LIVES LIVED

"Now, don't drone on ... "

That was Sandi Richmond's last teaching advice. Sandi's final instructions for her own memorial service were given to her friend and eulogist, Patricia, two days before she died. All of us at that service stopped weeping and started smiling -- exactly Sandi's intention -- when we heard those words. Spilling out the doors of West Vancouver United Church we sang the Ode to Joy and meant every note. Strangers, semi-strangers to each other -- but all friends of the incredible Sandra Richmond.

She is gone a month now, but my heart still jumps when I hear the low whirr of a wheelchair behind me, or see one hove into peripheral vision. Is that Sandi? No, no, of course not; but I'll bet I'm only one of hundreds on the North Shore with that reaction.

Sandra Diana van Zonneveld was born in Makassar, Celebes, a spice island in Indonesia; perhaps this is why she was so darkly exotic, so stunning in vibrant tropical colours.

When she was two years old she moved with her family to Vancouver. Always spunky, she was also gorgeous and popular, a cheerleader at Sentinel high school in West Vancouver, a great jiver in the sixties. But her real extraordinariness did not become apparent until tragedy struck. She met her husband Eddie at the University of British Columbia where both were studying physical education. They graduated, married and both got teaching posts in Kelowna. On summer break the young couple drove east, exploring Canada. One night, near Thunder Bay, their car slid on a soft shoulder and hit a sharp corner. Sandi was thrown from the little sporty car. She hit rocks and her neck snapped.

Half Sandra Richmond's short life -- the better half, she was adamant -- was lived to the hilt from a wheelchair. Yes, there were painfully slow years of rehabilitation at the G.F. Strong Centre where she clawed back some power in her shoulders, arms and two fingers. Years Eddie gave up his teaching job in Kelowna to be near her in Vancouver. Yet to know Sandi at all was to forget she was quadriplegic.

Minutes into meeting her, you just didn't notice any more. Her mischievous joy was utterly contagious. She not only got on with the business of living, but she told how it's done with a powerful novel for young adults: Wheels For Walking.

Sandi and Eddie Richmond were married one year when her life changed. They remained very happily married and after nine years Sandi took on her greatest joy and challenge: motherhood. She gave birth to two sons, Jimmy and Michael. Homemaker magazine ran an article on the courageous young family. Sadly, Sandi and Eddie ultimately decided to live apart. However, each took turns with the task closest their hearts: raising two wonderful boys. Thus, the family formed itself into a strong unit that would always cope and endure.

Out of this tremendously difficult decision came Sandi's greatest strengths. She bought a fitted van and took to the road -- and to life. She started to swim, her greatest pleasure -- eschewed earlier because she had been unable to move her head to breathe in the water. Now, by the simple expedient of going in on her back, she found she could move all by herself. And did she go -- up and down the pool at the West Vancouver Recreation Centre every day, the tortoise among the master-swimmer hares. Lap after lap, looking up at the roof -- thinking and planning her life as she went. She felt closest to free in the water, particularly in the sea.

No mother was more effectively and wholeheartedly involved in her childrens' daily lives than Sandi. Her writing was sidelined in the early, hectic years, but she had so much fun as a "hockey Mum" that she began stealing time to write another book Shoot to Score. Also Stripes of a Zebra based on her Dutch/South-African heritage. When her publisher suggested she might be biting off more than anyone could chew -- taking on apartheid, a mixed race teen romance and disabled characters -- Sandi merely smiled: "That's me -- just rolling along the edge..."

Meanwhile, life was again wondering what it could possibly do to faze this amazing woman. Inflammatory breast cancer was its answer. She was diagnosed early in 1995, with her boys then almost thirteen and eleven. Along with the difficulties of her normal life she now took on surgery, radiation and repeated chemotherapy. For nearly four years she carried on, business as usual.

She learned to sail in a specially fitted boat, part of the Terry Fox legacy. She flew the helijet, filled her sunny garden with flowers, dined out, took her boys and her own Mum to Hawaii. She watched whales, played bridge, and drove to every hockey arena in the province. She was always a strikingly beautiful figure, a bird of paradise rolling through Ambleside in those vibrant colours that suited her so well. The wigs at the cancer hospital were usually for older, greyer heads, so Sandi preferred hats, especially when a little of her own hair remained to show under their defiantly tilted brims. And when she did have to wear a black curly wig, she merely launched into On The Good Ship, Lollipop, watched by another bemused black mop, her giant poodle, Sasha. Together, they put in many a mile on the seawall.

Nothing stopped her for long, not breakdowns of her chair, nor harrowing therapies, and certainly not the heedless who parked too close to her van for her to wheel in. A passer-by would be blithely commandeered to move the van -- until Jim turned sixteen and could proudly reverse his Mum's van to where she could take her place at the controls. When her doctors feared she could not possibly tolerate any further chemotherapy, she said: "If you can buy me two more days with my boys, hit me with it."

We all wanted to hover around her, but she shooed us away while there were still precious days to be lived. Yet when the time came, there was no one ever more organized, more ready. When her doctors said it would have to be palliative care now or a nurse at home, Sandi just said "Give me my van and I'm outta here." Her closest helpers, Cheryl, Michelle and nurse Jan, took time off work to be with her day and night so she could be at home.

This is the kind of love she inspired in all her friends. From the four bridesmaids who attended her at her wedding and all her life, to the thousands who but met her once and never forgot her. "Not now death, I'm busy. Maybe next year." She used her four-year journey towards death to complete and fulfill an extraordinary life. On the one hand she milked every hour, on the other she arranged every detail of her funeral service except the date.

She asked for Let it Be to be sung to her boys, a song written by a son for his own mother who died of breast cancer. A son who did not know then this killer would also claim his wife. Sandi slipped away from us with customary style and grace, leaving her two "stars," her mother, Eddie, her siblings and her army of friends all bereft, but united in grateful awe.

And even now life can't quite stop this woman. Her second book, Shoot to Score, will be on the shelves in February. Her sons will read it to her grandchildren. No, nothing will ever really stop Sandra Richmond. Because Sandi's assignment that fateful night in Thunder Bay was simple: To be the teacher she always was. She taught everyone she met how to live. And when she had done that, she taught us how to die.

As Patricia, her eulogist said: every obstacle we would ever meet, every catastrophe, every hurdle, would be easier for knowing Sandi. Because of her courage, her joy, we might well learn how to let it be.

(by Mary Walkin Keane)