Peace, Mrs. Edwards

Apparently people are using this as an excuse to be nasty to her, which sucks. I'm sure I won't be the first or last to say it, but Elizabeth Edwards is a classy lady.

In 2004, I heard about her cancer coming back, and I sent her a thousand origami cranes, because I'd always felt well-disposed towards what I'd seen of her. She sent me a lovely handwritten thank you, which at the time I assumed she'd gotten some staffer to write, because, you know, she's in the middle of a campaign and a million people are writing her and also she's sick and probably not feeling all that up to corresponding with random strangers who send large boxes of paper to her husband's campaign office all unannounced. That evidently wasn't the case, though I would certainly have understood if it was.

I kept the note, and wished her well, and that was the end of it, I thought.

A few months ago, prompted by a discussion at Sadly, No, I googled my name for the first time in at least six years, and found via amazon.com that she mentioned, in the update to her paperback book, the cranes sent to her by D. Sidhe. (Not my real name, obviously, but I googled D. Sidhe, because, you know, not even I bother to keep track of my legal name these days.) It seems like my cranes haven't done her any more good than Sadako's did her, but apparently they did give her some joy, she'd always wanted some since she'd lived in Japan.

Anyway, that all cheered me up, at a point at which I was doubting I had anything to offer to anyone and needed more cheering up than usual, and gave my family finally something to be vaguely proud of me over, all of which is sort of odd, but now there's this, and it sucks.

It makes me feel small, if only because where I am lately seems like a rejection of what I've been given that you deserve, and the world would be better for it if we could swap breaths, but it doesn't work that way. I don't know if I can use this tiny point where our lives touch to do something that could be an appropriate thank-you with mine, but I'll try for however much I'm in control of it.

So, peace to you, Elizabeth, you're a lovely person and I wish there could be better for you. I'll light a candle and hope it's how you wish, even if it's obviously not what you might wish.