Christy Lorio, 1980–1922
This Saturday, April 22, at 3pm, there will be tribute to Christy Lorio at the University of New Orleans, arranged by the English Department’s MFA program, of which Christy was a graduate. Christy died on November 29 after a long, valiant battle with cancer. The tribute will be in room 197 of UNO’s Liberal Arts building, in case you want to attend.
While she was still alive, I wrote some words about her and posted them online so she could see how much one person appreciated and admired her. She surely was appreciated, admired and loved by many. This is a slightly edited version of that tribute for those of you who who might not have seen it and who knew and loved Christy — and also for those who never knew her, so you might have an idea of what an extraordinary person she was.
I met Christy Lorio in the spring of 2014 in an undergraduate class I taught, “Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing.” She was a serious, dedicated student with some flamboyant tattoos — was it a snake of some kind? — on her arm and a steely desire to write. She didn’t have the tenacious, cruel cancer that eventually would invade her. I have all her writing from that class — and all her writing from the four other classes I taught that she was part of as well. It’s a joy to read.
I will tell you that the first writing she turned in for that 2014 class is a very funny, deft piece. It’s about a pair of shoes Christy wanted to buy that her mother refused to let her purchase, because they were “hideous,” according to her mother. Christy, a high school student in a Catholic girls’ school then — read mandatory uniforms — bought them anyway and wore them at — not to, because her mother would have seen that — school. The piece is far more than a humorous mother-daughter fashion battle, though. The shoes symbolized Christy’s feeling that she was an outsider, standing apart from the crowd, with different goals, wishes and aspirations. Wearing the shoes she dubbed “Blue Laser Beams” with “the veneer of a diner seat booth,” was her way of declaring who she was. She ends the piece this way:
“As for my beloved blue sparklers, the dingy white soles fought a long, hard battle with crazy glue and eventually, I took them off their sticky life support and gave them the proper burial they deserved in the trash can. Still, I haven’t lost the spirit that went behind their purchase in the first place: don’t compromise who you are for anyone.”
I remember reading this piece and thinking, “Now, here’s a writer.”
At one point, while she was still at UNO, she revealed to the world she had cancer. I knew that her father had died of cancer, and so it was in the family. She feared she might get it, and she did.
She became very public about her disease. She posted on Facebook about her chemo, her operations, her pain, her fierce determination to live. (You can read some of that writing here.) At one point, after she’d taken up photography seriously, she had a benefit to help cover her hospital bills. Cancer is not only destructive, it’s expensive. She was in the middle of one of her chemo regimens when she had the benefit. I met her mother there for the first time — the same mother who had dubbed Christy’s shoes “hideous.” I teased her about this. But I saw the fear and worry in her eyes when she talked about her ailing daughter.
As the years went by, and Christy’s cancer periodically calmed, and then rose up and raged again, her battle became heroic. At least that’s the way I felt about it and others, too. Again and again, the cancer would be staved off, only to return. She had — how many was it? Two, three? — brain operations. Other operations as well. Chemo, then again chemo. Failing eyesight, loss of balance, more operations. I and many others followed her journey on Facebook, and I realized at a certain point that I’d never met anyone as brave.
Her determination and optimism were so fierce, I thought she would kick this detestable thing. She knew she had a terrible disease. You could see she put every ounce of her strength and will into fighting the cancer. It was painful and inspiring to read about her battles. Painful because they were harsh and relentless. Inspiring because Christy never stopped living creatively, vigorously, optimistically. She put a huge amount of creative effort into her photography. She had over a dozen gallery shows. I thought, if anyone can beat it, she can. She came close — it seemed. There were periods of the cancer waning, when her life seemed relatively sane and normal. I think all of us who read her posts about recovery raised a collective cheer. She’s going to beat it! She deserves to beat it!
But we all know cancer is sly and resourceful and, ultimately, so many times, finds a way back in. And it did.
She died November 29th. The Gambit, a local paper, published a warm and loving remembrance of her the next day.
Thankfully, Christy lived to see her book of essays, Cold Comfort, about her struggle with cancer, published. Now anyone, anytime, can read her work and see what a unique, luminous soul she was.
