“Don’t cry because
it’s over – Smile because it
happened.”
–Suzanne Corrales, quoting Theodore Seuss
Geisel A Personal Farewell To Suzanne Corrales
The
teen-age Suzy Rathz saw herself as these adjectives:
Unpopular.
Lonely.
Fat. The
only one who told her back then that she was beautiful was her mother,
Kathleen. Of course, no teen-age girl accepts her mother’s judgment on
that subject, no matter how obviously accurate it is, over the harsh judgment
of her classmates. But
her teachers also could see the real Suzi that was emerging, or at least a
glimpse. I found her Spring, 1972 12th Grade Report Card in
one of the boxes she labeled, “Sue’s Treasures.” Her grades:
“A” in Mass Media
“A” in American Literature
“A” in Sociology
“A” In Newswriting.
“B” In something called “Balk dan adv.” That’s
what it says next to the “B”-- “Balk Dan Adv.” You can’t even tell what
the subject matter is, and this Rathz girl was such a good student that she
managed to get a “B” in it. (It would turn out to be Balkan
Dancing. Advanced, no less.) But
it was the comment at the bottom of the report card from her homeroom teacher
(or whatever they called it at San Marcos High back then), Mrs. Measley, that
drew my attention:
“Suzi, you’re one of the rare ones.” Academically,
she proved that again in college, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. And if you
read the obituary
I wrote, you know that Sue helped found our small company and was the editor
and chief writer of Inside Healthcare Computing, and that she won
three national journalism awards. I’m
trying to go through the professional stuff quickly. That is
intentional. I think we put too much emphasis on public awards.
Yes, Sue won the awards, but real life is not a race for awards. Real
life is... ...Sue’s Treasure Boxes The
possessions we treasure tell a lot about each of us. Sue
kept cardboard storage boxes in our house, which she had labeled, “Sue’s
Treasures.” Let me list a few more items those boxes held:
– A guestbook from visitors when her daughter, Kristina (Kristy to friends
and family) was born.
– A tiny dress and shoes – Kristy’s baptism outfit.
– A binder full of pictures and memories from her father’s retirement
– Hundreds of pictures of family and friends, but especially of Kristy.
Of those, the most vivid and alive were the ones taken by her former husband,
Rick Corrales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Los Angeles
Times.
– A postcard that friends Kevin and Valerie sent from a trip to Paris – just
one of dozens of cards and letters from friends and family she saved. Not
all of the treasures of her life would fit in the “Sue’s Treasures”
box. The
most obvious of the treasures she left behind is her relationship with Kristy
– the best relationship between a mother and daughter I have ever
witnessed. She
also had a soft spot for stray animals. When we met, she had a
cat. The way she got that cat was that she left the side door of her
Whittier house open on hot summer nights, and the cat wandered in looking
like it needed a friend. So she fed it, the cat stayed, and later, when
it passed away, she adopted another cat, which passed away of age and
infirmity in our home. Years
later, one Saturday in Oxnard, she went to K-Mart and found a male Dalmation
wandering around the parking lot, looking lost, apparently trying to find its
owner. Sue took the dog by its leash, led it around the lot asking
people if it was their dog, and then finally went into K-Mart and asked the
manager to announce over the PA system that someone’s dog was missing.
