Patty 4-Ever: Lessons from the in-between space
Honoring the life and death of a phenomenal woman
(Trigger Warning: Death/Assisted Suicide)
I never wanted to have to write these words.
When Patty was alive she was one of the MOST alive people I ever met. And I selfishly wanted her to stay that way. But here we are almost 10 months after she crossed over and I miss her. Here’s (part of) our story.
Meeting P
When my friend Kara giddily said, “You just HAVE to meet my friend Patty. You two are going to get along so well!”. This was a little after the birth of Phoenix and I was starving for time away from kids, endless nursing, and diapers. When I plugged in her address on my phone I was delighted to see that she only lived about 15 minutes from my house.
I arrived in Prospect and parked on the street. I walked up two flights of stairs and knew instantly that I was in for an adventure as I knocked on her door. The door opened and Kara greeted me. A small yet BIG energy woman was sitting on the couch. I marveled at the living room I had entered. It was like being transported to another world, the colors were rich, art covered the walls, and various artifacts, African masks, and natural objects were exquisitely placed throughout the apartment. The air was rich and smelled faintly of essential oils and flowers.
Patty’s eyes twinkled as she took me in. One glance and our souls knew that we were looking at a cosmic soul-sister and it was only seconds before her infectious laughter filled the room. Kara, Patty, and I spent the day laughing, crying, healing, and talking. With every word, I knew that the gut feeling that I was sitting with a very special human was real.
How can you be the biggest badass, so grateful, so loving and tender, yet FIERCE, and be riddled with challenges and trauma in one short lifetime? I wish I had more time so I could ask this of Patty. She told me wild stories of her life. Her life had burdened her with insane challenges. In the words of Patty’s dear friend Katie Stone: “Starting at the ripe old age of 23, she moved through breast cancer, years of being bedridden with unknown illnesses, lupus, chronic pain, broken bones and torn ligaments, mysterious autoimmune issues, countless surgeries and doctors, and staggering bouts of depression.”
Somehow, over and over again, Patty decided that she was going to LIVE.
Tough Angels
After visiting Africa and experiencing the atrocities happening there firsthand, she started a non-profit organization called Tough Angels. This was the vision:
“We engage and empower community mobilization to protect women and children from rape. By providing curriculum and training to community members and leaders, greater understanding about HIV/AIDS and its prevention is built on a local level. We create supportive and respectful forums, which facilitate discussions to educate men and women on the dire need to choose consensual sex. We support survivors in safety, restoring dignity, hope, and healing through expressive therapeutic methods, including art, music, writing, and dance. Through community awareness and education, the social fabric becomes strengthened, informed, and better equipped to protect their own.”
Patty had faced death, worked with countless rape survivors, and was a radiant source of compassion, light, and an unyielding force for good. She inspired me so deeply. In a world where I often feel weird and a little crazy, Patty made me feel like I fit perfectly.
Every time I visited her little sanctuary, while only physically 15 minutes from my house, it felt like its own world, I would get transported to another time and place, and each time potent healing took place. She’d have delectable, healthy treats and when I was extra lucky, her husband Raymond would come in and say hi. He’d check on Patty and just generally exude a calm presence. You knew a man that loved a woman when you saw how Raymon looked at Patty. He adored every square inch of her being. And she adored him right back.
That first day at Patty’s house I also learned about the daily pain she lived with. She had a very unusual diagnosis that basically never allowed the pain receptors in her body to turn off. Some days were worse than others. Some nights she didn’t get any sleep. Always her cats were nearby. But somehow, she managed to be incredibly graceful about it. Checking in on me. Remembering details about my life. Asking about the kids. She also had a very effective use of the word Fuck! Because Patty didn’t sugarcoat the hard things.
The impossible farewell
In 2019 I saw less of Patty, lots of my focus was on my kids and work and we would send love messages back and forth from time to time. No matter what, each time I thought of her I would get a warm feeling of belonging in my heart and feel fortified. I learned that she got sicker from Kara, doctors had found a calcified brain tumor, and she also got diagnosed with vascular dementia, a degenerative brain disorder with no cure. It was heartbreaking.
In 2020, Covid happened and I had to leave Colorado without saying goodbye to Patty in person, and that hurt. She was immunocompromised and I didn’t want to put her at any risk.
I was so delighted to see on Facebook that she took that bucket-list trip to Sweden and Norway and saw the northern lights, something she always talked about. The images of her and Raymond on that trip were incredible – the light in her eyes, like a child living their best life, just oozed out of the photos. I don’t know how the heck she pulled that trip off because she’s been mostly in bed since I’d known her, but somehow miraculously she managed to pull it off.
Then late 2020, I got the text I never wanted to receive from Kara. It said that Patty was on her way out of this world and if I wanted to say goodbye this was my chance.
