Diagnosed with colon cancer in 2018, Elizabeth was the emotional core of Side Effects, the 7-part documentary I produced for the National Credit Union Foundation about the financial crisis of cancer in America.

I traveled to Idaho twice in late 2020 to interview the woman everyone knew as Biz. Out of those conversations, a precious friendship was born.

She passed away on August 3, 2021.

I was given the privilege of sharing these words at her funeral:

"I'll be right behind you, Andy. I'll help you get back safely."

Those were some of the last things Elizabeth said to me the final time I saw her in person, when I was up here to tell her story as part of the Side Effects documentary.

I'd first interviewed her in September 2020 at her home in Twin Falls. That’s where I met Curtis and Jacoby, where I got to see her eyes light up whenever they were near her, got to hear the love in her voice for Savannah and Zoie, got to experience the joy and affection she had for her family as she showed me around the house and explained the stories behind the pictures on the walls.

In that interview, she kept raving about Fallcreek, urged me to join them up there because that was their favorite place to really get away and relax. I took her up on her invitation a couple months later in early November, and followed Curtis' directions from Twin Falls to the campsite.

If you've ever made that drive, you know how gorgeous it is. I live in Indiana - some of the tallest things around us are cornstalks and basketball hoops - so I was a total tourist as I drove from Twin Falls to Mountain Home, gaping in slack-jawed wonder at the endless plains and soaring mountains all around me.

But as soon as I turned onto the dirt road that leads to Fallcreek, I remembered Curtis’ caution to drive carefully down that rocky path, no easy task considering how in love I was with the beauty arrayed under a perfect blue Idaho sky. 

Less than a mile away from the camp, I congratulated myself for guiding my little rented SUV safely through the rugged terrain.

And that’s when my tire blew out.

After a couple minutes of world-class swearing, I swapped out the wounded tire for the rubberized fruit loop that passes for  spare tires these days, then gingerly proceed ahead, dreading the moment when another knife-edged stone will destroy another tire and make my stay in Fallcreek much longer than expected.

Miraculously, I arrived at camp with all four wheels intact, where Curtis, Elizabeth, and Jacoby are waiting for me. Curtis met me as soon as I got out of the car, took a look at the spare, and said with a grin, “Looks like you had some excitement.”

Yeah, I replied. The rocks got me. Curtis said, "Why don’t you gimme that busted tire; lemme see if I can fix it." And with that, he snatched up that tire like the Michelin Man and retreated to his secret car repair location.

As Biz watches him walk away, she says, "That's why I love him."  Men, if you have a woman who looks at you, and talks about you, with just half the adoration and affection that she had for Curtis in that moment, your life is officially complete.

I hung out with her for the next two hours, capturing her in her own private paradise. This visit isn't about cancer and finances, but more about her and how she's doing.

I don't feel good, she confesses as the sun sinks toward the treeline.

I wouldn't have known it by watching her; she'd shown me around the campsite, walked up and down to the creek a couple times, and made lunch for all of us in the hour before that admission with a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye.

But now, huddled near the fire and under the protection of her soft gray Comfy - a brilliant invention that looks like the love child of a blanket, a hoodie, and a miniskirt - I can see the fatigue. I tell her I'm so sorry that she has to go through this.

"Ah," she says, "what're you gonna do, huh? I'm not gonna worry about that today," and the fatigue vanishes, replaced by a clear-eyed love of everything she still has in this world, and I marvel for the hundredth time at the strength and grace running over and through her.

By this time, Curtis has returned. The tire was too damaged to repair, he’s sorry to say, so the spare is gonna have to do. That's when Biz volunteered to follow me back along the dirt road out of Fallcreek, to make sure I got to the main road leading to Mountain Home in one piece.

And I did, thanks to her. I found my way to safety, thanks to her. And I think all of us could say the same about her.

A few weeks later, I got an Amazon package from her. You know what was in it? Comfys for my wife (a breast cancer survivor) and our two daughters. Biz remembered me saying how jealous they would be of the magical blanket/miniskirt/hoodie combo, and she blessed them with a gift of warmth and comfort.

That was her, for me, and I'm sure for all of you, too. Brave, selfless, kind, empathetic, giving, caring.

You have far more stories than I, far more history and inside jokes with her and about her. I wish I had the shorthand that you all have, the stories and laughter you can summon with just a few words.

Savor those memories. Tell those stories. Share her lessons. Cherish her life, and the lives left behind, because that’s what ahead of us now. We owe it to her to grieve well, to give ourselves the space and margin and time to mourn.

There are stages to grief - denial, anger,  bargaining, depression, acceptance - but not a sequence. 

Each stage is meant to be felt fully, repeatedly if necessary, each in their own time. We shouldn't explain away, numb, or discount them, because each is a manifestation of the love we have for her and for the life we wish we could've lived with her.

Death is not natural. It is not natural to separate loving parents from their daughter, to take a wife from her husband, to part a mother from her daughters and her son and her new grandson, to deprive friends of their angel.

Death is not what God had intended when he first breathed this world into motion, a God that Elizabeth knew was real and who was with her all the time.

That's why Jesus himself wept and cried out in anger and anguish when his friend Lazarus had died. That’s why it’s ok for us to do the same.

Death itself is so against the natural order of things that Jesus defeated it by dying in our place, then rising again, so we could be assured that death doesn’t have the final say, that eternal life is possible in and through him, and that we will see Biz again and again, healed and whole, forever and ever, amen.

So let us give each other the best gifts we can - our time, our shoulder, our compassion, our Kleenex, and our embrace.

Let us show as much love as we can to Curtis, Savannah, Zoie, and Jacoby.  Let us honor and support Virgil, Carol, and Linda.

Let us tell little Remington, early and often, about how brave and strong and true his gramma was, how much she lives on in him and in us, and in the love we will carry out of here. 

There will be a day when the mourning and grief brings us to the last, and most enduring, part of the grieving process - finding meaning. We will find the meaning one day of all of this, why it was necessary, why did it matter, and how her life, short as it was, guided and blessed ours in ways we cannot see or predict. 

Glimmers of meaning are already taking shape for me. Her story has been seen and shared thousands of times across the country. I hope it will inspire more financial institutions to meaningfully assist cancer patients and their families.

For me, her journey has inspired me to create a nonprofit that will payoff the credit cards and car loans and personal loans of terminal cancer patients across the country, to give them some measure of peace in the worst season of their lives.

Each of us will find that meaning in our own time, but not on our own. This is our shared journey now along a sharp and sometimes unsure path. But we know that Biz is right behind us, guiding us home.

The very last time I hugged Elizabeth, it was where the dusty road to Fallcreek meets the highway just northeast of Mountain Home. She'd followed me that whole way, right behind me, helping me get back safely, just like she said.

I'd pulled off the side of the road and told her that I'd be fine from here, that it was ok for her to go back to camp, back to Curtis, back to paradise.

It was there, at the end of our final embrace, that she said to me "I miss you already, dear friend."

Although we would stay in touch by text and email afterwards, it turns out that those were the final words I'd ever hear her say to me.

We all miss you too. Drink as many Pepsi's as you want now, Bizzie, and rest easy now.

Thanks for loving all of us so well. We will never stop loving you.