She waited for half an hour, but no one showed up to claim it. So
she brought this big, happy, handsome old dog home. She put up signs in
the neighborhood around K-Mart, ran an ad in the paper, and reported it to
the city, but no owner showed up. We
eventually learned that the dog had been abandoned. So we had our own
Dalmation. We named him “Mister Ed,” but Sue started affectionately
calling him “Doggers,” and that name stuck. Doggers
passed away in 2002, the first bad event of our worst year, the year Sue’s
cancer made its ugly presence known. But more on that later. When
Sue and some great oncologists beat her cancer back the first time, her
reward was a fluffy little golden retriever. We named the retriever
Buttercup. Then, somehow, after the veterinarian took down “Buttercup”
as her official name, it got changed to “Cupcake,” which is the name under which
the boarding kennel knows her. Ultimately, Sue found another nickname
more comfortable: “Puppy Girl.” But
it was more her people than her pets that Sue loved. Her Greatest Treasures Were Family…
She
clung to the good in relationships, with great determination. She
loved her cousins, aunts, and uncles in the extended Harnett, Rathz, Mangano,
and Corrales families. I have felt privileged to bask in the glow
of these warm and loving relationships, which she treasured so much. The
same is true of her former in-laws, the Hansens. A few weeks before she
passed away, she told me that she sometimes regretted having left her first
husband, Rick Hansen, whom she had loved then. In recent years, she
bridged the gap of time and separation, and re-kindled her friendship with
Rick’s mother, Joanne. She went up to visit the Hansens, and kept up
contact by email. Without
any prompting from me, Sue established a spiritual relationship with my
uncle, Monsignor Puma. In fact, when they had sessions together, they
shooed me out of the room. But what I do know is that in the past
couple of years, she has reconnected with her Catholic faith. …And Friends
Suzanne
Blumenfeld, Phil and Annette, Valerie and Kevin, Paula Williams (who whisked
Sue off to a beachfront resort on Kauai in December, 2005, just weeks before
Sue would have been too weak to go), Valerie Martinez, Gracie and Debbie at
Hair Dimensions, Julie Gift, and in her last days, her newest close friend,
Jody, her hospice nurse – I know I’m leaving people out, and I apologize to
anyone not named: Sue treasured these friendships and worked hard to maintain
them. She
also tried hard to make and build the bridge of friendship and family
connections with my family back east, especially my children – and succeeded
with my daughter, also named Suzanne. To
put it all into a sentence: what the boxes labeled “Sue’s Treasures” reveal
about Suzanne Corrales is that her most cherished treasures were family and
friends. Finally, After 17 Years, Our Wedding Day
We
were together as a couple for 17 years. We began living together in
1991, about two years after we met. And at least once every year of
those 17 years, I asked her to marry me. And
each time, she respectfully declined for the time being, but let me know I
was very much in the running. Finally,
on the evening of January 31, 2006, I asked again. I think it just popped into my head that it would make her
happy if I let her know I’d still be honored to be her husband. This
time, she said “Yes.” I waited
to reconfirm it the next morning, and we began planning our wedding. By
this time, she had had a couple of scary periods of days, and her life was
under imminent threat of a final turn for the worse. So we moved fast:
on February 4, 2006, we were married at home – wedding dress, cake, minister,
and all, surrounded by over 60 friends and relatives. It
turned out that our haste was well-founded.
Only six weeks later, she was gone. It
had all started... ...On My Best Day In California–The Day We
Met In
1989, I was a lonely guy, soon to be unemployed, living in Long Beach,
Calif., and dreaming about a career in the movie business. In
other words, I was not exactly the most expensive cut of beefcake in the meet
market, and I knew it. Women who looked physically attractive to me
were just not interested, and knew how to make that painfully clear. I
saw a brief article or ad – I don’t remember which -- in the Long Beach
Press-Telegram for a kind of evening group-therapy session at the
Unitarian-Universalist Church, for people who wanted to talk about
relationship issues, including my issue -- that I didn’t have one. I
walked in and sized up the crowd of about 30 people. It looked like the
biggest assortment of aging geeks and sorority rejects I’d ever seen.
Thinking, “I’m not this desperate,” I sidled as unobtrusively as I
could toward the door. Once outside, I made fast tracks for the parking
lot. But
just as I reached the lot, two women were heading toward the building.
I caught a glimpse of one of them as they passed by. That glimpse
was enough: I made a fast a U-turn and followed them in. I
recall watching the way this woman moved as everyone gathered for the
start. I thought I saw shyness, a quietness, or something, signaling
that I did not need to fear a mean rejection from this beautiful woman. The
way these sessions worked, the managers explained, was that they broke the
big group down into little discussion groups, assigning 5-6 people to each of
several rooms down the hall from the main room. Then, after 45
minutes to an hour, we would reassemble for social time in the main assembly
room. Watching
them select people for groups, seemingly at random, I decided that no matter
which group I was assigned to, I was going to follow this woman into
hers. As
it turned out, we were assigned to the same group. Her name turned out
to be Suzanne Corrales. Her Mexican-American last name was that of her
former husband, Rick. I
must have said the right things in that brief group session, because we found
ourselves walking back to the main assembly together, and spending most of
our time fending off other men hovering and hoping for time with her. I
ended up walking out with her phone number. And
now, 17 years later, I am trying to write this piece as a celebration of her
life. That Worst Of All Days …
The
worst of what I feel is the screaming sense of injustice and pain over the
way cancer took her life from her, an episode at a time, one capability after
the other, laying waste to the external manifestations of her beauty. So
the worst day of my life was the first day her cancer revealed its ugly
presence. But
it was also the day that an important statement emerged between Suzanne and
me. It
started with the call from our friend and hair cutter, Gracie, at Hair
Dimensions: Suzanne had just collapsed in her chair. The ambulance squad
beat me there, but not by much. Suzanne was going in and out of
conscious on the floor, afflicted by some mystery disease. The
ambulance squad asked me a fast but penetrating series of questions about her
health and possible causes. But she was in very good health, or so it
had seemed as recently as an hour earlier, when we’d had lunch with a
friend. Nothing
seemed to suggest itself as a reason that she would suddenly collapse. Actually,
there had been warnings – small, subtle neurological symptoms which had been
emerging for months. She had kept them secret, refusing to concede that
anything was wrong. At
the hospital, as they took her out of the ambulance, she pleaded with me:
“Don’t leave me.” I
said something like, “Of course not. Where would I go?” She
said it again, more insistently: “Please, don’t leave me. Please!” “Sweetheart,”
I said, “If you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to call the
sheriff.” And there it was. Even more than "I love you," which is easy to say and only half mean, it was my way of saying I was in all the way, and for the duration -- even though she wouldn't marry me (she had her reasons). That
sentence became something I would say to her when she needed
reassurance:
“If you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to call the sheriff.” She
never did. And finally, six weeks before she passed away, she did marry
me. Some Moments From
The Last Year Of Her Life Last Big Trip: Kauai with
Paula, December, 2005
Paula
Williams, one of her dearest friends, used a slew of frequent flyer miles to
take Sue with her to a beachfront resort on the garden island of Kauai.
