The Nicest Lady I’ve Ever Met

A friend died today.

I hadn’t had much contact with Suzanne Lewis, who used to write beautiful things on Patheos,  in the past several years, because we were in different social circles and lost touch. I knew she was ill, but didn’t know how bad it had gotten. Apparently her cancer took a turn for the worse back in January, and now she is gone.

I can’t begin to think of all the interesting things to tell you about her Suzanne. She was always telling stories about her her life and her family. She told me that her parents once lived in Paris in a gorgeous house across from a park, as luxurious and comfortable as you could imagine, but they could never, ever sleep past dawn in the mornings because the donkeys in the zoo at that park would bray so loudly at the very first light that the noise would wake them up. She told me that when she, herself, was living in Paris as an English teacher, they had next to no money and were borrowing rice and beans to get through the week, but teachers in Paris get free admission to the museums, so she went to the Louvre every day. She told me that the reason all of her beautiful daughters had first names beginning with “S” is that she named the first one a pretty name she loved that began with S, not thinking about the fact that she was Suzanne and her husband was Stephen. That was when everybody started calling them “the S family.” She realized that, if she had one more child but wasn’t able to have any more and named the baby a non-S name, that baby would be the odd one out and might feel sad about it, so she named all of her children names beginning with S. She told me about the time, when she was working as a social worker in the maternity ward of a great big hospital, one patient got in a fight with the other and threatened to kill her. Suzanne pleasantly said “now, are you really going to kill her? Because if you’re really, REALLY serious, I’m going to have to call the police on you, and I don’t want to do that.” The patient said “Why, you’re the nicest lady I ever met! I’m going to not kill her just for you!” and wrote on the piece of paper Suzanne presented, “I am not going to kill so-and-so, because Mrs. Lewis is the nicest lady I’ve ever met!”

I’ll bet there are dozens, if not hundreds of people who call Suzanne “the nicest lady I’ve ever met.”

Suzanne was the opposite of me in many ways: bright, cheerful, extroverted, not at all awkward to talk to. She had boundless energy and always had encouraging things to say. She gave sensible advice, but she also knew when to just listen. She threw big parties at her lovely house at the end of LaBelle, the house with the garden she worked at tirelessly and all those wonderful lavender plants out front. Every party at Suzanne’s house ended with somebody getting out the guitar and everyone singing folk songs together for at least an hour.

I knew Suzanne at the absolute worst time in my life, just after Adrienne’s horrendous traumatic childbirth when my trauma was out of control. She was kind and understanding with me even though I was a basket case, and I can’t begin to say how grateful I am for that. She was also extremely generous when we were especially poor for the first year or two of Adrienne’s life. Once I mentioned that we were out of all our normal groceries including toilet paper, and the next thing I knew she was at my door with bags of groceries: not just standard groceries but the luxurious cushy toilet paper, organic cheese and milk, and a big gallon of Haagen Daas.

She was like that with everyone.

I didn’t deserve such a friend and I couldn’t possibly.

Suzanne told me about her deceased daughter, Stella, who was stillborn next to her living twin sister. When the babies were born, prematurely in a terrible emergency on April Fools’ Day, the living baby was whisked right to the NICU and Suzanne couldn’t hold her, but she got to hold Stella for awhile. And she was so grateful to know that her babies were identical twins, so she would always know what Stella would have looked like, because she looked like the living twin. While I’m shocked and sad that Suzanne has left us, I’m glad to think of her reunited with Stella now.

Suzanne loved a book of poetry called “Prayers from the Ark” by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold.  It’s a sweet book of little prayers, each in the voice of a different animal. Today, in Suzanne’s honor, I’ve seen lots of people posting the poem “Prayer of the Donkey” from that book:

I can’t imagine what her family must be suffering, to lose such a beautiful woman so close to Christmas. But I am glad Suzanne is not in pain anymore. And I know that she is at home now, with Stella, and Jesus of the Christmas crib.

Goodbye to Suzanne Lewis, the nicest lady I’ve ever met.