Claire

I'm ending this day on a very sad note. I'm not even sure I can properly write about it. This evening a very good friend passed on to a new life.


I met Claire online 5 years ago on a COPD forum. She and I were both trying to get accepted into some new clinical trials for an experimental procedure that offered a better quality of life for people with our shared disease. Claire wasn't able to qualify as she was already getting too weak and deconditioned to take part in the necessary rehabilitation that was required. I was accepted but due to the luck of the draw (or lack of luck, depending on how you view it) I ended up in the control group, which means I didn't get the procedure but was monitored for a year for comparison to those who did get it.


Claire and I always hoped that we might find a way to meet in person but that never happened. She lived in Florida. I'm in Kansas. But we became fast friends and talked by email and phone pretty constantly for the last five years. Some days neither of us had anything to say. Other days we'd exchange a dozen emails. We found we had so much more in common than just our disease and so we mostly talked about other things. We reminisced about earlier days, raising our families, music we loved, politics, so many things. She was only 67..far too young to leave this world.


Last week Claire started really struggling to breathe and was taken by ambulance to the hospital and admitted to ICU. Sunday she went on a ventilator and this afternoon her family made the difficult decision to remove life support. I know, as they most certainly did, that Claire didn't want to linger. And I know that tonight she is breathing freer than she has in many years. But I will miss her more than I can say. I'm a better person for having known her and will hear her voice for a long, long time.

Breathe easy my friend. I love you.