Elsa asked me several times to let everyone who reads her blog know that she could not post any longer. For the past few weeks, and months, she used all her strength to continue fighting, to make sure that the disease that ravaged her body would get all the fight-back she could muster.
It was her hope when she started "Living with a Sarcoma" that it would help other people with the same condition to benefit from the things she learned throughout the over a decade long battle with her cancer. Her motivation was always to help others, to encourage, and to hopefully make life better for everyone. All who met her got this message instantly, I think. In the end, she told me that she did not want anyone to be sad, but to celebrate the time she had on this earth, and it was her hope for those with liposarcoma, that they also fight against their cancer, because Science will one day triumph over it. As she explained to our daughters, she never knew, when our nine year old daughter was born, if she could live long enough to see her walk. Yet, she did that, and then saw her start kindergarten and to grow into a nine year old who already shows evidence of Elsa's influence in her likings, her personality, her engagement with the world around her. Elsa will not see our oldest daughter start college this coming September, but Elsa's imprint is evident in her, in the deepest core of her humanity. So the eleven years were well worth it, is what I am saying, and is what Elsa believed.
Elsa passed away on this past Sunday morning, March 20th, at home, surrounded by family and friends who comforted her until her last breath.
... don't give up the fight.
Z
