Some thoughts by Lori Kagan: (Lori66@aol.com)

Many people have paid tribute to Maidi by drawing on the vast amount of interests and talents that made her the very special person who she was. They are wonderful memorials to her. It is, of course, important to honor Maidi with the things she loved, to remember her accomplishments as a teacher, a student and a friend.

As difficult as it is, though, it is also important to remember not just how she lived, but how she died. It is not something that should just be spoken of in lowered voices. The loss of Maidi, and the reason for it, is much too big of a tragedy to ignore.

Maidi died from depression, a depression relentless enough to kill.It is this we must grapple with, must at least attempt to talk about if we are to fully honor her memory.

There are many things that may have fed the depression - for it is a ravenous thing - and certainly one of those things was severe physical pain. I have the strongest sense that the physical pain was not the cause of Maidi's psychological pain. Certainly it fanned the flames, leaving her still more uncomfortable and weary, and with two illnesses to fight instead of one.

It may be hard to imagine depression as a deadly disease. But in that fact is its advantage. Although it's relatively easy to accept not understanding something like cancer, depression is something we'd like to believe we can understand, something we can, with enough intelligence and willpower, gain mastery over. But who was smarter or more strong-willed than Maidi? No one I can think of, yet we have lost her.

Since we cannot have Maidi back, we can only remember her by learning what we can from both her life and her death. In a community filled with so much intelligence and talent, it is far too easy to intellectualize emotional pain. Perhaps from this we can learn to be a bit more vigilant in caring for one another and, indeed, in caring for ourselves.