My Friend Joanne Hanf Razoog McManus-Hain Died Yesterday

My friend Joanne Hanf Razoog McManus-Hain (aka Joanne Thomas) died yesterday, on December 19, 2011. I want to write something profound and worthy of her friendship, but the words don’t come. Tears are the only tribute I can muster for her at this point. Perhaps in time I will be able to put into words how I perceived Joanne, but for now the tears obscure any words that might come to me and therefore remain my only tribute. I am truly heartbroken at the loss of my dear friend.

The thing that is odd about this is that I never met her in person. I was trying to think about when we first started being friends and realized that I don’t remember when or how. At some point, over time during our years as bloggers, we began to communicate. In time we started emailing and eventually talking on the telephone from time to time. She lived in Michigan and I live in Georgia. But I have connections in Michigan and lived there for a while, so we talked about getting together whenever I was in Michigan. But it was just talk. Michigan is a big state and she didn’t live any where near the places I went when I was there. But we chatted about it like people do.

Joanne was a better friend than I was. She credited me with getting her writing jobs on the internet. In truth, she more than earned her own way with her writing. She started the blog, Southern Sass on Crime (the original URL was hijacked by someone in Japan while she was undergoing chemo so we had to start it anew under a new URL) and wrote with passion and conviction about victims of crime. Children who were victims were her passion and she was a fearless advocate for any child who was abused. In recent years she wrote for Right Pundits and Right Juris, continuing her crusade on behalf of victims of crime.

Part of her interest in me seemed to be the fact that my son was in the military. She was as strong an advocate for our military men and women as she was for the rights of children who were crime victims. She took a real interest in my son (as she did in all of our men and women in uniform). Then, about the time that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, one of my nieces was diagnosed with leukemia. To top that off my niece, who was 7-years-old at the time of her diagnosis, was named Lily, which was Joanne’s first name. She seemed to feel a kinship with my niece and followed her sickness and recovery closely.

Whatever the case, we had kindred spirits and our conversations were long, personal and in-depth.

All was fine until she was diagnosed with breast cancer about three years ago. After that, she continued to behave as she always had, but little hints here and there let on that all was not as well as she tried to make it out to be. While she was on chemo she would, from time to time, ask me to edit her writing. She told me that she couldn’t see as well and that her fingertips had become raw from the chemo. She said the skin had peeled off her fingers and they were so tender that she had a hard time typing. She was afraid she had misspelled words or made horrible grammatical errors. I would check her articles and only correct grammar and spelling, not the content, passion or meaning of what she had written.

In recent months she had started talking about how difficult it was for her to get the medicine and medical care she needed. She saw herself as a victim of Obama’s death panels. She had also started talking about her alarming weight loss and her attempts to gain weight. The last time I talked with her she told me she was happy she hadn’t lost weight. I asked her how much she had gained and she said that she had really lost a little, but it was less than she had lost before. During an earlier conversation she mentioned that ‘they’ had tried to put her in hospice care, but that she had demanded they let her stay with her regular doctor. In essence, she had run the hospice workers away. I knew then that the end was near even though she tried to tell me that the hospice was not for end of life care but for the fact she needed more care. She tried to minimize it as best she could.

Joanne knew exactly what was happening to her. I don’t believe she was in denial at all. I think rather that she didn’t want people treating her differently. She didn’t want people to rush to her side. She wanted her life to end her way, not in a nursing home or having her loved ones inconveniencing themselves to care for her. She wanted to go quietly without a big to-do. She was much more comfortable taking care of other people than having people taking care of her. She wanted to die at home alone and not be any trouble to her beloved children, grandchildren and siblings.

The last time I talked with Joanne on the phone we talked for a long time. At one point she apologized for being out of breath during our conversation. She explained that she had walked outside while we were talking to bring in wood for the fire. She said it made her mad that she could only bring in a couple of logs at a time now whereas in the past she would bring in an arm load. I chastised her for doing that and asked her if there wasn’t someone close-by who would bring in wood for her. She blew me off and asked why she would need that when she could do it herself, she just had to make more trips for the wood now is all.

The most telling thing of all was that she asked me to ask my mother to pray for her. She said she read my mother’s blog daily and got strength, encouragement and hope from it. For the first time since I had known her, her voice broke when she talked. I tried to lighten it up by saying I felt like my mother had a direct line to God with her prayers. With a breaking voice she asked if I would mention her to my mother and ask her to pray for her. I told her I would and I did and my mother did pray for her. I hope that brought her some level of peace and comfort.