A year and a half earlier I had lost my friend Leanne to brain cancer and I didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye. Last fall I lost my friend Loren to suicide and my uncle had just died of Covid – those losses happened very suddenly so this time I was grateful for the chance to say goodbye.
I was devastated when I heard of Patty’s impending crossing over.
Kara explained to me that Patty had come to terms with her diagnosis and that she had decided to voluntarily stop eating and drinking and that she was dying on her own terms*.
*Read about how this went down via Katie’s words at the bottom of this article.
It felt impossible to say goodbye forever. But I did what I was guided to do. I recorded a voice memo for her pouring my heart out to her. Later that night I sang her a song in Swedish. She always called me her “tall, Swedish goddess” and loved our culture since she had Swedish heritage, so singing in my native tongue felt like the right way to honor her.
The voice message I got back is something I will treasure forever. Patty said it best “I don’t know what to say, but with you, I feel like I don’t have to say anything. We already know.” And she was right.
In our last text exchange, she told me about her biggest “accomplishment” in life. She said she learned how to love herself and that it was the hardest damn thing she ever had to do. BUT SHE DID IT!
If you know Patty and what she had to overcome and endure in her life, the fact that that was the hardest part just completely knocked the floor out from under my feet.
It touched a part of my heart and soul that I never had felt before. I trust Patty with all my being. And I want to honor her legacy by:
Like she requested, help our culture get better at dying by sharing my experiences with death openly
Loving myself wholly with all my flaws
Using my gifts and taking whatever action I’m inspired to do make a difference for people less privileged
So many spiritual people talk about “choosing from love”. But I think it’s important to remember that sometimes our choices ARE LIMITED. And that part is really fucking hard. (I’m tired of “spiritual leaders” sugar coating and love and light-washing the most brutal aspects of the human experience!)
***I encourage you to read one of Patty’s dearest friend’s words at the bottom of this article to learn more about assisted dying and Patty’s experience.***
So imma be like “P”. I’m going to call BS when I see it, listen deeply, laugh loudly, love cats, go after opportunities for healing, swear and cry when life throws impossible curveballs, help marginalized people when I can, let myself be human AND glorious at the same time. And I will preserve my sense of wonder, no matter what.
Thank you, Patty. I miss you dearly.
Your friend,
Karna
The third post in a public series about Patty’s death by Katie Stone:
“Patty’s plan to exit this realm with a support team in Switzerland was thwarted after her and Raymond returned home from Scandinavia. COVID lockdowns were in full swing, and P knew she wouldn’t be able to travel abroad in time. Having this option removed from the table left Patty scrambling for direction.
Patty approached everything with tenacious drive and curiosity. She spent the summer furiously researching options for treatment, while living as boldly and as gregariously as she could. She said YES to anything she could despite the massive amounts of nerve pain she was struggling with, and her boisterous fuck-it mentality was in high gear along with that unmistakable laugh of hers.
On July 6th, Patty told me that she was starting to feel like her brain was separating from her soul. I pointed out possibilities of what could be going on, drunk on my own optimism and denial, but she was adamant that it was the dementia, and that it was progressing. I could tell she was growing weary of finding a way to prolong her condition with experimental treatments, and she confirmed that after a phone call with yet another doctor. She was exhausted and hellbent on not living out her grim prognosis, and was suddenly grasping for options to determine her own fate.
Death With Dignity and Right To Die laws only apply to terminal patients who have six months left to live, and who are able to advocate for themselves. By the time dementia and Alzheimer’s patients have six months left, they have been cruelly robbed of any semblance of who they were, and are unable to advocate for themselves. Because of this, the only option for ending life on her terms, and not winding up in memory care, was to commit to a process called VSED (Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking).
Throughout this process, I have heard many people comment about the “choice” Patty made. While yes, this was a decision, it was not one that came lightly or easily—but one that arrived because Patty felt that she had no other option. I watched her struggle for months with debilitating fear and anxiety over what this would feel like, whether or not she could do it, what kind of impact it would have on those of us present. We would sit in the sun out on their rooftop deck, drinking sake and smoking tiny joints, trying to think of options that were better than VSED. She had thought about the usual suicide measures, but there was very little she could do without legally implicating Raymond—and doing anything of this sort meant she would have to do it alone, and none of us were okay with that.
I remember one day she told me about some potion she had found on a dark web internet site. It was small bottle that you drank and it stopped your heart within minutes. We laughed about the idea of it, making Alice in Wonderland jokes. This is what this entire process was like with P—deep, honest, real conversations about death and how she felt about it, interspersed with lightness and that wicked sense of humor that made everyone fall in love with her.
One of P’s dying wishes wish was to change the way our culture approaches death, and I promised her that I would tell her story.”