Lori Beth Marsh (Wyatt)
(1975 - 2009)

Choral conductor, singer, foreign exchange student, sign language lover, knitter, reader, mother, heavy equipment expert, self-proclaimed 'professional lupus patient'... Lori packed a lot of living into just 33 short years.

She left this earth on June 4, just two days shy of the 16th anniversary of our meeting, after a decade-long struggle with lupus and a 44-day hospitalization for pancreatitis, which steadily deteriorated to include renal failure, respiratory failure, fevers, anemia, malnutrition, and a host of other complications.

But the time just prior to being admitted to the hospital was a happy one for Lori. She had just purchased a digital SLR camera to capture the perpetual blur of her much-adored two-year-old. She had finally gotten our bedroom, where she was confined for most of her days, decorated exactly the way she wanted it. She had gotten on top of the clutter that can so easily fill an American home. She had gone through all her photos and thrown out the duplicates, making me promise to never let her order double prints again. Although she was never able to spend a night there, she had helped pick out our next house. And she had caught up on her reading in a huge way, tearing through books at breakneck pace and checking out 200 items at a time from the library, as though storing up things to ponder while lying helpless in a hospital bed.

She was able to visit her hometown and dine at all three of the 'holy trinity' of restaurants there (Casa del Rey, Chances R, and Runza). She even was able to have one of Chances R's famous chef salads, expiating Al's guilt over mistakenly throwing out the French dressing from a salad that her mother had brought down to Missouri earlier in the year. She attended her brother Doug's 50th birthday party, her niece Brianna's prom, and her great-niece Reagan's baptism. She got to go clothes shopping at Maurice's with her mother. And driving home, she was able to stay awake the entire trip -- a rarity for her -- talking with Lily and me, singing songs, playing games, and reminiscing about our childhoods (I always considered it a blessing that we shared the same hometown; it made it so much easier to tell stories when you knew the same people).

Reading over what I've written, it doesn't seem like all that much to be happy about. They're all small things. But being chronically ill makes you appreciate small things. Lori had abandoned her plans of a career when it became clear that her health wouldn't allow it. She was never able to become a doctor. She was never able to travel to Europe. She wasn't able to have five children. But she did learn, especially in the last year of her life, to savor and appreciate what she did have, to make the most of it, and to consider herself blessed.

Lori and I used to joke that she had so many aches and pains and physical limitations that death, when it came someday, would be a kind of relief for her. It was grim humor, but by the end it wasn't funny any more. It was true. Death was indeed the only relief she had to look forward to, and in the end I suppose this will apply to all of us. Being with Lori when she died was kind of a gift because I no longer fear death after watching her go through it.

Among the last words she heard, if not the very last, were these, sung by herself and her friends on a Christus Chorus concert CD:

Peace be to you and grace from Him
Who freed us from our sins,
Who loved us all and shed His blood
That we might saved be.

Sing Holy, Holy to our Lord,
The Lord, Almighty God,
Who was and is and is to come;
Sing Holy, Holy Lord!

Rejoice in heaven, all ye that dwell therein,
Rejoice on earth, ye saints below,
For Christ is coming, is coming soon,
For Christ is coming soon!

E'en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come,
And night shall be no more;
They need no light nor lamp nor sun,
For Christ will be their All!