They sat in beach chairs watching big fat seals loll on the beach in front of
them. It
was one of those resorts at which cabana girls would take drink orders at
your beach chair if you put up a flag. Sue
got happily tipsy on a rum drink and called me to tell me she was getting
happily tipsy on a rum drink. Barcelona, Venice, London,
August, 2005
In
Barcelona, we rented an apartment in a renovated ancient castle in the
Medieval part of the city, wandering the narrow streets and alleys of the
Barri Gotic and El Born with nothing particular in mind. We toured the
Picasso Museum and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, and Casa
Batllo. On
the train between Barcleona and Venice, Sue got her first chance to sleep in
an overnight berth as we sped through the south of France to Italy.
Dinner on the train was surprisingly good. She had sea bass, I had beef
shank; we shared a local bottle of wine, saving half the bottle for
Venice. Our
Venice apartment – we did the entire trip in apartments rather than hotels --
overlooked a canal. In the early morning, delivery gondolas brought
food and supplies to the restaurants, calling out as they rounded the
corners. Climbing
the steps of the Rialto Bridge our first night in Venice, we heard a violin
playing “Ave Maria” more sweetly than she and I together had ever heard it
played. When we reached the top, we saw that the source of the music
was a young man playing for coins. Wanting
to do something memorable for her, I approached this violinist and offered
him 20 euros to play his very favorite song. He responded with a
song so sad that it was as if the violin was weeping with uncontrollable
grief. How could he have known she was dying? In
London, we saw a Queen revival and a very good, energetic comedy, “Tom, Dick,
and Harry,” in which three actor brothers play three brothers. New Jersey, May, 2005: Msgr.
Puma’s Beach House
In
the most obvious ways, this was the least of our trips out of state in 2005:
it was before the summer season, cold, and rainy most of our time
there. However, in the important ways, this was Sue’s most important
physical journey of the year: It was the biggest of many steps in a spiritual
journey she began when she understood that her disease would take her life. Suzanne
and my uncle, Msgr. Vincent Puma, spent hours together, and for some of those
sessions, had me leave the room for extended periods of time. I went
off to a local Internet café while they talked privately. So I don’t
know the exact words that transpired between them, but I did see the outcome:
Sue’s fear diminished as her death approached. He had used the term,
“surrender,” to her, and over time, after that, as the outcome became so
clear, she did – not to defeat, but to acceptance and to the belief that
eternal life is real. I
know the Catholic faith, having grown up in it, and with a Monsignor as an uncle,
but I am not currently of it. Neither, for most of our years together,
was Sue a full practitioner. She didn’t disbelieve, just didn’t
participate, until her fight against cancer. The Suzanne Corrales Smile
I
wrote in her obituary about the “quiet determination and courage with which
she fought cancer for nearly four years.” But
something Gracie said to me the other day made me realize that I missed the
most important part. It was not just the courage. Look at her
pictures. It was the smile she bestowed on everyone, right through
the worst. In
fact, one of her very last acts, with the last of her strength, was raising
her hand to wave and smile at her hospice nurse, Jody, when she came the day
before Sue passed away. But
with apologies for stretching a metaphor, the great sheriff in the sky has
come. As Mrs. Measley said
in 1972 –
Suzi, you’re one of the rare ones. Oh,
my girl. My sweet girl. Farewell.
– Bill Donovan, March 25-27,
2006
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