The Patient Person for March 16, 2007

• By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Mar 16, 2007

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My daughter’s closest childhood friend died two weeks ago.

She was 23 and blessed with a rare combination of wisdom and innocence. She had the ability to see through the crusts people wrap about themselves to the nuggets of goodness inside. She sparked those nuggets to shine and grow.

Kristen Fischer was the most compassionate person I have ever known. Perhaps that compassion grew in great part from the disease she fought since childhood. She was in and out of hospitals. She carried medical equipment with her wherever she went.

Much of Kristen’s life seemed a breath away from death. Maybe that is why she savored life so much. Maybe that helped to make her a magnate that drew those within her radius into that same appreciation for the simple, wonderful moments of every day.

Once, when they were children, a teacher asked Sarah and Kristen’s class to write about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Kristen wrote that all she wanted was a chance to grow up.

She did.

She became a beautiful young woman.

She had fun at college.

I’ll always picture her with a smile and with a grace not only of movement, but of being.

She would have been a wonderful mother, though she knew that was never to be.

Kristen never had a serious romantic relationship, though suitors were drawn to her like proverbial moths to a flame. Yet Kristen knew her flame would be short, and I suspect she didn’t want to burden any young man with the pain of losing her.

God knows the pain those of us who knew her well have felt at her passing.

I’d seen tears well in my husband’s eyes after the death of his father and when we learned that my cancer was terminal. I saw them for a third time when Kristen’s brother called to tell us of her death.