Cathy

It was just shy of a year ago as we were preparing to move from Omaha to Spokane that we received the phone call from Salt Lake telling us that my aunt Cathy had been diagnosed with brain cancer and given a mere 3 months to live. We were lucky enough to have Cathy with us almost 4 times longer than they originally gave us, but last night we received the call that she had passed away.

Cathy made it clear that she wanted me to speak at her funeral, but as I am stuck in Spokane on bed rest, I obviously cannot travel to Salt Lake for the funeral on Saturday. So, I just thought I would at least write a few things about Cathy here that I might have said had I been able to be there.

First off, many of you reading this did not know her and so I will tell you a bit about her. Cathy was the 2nd of the 6 Evans girls. My mom was the first, and Cathy is just 11 months younger than her. She was born on Christmas Eve in 1957. This last Christmas eve we were able to, as a family spend her 50th birthday with her. Cathy was very loving and kind to everyone. She was a true child at heart-a bit like Peter Pan (those that know her know what I mean). She loved Disneyland, Lagoon, her Utah Jazz, and most of all her friends and family, and always wanted to share her love for those things with everyone. Her life was about having fun and enjoying life all the time.

Once I had a boyfriend that collected Pez dispensers. He would buy them for me sometimes, and I thought they were pretty awesome, so I started my own Pez collection. However, when that boyfriend left on his mission and I started dating other people, as you might expect, my collecting of Pez dispensers began to fall to the wayside. Cathy would not let that happen. Cathy began collecting the Pez dispensers for me. Up until the recent couple of months I would still get phone calls from Cathy "I am at the dollar store and they have a new bunny Pez dispenser. I don't think you have this one yet, so I will get it ok?!" And every time we visit Utah, she has a whole new group of dispensers to add to my collection.

That is just the kind of person Cathy was-the kind that never forgot any little quirk about you. And the kind of person that tried to make sure that you held on to those seemingly unimportant childlike little things even amid the daily stresses of life. The little things do matter-you do need to remember what it was like to be young and carefree, and Cathy was the queen of making you remember that.

Much time over the past year was spent on family trips to Disneyland. Even in her pain she kept a sense of humor. The first trip to Disneyland, we were all sitting eating dinner, and Cathy started to choke on some food. After a stunned second Tiffany (my cousin) jumped up and gave her the Heimlich maneuver, dislodging the food. Cathy looked up at everyone, smiled a huge smile and said "Wow-for a minute there I thought I was going to die at my favorite place on Earth-that would have been pretty cool."

Not so cool for all of us, but she loved it there so much that she thought having her last few moments there would be amazing. She was able to go to Disneyland with her family many many times, most recently only about 2 weeks ago. And in the end of her life, she had chosen how she wanted to go-in her home, with her family around, and that is how it happened.

We will all miss her terribly, but she is free of her pain and is now in a better place. I am so grateful for my faith and testimony of life after this because I know I will get to see her again. I am grateful for a wonderful husband that was able to really bond with Cathy and to help her choose to go to the temple a few years ago. What a blessing for Cathy that she did that and was able to go back often and learn from the great work done in the temples of the church for the last few years of her life. She was given a blessing yesterday that said that the Lord wanted to heal her, but that He has work for her to do. I am sure she is anxiously pushing to get that work started already! We all love her and already feel the weight of losing her, but are so grateful for her life and for being able to be part of her family.