‘It really is a wonderful life’

Something about looking death in the eye has a way of clarifying what it is that is important about living.

This weekend we were invited to attend a celebration for one of our longtime writers whose name has appeared in these pages for many years.

Patricia Wade is well-known to readers of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. Other community columnists, such as Elinore Ebling and Jody Simpson, who wrote Talkeetna and Big Lake news columns respectively, retired from the Frontiersman’s pages after a few years commitment. Wade’s relationship with the paper, however, lasted through a string of editors across nearly two decades.

She wrote for the Frontiersman first as a community columnist beginning in 1995. To that she added countless letters to the editor — her last was published May 30, 2014. And in 2012, we were honored when she agreed to write a series of stories about her family’s history for the Frontiersman.

When email became ubiquitous, Wade moved on and used that tool to distribute her own “Chickaloon News” instead of relying on the Frontiersman, which only offered her limited space on Fridays for “Chickaloon Views.”

Her hometown newspaper was her first foray into the world of journalism. But her voice grew beyond our pages, and soon schoolchildren around Alaska knew her name and could recite the Ya Ne Dah Ah stories she told them.

We knew Wade was ill. We knew she’d declined radiation and was seeking alternative treatments. But the news of her passing in Seattle on July 31, 2014, caught us all off guard. We thought we had more time to say thank you, to say we loved Wade like family.

Her letter to the editor in May tells the story of her health struggle.

“I went to a lousy dentist 20 or so years ago who left a shard sticking out of the filling that irritated my tongue. I had a dentist file the shard off, but the sore still came and went. Then I had the tooth removed and year after year that sore still persisted,” Wade wrote.

“In November of 2012 it blew out like an angry balloon and was so painful I started taking ibuprofen pills at night and even during the day. I had been trying to heal it naturally for years. Finally, in April 2013, I relented and had the surgeon cut it out. He wanted to do ‘clean margins’ but I was confident I didn’t have cancer and I wanted to be able to talk. I mean for chrissakes, I’m a storyteller. I need a tongue.”

The pathology report discovered squamous cancer cells in the lesion and a PET scan showed a swollen lymph gland, she wrote.

Wade declined radiation and pursued every natural protocol she could think of.

“My latest healing modality is having my sister Rain and Daniel Shaffer do bioenergy work called Domancic,” Wade wrote. “Not only does it draw all kinds of interesting stuff out of the neck lump, but even more importantly was how it helped me overcome my fears.”

Wade closed her final letter to the Frontiersman with these words:

“I think the best idea for me is to embrace mortality with an open heart when it comes my time and until then, live every day to the fullest. It really is a wonderful life.”

Rest now. We’ll see you down the trail old friend.