) going ashore at Two Harbors, so named because it's
the thinnest part of the island and there are harbors on the LA basin
side and on the Pacific side. |
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| We climbed out on the rocks to find the spot we
would release the ashes the next day. The water at Little
Harbor was almost Caribbean blue. I thought it was fitting
that there was a small family sailboat moored in the harbor. |
The Pacific Ocean side was azure blue once we climbed out past
the breakwater. Looking back, the campground was a little
oasis in the otherwise rather dry and arid countryside.
There was no electricity or water, and I don't know how they
kept the grass alive, but it made a pleasant camp. |
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| That night, we set up the tent, cooked dinner over an open flame,
had a huge bonfire... perhaps a little too big... and talked about Kate and life.
And it was all topped off by a spectacular sunset. |
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| It did rain, but only for a few hours in the early morning, and we
did get midnight visits by what the kids were sure was a Bison and a fox
(or groups of them), but by the time we exited the tent a glorious day was
already underway and no nearby lurking animals we could see. Brie and I went for a swim in Shark Harbor (less
kelp), we broke camp, and just about the time we were finishing,
everyone else arrived. We went down to the waterside (except for
Janet's sister Doris, who didn't feel up to it). There was a new
ship moored outside the harbor, adding to the beauty of the
surroundings. I released Kate's ashes into the water and there was
a long quiet period of reflection. Then we all headed back to
Avalon, had lunch and did some shopping, and took the boat back to San Pedro.
On the trip back, we saw the
most glorious rainbow I've ever seen in California. |
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| And some photos from one of Kate's childhood trips to Little/Shark
Harbor with her family on the family Sailboat with the following
commentary from Anne: "The boat in the pictures is actually
our Thunderbird named T-Boo and our old Sabot for a dingy. I love that
pic of Katie jumping off. T-Boo was a very pretty boat with teak trim
and a wooden mast, but was about 5 feet too short when we got bigger and
was finished from a Japanese kit. (A number of the Windjammer Yacht Club
members ordered kits - and the families built them together in a space -
I think at King Harbor.) T-Boo is the boat where Katie eventually asked
mom "what are dammit places?" Mom kept hitting her head and saying the
inevitable "dammit" and Katie couldn't stand it any longer and had to
ask. |
Little Harbor |
Shark Harbor |
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| We did a couple more things in California; I
visited some of my old RPI/JPL friends on Friday, and Saturday we had
lunch at the LA Farmer's Market on Fairfax Ave. with Janet, Lisa, Bruce,
Anne and Nick, and then visited the Pederson Auto Museum (which was
amazing). Then we flew home. You can see a link to her
memorial page
here... and if you want to add something, please send it to me and
I'll be happy to include it. |
Rest in peace, sweetie. I miss you. |
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http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kdickie |
