Goodbye, Lorrie

Lorrie in Happier Times

My dear friend, Lorrie, died yesterday. She’d been having a lot of health problems, one piled on top of another. The final straw was lung cancer. She already had lung problems with a fairly rare disease of the lungs which required her to carry around oxygen with her. Between the two diseases in the same organs, she didn’t have much time left. She told me about this latest diagnosis in early November. She had maybe six weeks, the doctor said. Well, she didn’t get much more than that, but I really don’t think she wanted any extra weeks.

She had her family gathered around her and she peacefully passed away on January 5th. A mutual friend who lived near her let me know.

It’s always sad to lose a loved one. The funny thing is that Lorrie and I have known each other for around ten years, but we never met face to face. Only toward the end did we even speak on the phone. I’m not a good speaker (I don’t get much practice), so I was trying to convince her to at least keep her email account open. But, no, she was done with it.

A lot of people condemn the internet for making close friendships too difficult. You know what? Lorrie and I beg to differ. We stayed in constant contact and even worked together on writing projects for those many years. I first met her in an on-line critique group. When the group went off in a different direction, many of us dropped out, but stayed in touch. Liz, Lorrie, Emmy for sure and most likely several more who I’m still in contact with, but many have wandered off in other directions.

I’m going to miss Lorrie a lot. She was funny, loving, and kind. She had many, many friends. However, she told very few people of her health situation. I asked her if I could privately contact a few we’d known together for years, but she said she didn’t want anybody to know, so I swore a vow of silence.

When she did pass on, I put up a post on her page in Facebook to let everybody know. I especially want to thank Darla for being my liaison in Lorrie’s town. She visited her often and passed along information to me through Facebook messaging. See. The evil internet helped us see Lorrie through her last few weeks even though she had dropped out of any email or posting.

I don’t know what will happen with Lorrie’s books she still has on sale on Amazon and other places. I imagine her publisher will arrange something with Lorrie’s daughter to either continue selling the books or unpublish them. I hope they don’t do that. Her series on a wacky old lady who grants dead people their last wishes is a total hoot. Lorrie always said she was Winnie in those books (Call On the Dead Series).

A few months back, I tried to get her to do one more Winnie book and I’d collaborate. I even volunteered to be the dead person. We were trying to come up with a really good last wish. Not magical wishes, but practical things like letting the family know where the deceased had hidden the family jewels. That kind of thing.

She also wrote a western involving a shy sheriff and a thieving monkey. Again with the funny business.

So, good-bye, my friend. Damn you for not finishing the Winnie book we were doing together. You weren’t the one who was supposed to die. Then, you could call on me and make it all better.

See her books on Amazon. I’m sure you’ll like Winnie’s tales in “The Call on the Dead Club” anthology.