Hi everyone,
I’m so sorry to bring such heartbreaking - and very belated - news about one of our best friends from here, Sue in Minnesota.
It was only today, so many months later, that I was able to find out that Sue died on April 17.
Lots of you had been asking about her the last few months and I had been trying, with the help of Chi, who never stopped thinking about Sue, to trace her because we knew she had been unwell, and hadn’t commented at the blog since February.
It’s just impossible to express how painful this is, those of you who got to know Sue at the blog could only love her - she was kind, warm, inspirational, endlessly encouraging and full of passion, and in her later days she never let her ill health overcome her spirit. Her support and work for President Obama was immense, he meant everything to her and she talked often of feeling blessed to be alive in his time.
I read back through Sue’s comments today, she was here since almost the beginning, in 2009, and she never failed to make me smile. Especially her fiery determination to learn how to use Twitter - so many of you were helping her figure it out, VC her tutor-in-chief.
The name she chose at Twitter was simply perfect: @fairwarrioress
She hadn’t got around to mastering Twitter, but I smiled again when I saw that one of the 12 people she was following was Ambassador Susan Rice. I think I know who Sue would want to be the next Secretary of State. Although, I’d guess she was a John Kerry admirer too.
I can’t even begin to describe her kindness to me, her generous, supportive, beautiful emails, right from the early days, ones that made your day. A word from Sue was a blessing, she spread sunshine, she was a very, very lovely human being.
Yet, that’s the strangeness of all our blog friendships, we simply do not know what to do when contact is lost, we’re just left wondering and worrying. And so many of us feared the worst about Sue.
But, after she left us, her beloved Minnesota did her proud:
And that would have made her beam broadly.
****
The search function on the blog is useless, but I think this was the last post Sue commented on.
It included photos of Jodi Fisher, the 44-year-old woman who was diagnosed with an inoperable form of cancer and who created a bucket list of things she wanted to do before she died. One of them was to meet President Obama, which she did at San Francisco International Airport on February 16 (you can read more about Jodi here).
Sue wrote:
“Strength and God’s blessings to Jodi and those with her on her journey, she seems so full of light.”
Jodi died on March 17, Sue died exactly a month later.
Love you always, Fair Warrioress.
Like Jodi, you were so full of light.
As a message under Sue’s obituary in her local paper read:
“You touched our lives and will live in our hearts forever.”
Our thoughts go to Sue’s family for their immeasurable loss.
White House.gov