Remembering Susan

Like pretty much every other mom blogger out there, I am deeply grieved today over the loss of “Toddler Planet” blogger Susan Niebur, otherwise known as WhyMommy. She died yesterday after a five year battle with inflammatory breast cancer.

Susan was a reader of this blog almost from the beginning. She always left kind, thoughtful, intelligent comments, and over the years, she became someone whose friendship I trusted as much as anyone in real life. She was a devoted mother to her boys, but she also was devoted to her career as an astrophysicist, and continued working on contract to NASA, speaking at science conferences, and contributing to the blog “Women in Planetary Science,” right to the end. I always admired that she was able to find ways to feed her passions for family, career, and friendship, all while valiantly fighting cancer.

A part of Susan was always painfully aware that her cancer would, in all likelihood, kill her. She knew when she was diagnosed with IBC that her prognosis was grim — many with the diagnosis die within two years. Because of this, she made every moment she had as a mother count. Even when she was too sick to play with her boys, she cuddled and napped and watched television with them. Her deep appreciation for every minute she had as a mom has had a profound impact on me.

Without a doubt, I am a better mother because of Susan.

Thanks to her, I have paused so many times throughout my (seemingly mundane) days with my kids, and been so very thankful for every moment we have together.  For that alone, I am so grateful to her. She taught me, quite simply, that time is a gift.

It also was meaningful to me that Susan had a deep belief in God. She was devoted to her church and often wove reflections on her faith into her posts. Before Susan, I believed that those who studied space and planets were pretty much destined to be atheists, simply because their search for concrete answers left little room for the mysteries of the afterlife. But Susan looked out at the stars and saw evidence of the divine. I don’t know about you, but when a NASA scientist sees God, more than ever I WANT TO BELIEVE.

And yet, despite all this, Susan was so real. Yes, she believed in an afterlife, but that didn’t make her any less desperate to cling to the life she had here on earth. She was honest with us about the unrelenting pain she experienced at the end, and about her fear of dying and leaving her boys motherless. And she was always, always hopeful for more time, right to her last blog entry, when hospice was on its way to her home. “I am not blogging goodbyes,” she wrote, just a few days ago. “I am not saying goodbye to you yet. I won’t.”

Even at the very end, when it was obvious to even the casual reader that Susan’s days were numbered, she told us that hospice would only be coming “for a time.” Even at the very end, she promised that she would write more tomorrow.

That was our Susan. She never gave up. Never.

The bulk of my relationship with Susan took place online, through e-mails and comments left on her posts and mine. But a few years ago, I was waiting at the elevators at a BlogHer conference when a woman shyly approached me and introduced herself.

“Hi Lindsay, it’s me, Susan,” she said quietly. “WhyMommy.” And then she smiled.

Susan’s smile, as anyone who has met her knows, was pure sunshine. It had the power to make a person feel warm all the way down to her toes, and it stopped me in my tracks on that busy day at BlogHer. It is Susan’s smile, and the big hug that followed, that I hold now in my heart.

I know you’re smiling right now, Susan.

But my God, we’ll miss you.

If you’d like to contribute to the fight against IBC, Kristen Hammond has written a very moving post on just how to go about it.