Sylvia Reizes
Sylvia was my closest friend. She died of metastasized colon cancer on Aril 25 in Victoria BC, almost 10 years after the death of her husband Ryk, caused by an aggressive cancer to the prostate. That's when we first met, in the palliative care unit of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where we were both caring for our spouses.
Seven years later, Sylvia was diagnosed with stage-4 colon cancer that because it had gone into the lymph system would likely metastasize. Sadly, it did, going to the liver.
What then followed was a three-year struggle with operations on colon and liver to arrest the spread, chemo therapy, scans, blood disorders, infections, tests, hospitalizations, on and on it went, with Sylvia having full knowledge that her boat would not come in, that instead it had been sent adrift.
Sylvia, a vivacious, life-embracing person with a love and talent for painting, poetry and an ear for music reacted to all this with a spirit true to her nature. She gathered her strength, and with an outpouring of love and support from a large circle of family and friends - and as much as medical circumstances allowed - embarked on a life of painting, concerts, movies, dinners, travel, visits to and from family and friends all across Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, outings to good cafés in the area, volunteer service in support of other women similarly stricken - all this with her remarkable zest for life, with courage, with a ready smile, but also with unflagging courage and an iron determination to make each day count.
Along with her will to live came her need for excellence, and even towards the end when others might long have given up, she managed to have her artwork displayed in a solo show at one of the best galleries in town. Sylvia would not retreat, even though she had already at the outset been guided that this cancer would eventually overwhelm her. Go and enjoy life! - she was counseled, and such good advice it was! Sylvia experienced all of it, nurtured by a deep attachment to her family and her friends.
And so I want to salute Kyle Braatz, a nephew of Sylvia's, and the Typically Canadian group, who with their magnificent effort are paying tribute not only to cancer survivors, but also to those who didn't make it, who never even had a chance but who lived as though they had, right up to their last days.
