Colorado College Bulletin

A Tribute to Jodi Carson '84

By VINCE BZDEK '82

I can tell you the exact instant I became a technophile. It was during my wedding in January right after my wife of 10 minutes and I came down the aisle and she handed me the cell phone from out of a bridesmaid's bouquet. My longtime friend from Colorado College, Jodi Carson, was on the phone from her hospital room in Denver.

"Let me be the first to congratulate you," she said, feebly but clear. "It sounded like a beautiful ceremony."

Of all the best wishes, hers was the most heart-meant, the one that cut through the scripted ritual and hectic blur of the wedding and brought home the deep, starry luck my wife Kelsey and I had just sanctified. Here was Jodi, as if just drifted in from a midsummer wood to bless our wedding with a wireless chirp.

Kelsey and I had hoped to have our wedding in time for Jodi to be there in person. Her cancer had advanced too much for her to fly to Washington, but as a surprise Kelsey had arranged for her to listen in from the flowers. My single regret as a groom -- that Jodi was missing -- turned into a capstone of bliss when I realized she was there after all.

Jodi was in a way responsible for the whole event. Just two months after Kelsey and I started dating I asked Jodi for advice. "Don't waste time," she said. "If it's right, marry her, as soon as possible." Jodi knew the real thing when she saw it, and she also knew the paramount value of love. I think she wanted any love around her to stay around as long as possible, since she couldn't. She wanted all of us she would leave behind as wedded to each other as we could be.

The wedding was just one of the last cairns in Jodi's last year, her 36th, a year T.K. Barton would have called an annus mirabilis, a "Year of Wonders." Her year began in January, 1998, with a party Jodi threw for herself and 200-some of her closest friends. She'd just been told that she probably had less than 12 months left, and her response was to throw her own wake: to say goodbye, in person, to all the people that meant something to her. To say goodbye, but to reaffirm her bonds to us as well, many of who were from Colorado College. Jodi liked to quote Morrie in Mitch Albom's tuesdays with Morrie: "Death ends a life, not a relationship." She called her party a "Celebration of Life."

Many artists she'd worked with at Site Santa Fe and in her mother's gallery in Denver created works just for the party. Other friends created a book of memories -- written, drawn and painted. We swirled around Jodi all night and quickly relocated our collegial spirits. What I thought would be a difficult evening quickly became a celebration many of us there thought was the best we'd ever been to. Why? Mostly because we danced and felt alive. Towards the end we danced the Hora, a traditional Jewish dance in which we all kick-stepped in a circle, arms interlocked, with Jodi at the Center. A handful of men lifted Jodi up in a chair as the crowd of 200 circled around, so that she rose like a pistil from a flower and we all created something, inspired by Jodi, something that was found and dancing and larger than its parts.

Jodi continued to illuminate and replenish us in her year of wonders, living a model of right priorities. She cut away the fat of her world and dwelt in the vital. In her mother's words: "She set an example for all of us...to live life fully, to emphasize the worthwhile and in so doing to never allow life's inequities and unpleasantries to diminish the wonderful moments."

If you were part of Jodi's year, you knew you were vital to her, and therefore you felt your own vitality. Without doing so aloud, she asked: "Why isn't your every choice vital? Why not put your whole, best self into the choices you make, and truly choose them, commitedly, decisively?"

Jodi lived as vitally as she ever had while dying. In her year, she whitewater rafted in Costa Rica, skied in Taos, danced so hard in a Denver bar she jarred loose the tube on her portable chemotherapy dispenser. In addition to months of chemotherapy, she endured radiation therapy, brain surgery and a broken leg. In between she traveled as much as possible -- to New York, Santa Fe and Mexico -- only stopping when she couldn't get out of bed. Her brother tells me her last words in March were: "OK, I'm going on a long trip now, and I want a map."

At her memorial service in her parents' backyard, the wind came up while friends were reading their tributes. Notes blew away; hair tangled; chairs folded. Jodi would have liked that I think. She was a passionate outdoorswoman, always treasuring another of her relationships - to the blustery beauty of Colorado and the West.

Over the summer, her family spread her ashes at Weller Lake on Independence Pass. I'm told the wind came up again, and a batch of white butterflies floated up from the water and lighted on the children. Jodi's family said they felt like Jodi was there.

I like to think I know what they felt. Jodi is here still, as a memory and a lens, in all of us who were at her "Celebration of Life." She's present the way she was present at my wedding -- as a wise and lovely voice.

I'll sometimes pick up my cell phone, which I now regard as a magic wand, and I'll use it to better cement those bonds -- especially the Colorado College ones -- that Jodi had such faith in. And sometimes I'll just hold it to my ear without dialing and listen for her voice.

Vince is assistant editor at The Washington Post.

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