In May , Nancy Hardesty was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And as began, we knew it had metastasized and was terminal. I wanted it to be a special tribute to Nancy. She and I talked at length about each part of this series , and she was delighted to read the installments as our story unfolded online, post by post.
She would say she could hardly wait to read the next one. I had her permission to quote selectively from our lengthy correspondence, and we talked about the contents of the upcoming installments Parts 7 and 8โand possibly more. We relived the memories together. She died peacefully in her sleep, under hospice care in Atlanta, on April 8, She was 69 years old.
It is hard to realize she is gone. This past weekend, I almost expected her to call, as she so often did on Saturday or Sunday afternoons or evenings. We would each pour a cup of coffee and talkโmost times for about three hours, sometimes even four and at least once during this past year, five hours. It always seemed as though we were enjoying an in-person visit.
At times, we would talk during weekdays or evenings as well. As with most people today, electronic correspondence had gradually replaced the long, almost daily snail mail letters we had sent across the miles during the writing of our book. And the lengthy phone calls that became frequent during the past fifteen years or so were only made possible by unlimited long distance plans that would have been beyond our imagination at the time we wrote our book.
Although Nancy and I lived far apart, with time and energy necessarily centered on our own separate lives and careers, we never stopped encouraging each other in our writing, editing, speaking, and teaching careers, as well as sharing our personal lives. Often when either of us needed advice or support, we knew it was only a phone call away.