I learned so much from Joanne about friendship, strength and courage. She was the type of person who rarely (if ever) complained about her own hardships and paid more attention to her blessings than her struggles. She followed my nieces fight with cancer closely and often said it was so hard to see such a young child have to struggle with that horrible illness. She followed my son’s military service as if he was a member of her own family and remembered him and his family by name and often asked about them and how they were dealing with the war. She worked hard on the internet to make money to pay her bills, even up until a couple of days before her death and never let on how difficult it was for her to focus, read the monitor or the pain she was in.

When my son was stationed in Germany, Joanne gave me the name of her brother-in-law who is a General and also stationed in Germany and asked if it was okay for her sister to contact him. OF COURSE!!! But my son soon was stationed back in the states. When I had trouble with a well known national retail chain she had her daughter, who works for that department store, to call me and try to help me with the problems I was having. When I had problems with my blog or internet problems, Joanne was there to listen and try to help as best she could. She was there as a friend and colleague. Oh how I will miss her being there!

Joanne was one of a kind. She was a ‘character’. She lived and died her way, the way she wanted, without fan-fare or causing anyone trouble on her behalf. In so doing, she made many friends. People loved her for her love for children, her love for life and for her beauty as a person. People loved her for her passion and direct way of speaking and writing. People loved her for the beauty that exuded from her as a person. She truly cared for her family and friends and never (NEVER!) asked anything in return.

Joanne loved her family. She was the oldest of a large family and talked about her siblings the way that the oldest often does. She loved them and, it seems, they loved her in return. She was proud of them and told me about them often. She was even more proud of her children. I felt I knew them from our conversations. She sent me pictures of her grand-daughter when she got engaged and often talked about her children with love and pride. She didn’t want them troubling themselves over her illness and kept it from them. Whether or not that was the right thing to do is not for me to judge. I just know that it was done out of love for them and a sincere desire to not trouble them from their own lives.

Joanne stood 5’9″ tall. She was slender and beautiful. Some of the stories she told me led me to think that she had a lot of fun in her younger days. She had lived a full life. At one time she worked as a Playboy Bunny. She was physically beautiful, until the ravages of cancer, chemo-therapy and radiation-therapy took their toll on her body. Even then, her spirit remained beautiful. She was only 62-years-old at the time of her death. Much too young. Much too young.

I hope she knows how beautiful she was (IS!) as a person. I hope she knows how much she meant to so many people. I hope she knows how much her life mattered to the people who were smart enough to pay attention to what she had to offer and what she was able to teach. I can only hope that when it is my turn to go I can do so with as much dignity, generosity and grace as Joanne Hanf Razoog McManus-Hain did.

Lilly Joanne Razoog McManus-Hain (Southernsass) went to the Big Blogging Center in the sky on 12/19/11 after a vigorous battle with breast cancer and COPD. She was born Jan 17, 1947 to Thela Mae Thomas and Norman Hanf in Kingstree, SC and lived in Roscommon, MI. She is survived by daughters, Cindy and Gina, son, George Michael, grandchildren, Erin, S , Tink, sisters, Linda, Susan, Nancy and Barbara, brothers, Norman and Thomas, lots of nieces and nephews and furry babies, Lucy and Henry. She was preceded in death by her sister, Terri and her parents. Joanne was an independent,avid blogger. Her most passionate topics were support of our troops and missing/abused children. In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to Van Strein-Creston Chapel/Heritage Funeral Services Inc, 1833 Plainfield Avenue North East, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505.

Joanne’s sister Linda Hanf has told me that these are the funeral arrangements:

The funeral service is this Friday at 11am with a viewing at 10am:
Van Strein-Creston Chapel / Heritage Funeral Services Inc
1833 Plainfield Avenue North East
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

Joanne worked hard her whole life. She never asked for anything in return and was generous to a fault. She died without money. Her family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to pay for her funeral expenses. You can send a Paypal donation to her sister Linda at ldhldh[at]aol[dot]com or send a donation to the funeral home in memory of her.

This tribute to my friend Joanne Hanf Razoog McManus-Hain is inadequate. It is written through tears and a genuine feeling of loss. She was a true friend, a true gift. I will miss her every day for the rest of my life. I like to think she is at peace, free from pain and suffering, and reaping the rewards of her Earthly labors – so well deserved – from a life well lived. I love you, Jo. I miss you already and know that I will more as time goes by. I hope to finally meet you in person when my time comes. I can only hope.

Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
~Matthew Chapter 25 Verse 23