Some of you may be familiar with the work of novelist, Holly Lisle. We were friends from way back. High school, to be exact. I knew she was going to be an artist, but I didn’t realize it would be with words (that was one of the things I wanted to do). She was painting Canterbury Tales murals on the wall of our English classroom, and she allowed me to help her. I thought she was amazingly gifted and talented, and she was friends with me. I have murky memories of high school – not from anything I did or didn’t do but the fact that it was almost fifty years ago, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but Holly was a bright spot. Also, though she was only a couple of months younger than me, she was a year behind me in school.

I thought she was a new kid, but her family had been out doing missionary work, and they had recently moved back to the area when we met, so I found out years later she had a lot of family in the area.

After I graduated, I only saw her a few more times until we reunited in 2002. Catching up on each other’s lives was fun. We each had had many twists and changes. We were both in relatively good places by that time, but our initial post-high school careers were illuminating. I made toy drums before deciding an education and more challenging work might be a good idea, and she began a painting career as a sign painter also to realize there had to be more to life. I went in the military, and she became a trauma nurse.

Holly was an established novelist adding in her teaching work when we caught up with each other, and my military career was nearly over. We were in close electronic contact after 2002, and I’d been able to visit with her twice in person –most recently a year ago when I visited Ohio for my 45th class reunion.

Shortly after that visit, she told me she didn’t have long to live. She made it a full year from that point. She had the relative luxury of attempting to prepare her family to be without her, but nothing can really do that. Her husband contacted me on the morning of August 27th to let me know she was gone. I immediately knew why I’d needed to go camping that week. This was my view as I got the news:

Matt confirmed Holly would have loved it. I was grateful to be in a peaceful place instead of the chaos of Snip and Chip check-in when he gave me the news.

Holly and I privately supported each other, and I was always surprised that Holly frequently told me how amazing she thought I was. I have never considered myself amazing, but Holly would always reinforce that impression with concrete examples. To me, she was the amazing one.