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Remembering Emilie |
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By Joe Towalski
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Wednesday, 31 December 2008 |
The Catholic Spirit lost a much beloved member of its family on Christmas Eve when Emilie Lemmons died after a courageous 16-month battle with sarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissues.
Stephen and Emilie Lemmons with their sons Daniel, left, and Benjamin soon after his birth - Photo by Wendy Betters / Swaddlebee Photography
Since May 2007, Emilie had written a monthly column, “Notes from a New Mom,” in which she shared the adventures of parenthood that she and her husband, Stephen, enjoyed after the arrival of their two sons, Daniel, now almost 2-and-a-half years old, and Benjamin, 9 months.
More recently, Emilie wrote about her up-and-down struggles with
cancer. She submitted her last column to The Catholic Spirit just a few
weeks before she died — a reflection on searching for Advent joy from a
40-year-old woman facing stage 4 cancer that was getting worse.
How can a person facing death possibly experience joy? Here’s a little of what Emilie wrote:
“What if I just let go of that? What if I trust that even if I die
tomorrow or next month or next year, things will somehow work out? What
if I allow myself to put the outcome in God’s hands and just live
intensely in the present, absorbing and embracing life as it happens?
It’s not indifference or admitting defeat; it’s seeing the bigger
picture.”
And she concluded:
“Maybe I am capable of experiencing joy after all. Maybe I don’t need
to approach joy with resentment. Maybe that message is what my Advent
light is illuminating. I pray that I can enter into the lesson God is
trying to teach me.”
Emilie’s columns shared a progressive wisdom about life and faith from
which her readers, including myself, gleaned lessons. They helped me
rethink how I live my life. How I, too, need to keep the big picture in
mind, even during the darkest times. How I need to be more open to the
lessons God is trying to teach me. How I ultimately need to surrender
to God’s will for me, but how difficult that can be.
A lot of what Emilie accomplished with her column is a testament to how
good a writer she was. Before she began her column, she had shared that
skill in a variety of other ways.
Tenacious reporter
Emilie was born in Portland, Ore., and graduated from Columbia
University in New York with a degree in English literature. She joined
the Mississippi Teacher Corps and taught English at a public high
school in Greenville, Miss., before joining the staff of the Delta
Democrat Times in Greenville and then The Catholic Spirit from 1998
through 2006.
Emilie won numerous awards as a Catholic Spirit reporter from the
Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada. She
garnered the honors for stories such as “Catholic in the 21st century,”
about how Catholic colleges and universities grapple with identity
questions, and “Is Communion rule hard to swallow?” on the issues
surrounding the Eucharist and those who have celiac disease and are
unable to receive the host.
She had a dogged commitment to accuracy and fairness in the search for
the truth. She was mild-mannered but never afraid to ask the tough
questions — even of church officials, who sometimes bristled at the
directness of a reporter who was supposed to be “on the church’s side.”
Emilie, of course, was on the church’s side. But she never felt she had
to sacrifice good journalistic principles in telling the Good News, and
she was a big reason The Catholic Spirit was named the top
large-circulation diocesan newspaper in the country for its work in
2003, 2005 and 2006.
A new adventure
After Emilie became pregnant with Daniel, she began writing a blog — www.lemmondrops.blogspot.com — with posts about parenthood, marriage,
her health and other observations about life.
Daniel’s arrival in 2006 prompted her decision to leave The Catholic
Spirit so she could devote more time to her family. With writing still
very much in her blood, however, she began freelancing for The Catholic
Spirit and other publications. She also became a column-writer.
In many ways, her columns resembled her blog posts. The writing was
personal. Over time, it was apparent that parenthood and then her
devastating illness were changing the way she viewed life and faith. It
was a journey she was willing, thankfully, to share with Catholic
Spirit readers.
Here are some excerpts from her column over the last year-and-a-half:
• On coping with cancer (Sept. 20, 2007)
“Of course, I would rather never have gotten cancer in the first place.
I know the months ahead are going to be difficult as my abdomen heals
and I work hard to nourish myself and my unborn baby to places of
health. I know that I will always worry about the cancer coming back.
It will forever hang over my head.
“But there is a silver living in what has happened: In these surreal,
agonizing past few weeks, I have felt very fully how much my family and
I are loved and cherished by people in our lives, whether we have known
them for decades or just fleetingly.
“I feel enveloped in that love. It is Christ’s presence in this world,
and I hope every person will have an opportunity to know how it feels
to receive it — and to give it.”
• On faith, after watching Daniel through a child care classroom’s one-way window (Feb. 21, 2008)
“There are so many moments in my life when I feel as if God has ‘left
the room,’ leaving me all alone to cope with whatever happens to be on
my plate. It’s tough to grapple with the sense of doubt that haunts me
during those times.
“I know that the most devout believers and mystics — Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, St. John of the Cross — have experienced doubts
and dark nights of the soul. Yet I still feel as if I am somehow to
blame for my insufficient faith, as if I give up too easily on trusting
in God’s presence.
“And I wonder: Is God watching me all the while in anguish, like the
parents behind that one-way window, wishing he could reach me and
comfort me and reassure me that he is never far away? . . .
“In those moments when I feel lost and abandoned, it might help to
think of Daniel and how he’s grown over the past few months, and to
trust that God will come back soon — that, in fact, he has never really
left the room.”
• On parenthood (Oct. 16, 2008)
“Thinking about the mysteries of parenthood often makes me think about
our relationship with God. We humans, with all our demands and
insecurities and joys and sorrows — are we carrying God’s heart around,
just as our children carry ours? If so, I can only imagine how full and
loving that heart must be when God looks over his creation every day.
If we are the embodiments of God’s love, what a deep and awesome
responsibility we have to use that gift wisely.
“In the car that day, I asked Steve, ‘Would you go back to those times before kids?’ His answer was a quick and definite no.
“I wouldn’t, either — although I’d love the chance to pop into a
bookstore on the spur of the moment again. I guess that’s what
babysitters are for. Besides, I can’t let myself forget that before
kids, I used to pray that God would give me children. Now, I cannot
imagine my life without them.”
Emilie asked her husband to post a quote from Raymond Carver on her blog after she died. It reads:
"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."
Emilie’s death leaves many people grieving: her family, her former
colleagues and her friends — those who knew her well and those who knew
her only through the stories, insights and wisdom she shared in her
column and blog posts. She and her family were members of St. Thomas
More parish in St. Paul and the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis,
where her funeral Mass was held Dec. 29.
Ever the teacher, she reminds us in her parting message that true joy
is found in the love of God and the love of others, no matter if our
time on this earth is long or all-too-short.
May we all take her lessons to heart.
Joe Towalski is editor of The Catholic Spirit.
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