Vicarious Rocky

My friend Pat Smith died yesterday on her birthday. She was 43. It was the classically horrifying story about not feeling well, going to the doctor, being checked into the hospital and then dying suddenly. She was being treated for blood clots and was doing well. In fact, I was told she was up and talking to her visiting family before she instantly died around 10am.

Pat would have re-written that paragraph. In our work world, it’s called a “lead,” and I am terrible at writing them. When I first met Pat, I was not a particularly good writer, but she was amazingly patient with my work. Everything that came back across my desk as a trade magazine editor was edited by my boss Pat, and it was always bloody in corrective ink. Pat was good at her job and she made me good at mine. I credit her with making me a decent writer.

Pat loved her work which was completely odd. Not the love, the work. Even though she was a girly girl in so many ways, like being a huge 19th century female literature fan, she was also a top, respected expert in the machine tool industry. She worked in the machine tool trade for over 20 years. It took her all over the world -- to Korea, Sweden, France and England to name a few.

When we were together, we always had our best times in Chicago. We once stayed out until 5am and couldn’t take a chance going to sleep before our tradeshow work restarted with a 7am client breakfast. And so, we tried our best to stay awake in our fancy Four Seasons hotel lobby, giggling and poking each other for 2 hours, as the staff vacuumed around us.

Pat led a diverse and rich life. She loved so many things so fully. She was a wonderful cook, loved art, fine food, cinema, books, chocolate, and shopping. More importantly she deeply loved her family. She was the only daughter in a family with 4 brothers and they all adored her. She lived with and took care of her aging parents and spent lots of time with her beloved niece Amber.

I last saw her right before Thanksgiving, and we met at the Art Museum before dining and shopping in Little Italy. Over lunch we talked at length about her Father who had struggled back from the brink of death over the summer. Pat encouraged me to get my affairs in order, and we spoke about our own deaths. She was confident, having such spry older family, that she would live to an old age. But she worried about who would care for her. And she said, after seeing her father’s struggle, she wanted to die quickly without any complications.

We were going to get together on the 20th and go to the Cleveland Film Festival. Many people will miss Pat.