Goodbye

It doesn’t seem right that someone can die in springtime. All the tulips are in bloom, the fruit trees are blossoming and the grass is greener every day. And yet that is what has happened. My great friend and Knitting Partner in Crime, Sue Fisher, passed away this past week.

I worked with Sue for many years at The Evil Airline that No Longer Exists. We weren’t close but frequently chummed it up on breaks. Then she started bringing in things she’d knit and crocheted to sell at craft fairs. I used to drool over the stuff. A lot. I purchased a few things. I told her I’d learned how to knit and crochet from an aunt when I was a teenager. She encouraged me to pick it up again. A lot. When I retired she gave me the book Hip to Knit as a retirement/going away gift. I looked it over. I liked what I saw. I thought, “She’s right, I can do that” and I signed up for a class.

The rest, as we say, is history.


Sue retired not long after I did. We started going on knitterly
outings together. We went to Knitters’ Guild meetings. We got seats on the bus for the Shop Hop. We went to Yarnover, World Wide Knit in Public Day, and we cruised the Mississippi together. We e-mailed each other constantly, chatting not only about knitting but about politics and books and libraries.

She had breast cancer about ten years ago. She fought it valiantly. She’d been sick for a while and last December found out that the cancer had metastasized. And now she’s gone. I miss her. A lot. She had a huge influence on my life and as I’ve encouraged Girl-child and others to knit, she’s changed lives of people she never met too.

Funny how that works.
It’s a wonderful life.

Thanks, Sue.