For me, the thing that would mean most would be a pen or pencil of hers. I only had very casual interaction with ita until the past couple of years, when I started getting back into artwork. I don't feel like I got to know her as well as many of you all did, but I was just starting to get a real taste of it when - poof. Gone.

I cannot tell you all how much I miss the lost opportunities.

There is so much wonderful amazing hair among you all.

That obituary is beautiful.

Hec, your mix is so good I can't listen to it right now because I'm going to cry and have to TCOB. And that's on shuffle (sorry). In the right order I might shatter entirely.

Catching up on this thread is some hard work.

Between the obit and John Moore's eulogy it feels too real.

Beautiful obituary. Thank you.

The obit, the sharing, it's all so lovely.

Everyone who worked on this, the lovely obituary, and the music mix, and taking care of her things. You all have very pretty hair.

Gorgeous hair. You're like Jem and the Holograms.

Thinking about things to do, in addition to the scholarship and Girls Who Code, I saw this article at my uni's website, about a movement to address racial disparities in health care management, starting with both formal education and retreats and teach-ins for doctors and medical students.

They already had their first retreat a couple of weeks ago, on the weekend that ita passed, but they've got plans to keep pushing the organization forward. Some of the names mentioned in the article are people I at least know to say hello to in the halls, some are friends of faculty members who know me and might be willing to help make connections, and the student organizers are on campus and actively seeking more participants.

So I'm wondering about, if ita's family thought it was a windmill worth tilting at, maybe making a project of gathering all her Natter updates about being bounced from doctor's office to ER to other ER to inpatient treatment, back to ERs, to home care, to inexplicable cancellation of everything -- anonymizing if her family prefers that -- and arranging them into a narrative that could be passed on to one of these people (I imagine the student organizers would be the most approachable). Pain management is mostly complete shit in the US anyway, but POC are even more likely to get the short end of what's already a short and splintery stick. If there's an activist group wanting to attack medical racial disparities from inside the industry, maybe her story and what she faced is something they need to know.

Yea? Nay? Thoughts?