This Eagle has taken her last flight

It is with much sadness that I inform you that Laurie Dee (Wells) Coleman took her last flight.  Laurie, 44, of San Jose passed away on January 09, 2015 after an almost 7 year battle with Colon Cancer.  Laurie was born in Wichita Falls, Texas on November 29, 1970 to Margaret “Pegi” Kelly and Richard Dearl Wells.  She attended Wichita Falls High School and continued on to receive a BS in Biology and BS in Medical Technology from Midwestern State University.  Laurie was a Clinical Laboratory Scientist whose most recent jobs were at El Camino Hospital and Stanford University.

Laurie is the beloved wife of David Coleman and is survived by her two gentle and adoring Akitas.  Laurie’s hobbies included gardening, raising chickens and participating with people throughout the country in observing the restoration of the bald eagles and rehabilitation of other raptors.  Laurie is survived by Pegi Kelly (mother), Dearl Wells (father), Krystal Arthur (half-sister) and her husband.  She was predeceased by Darren Wells (brother).

The California memorial for Laurie will be held at the Los Gatos Memorial Park Chapel at 11am on January 17th.  Los Gatos Memorial Park is located at 2255 Los Gatos Almaden Road, San Jose, CA 95124.

Memorial services will also be held in Wichita Falls, Texas on February 7th.  The time and place will be announced later.

Instead of flowers, Laurie’s wishes are for donations to be made to either:   Raptor Education Group, Inc; P.O. Box 481; Antigo, WI 54409; (715) 623-2563 http://www.raptoreducationgroup.org/Donate.cfm  or Institute for Wildlife Studies; attn. Dr Peter Sharp; P.O. Box 2500; Avalon, CA  90704; (310) 510-2728

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Laurie and her husband greatly appreciate all those who traveled both locally and from across the country to see her over the last 6 weeks of her life.  Words cannot express how much it meant to her to see you, even if the visits were brief.  Those of you that have seen her over the last few months saw a strong woman who showed very little indication of the battle she was fighting.  Over the course of the last few months her cancer became exceedingly aggressive, causing her liver to become hard and grow to multiple times its normal size.  She managed to disguise her pain and discomfort very well, only showing signs of being tired.  Laurie was a true warrior and she will be sorely missed by those around her.

Plotting out the future

Sorry, I couldn't help myself with the pun.

Laurie and I went out to Los Gatos Memorial Park today to look at options for grave sites or plots. The location is very pretty and not far from where our house is.  There are all the traditional ways to do casket burial there along with ways to store cremated remains.  This has been an interesting topic for us as we come from such different backgrounds.  In Texas most of the time people are buried in a coffin.  In California there is a pretty even split, but my more immediate family has often done a scattering of ashes. I think we have found a wonderful middle ground.  Laurie has decided to go with cremation.


We found a really nice situation at Los Gatos Memorial Park that makes Laurie very happy. There is a new area they have created called the Reflections Estates, which is a set of single and double burial markers around a fountain and a waterfall - a beautiful outdoor cremation water garden.  No one has been interred there as it's just been completed. There are still a few things they are working on and the flowers will be refreshed as the originals didn't take with our strange weather of late. Laurie is the second person to choose a spot there so she got one that she really likes, up by the fountain and next to a waterfall. The ashes will be entombed in a granite casing which will be interred at the outdoor cremation water garden. The granite will be engraved. The ashes will go into a capsule which will be fitted into the bottom of the granite stone. The portion of the granite with the capsule will be entirely buried underground.

I'm including several pictures here along with links to two videos that Laurie took.  We purchased a tandem gravestone where we will both be interred when our times come.  The location is to the right as you enter the Los Gatos Memorial Park and our marker (#61) is on the right side near the top as you look from the bottom. Our double stone is not yet in place in the pictures.

View from the bottom of Reflections Estate - Los Gatos Memorial Park 

View from the Side of Reflections Estate - Los Gatos Memorial Park

Our plot will be roughly centered here, between the walking path and the water feature.
Reflections Estate #61, Los Gatos Memorial Park

Catching up after a little delay

The Airport in the Sky, our desintation

Catalina

Sorry for the delay, there have been a lot of things going on and I’ll try to catch everyone up on what’s been going on.

If you’ve followed our travels through the years, you know that no trip goes simply for Laurie and I.  Our very first trip together we had our trip changed by a hurricane, a broken drive shaft and a re-routing of the ship.  It did result in showing we could endure a lot together and the picture on our wedding wine came out of that (see picture to the right).

The very low reservoir

Catalina would be no exception.  As all the eagle watchers know, Catalina is/was in a stage 2 water shortage and they are way down on water.  Of course this means that Mother Nature would choose this time to pour significant rain on us.

We arrived mid-afternoon and made arrangements to have Maria (our stellar IWS tour guide) meet us at the airport so we could start seeing things before the rain arrived on Tuesday.  We tried to locate K46, which was an 8 month old female eagle that had been recently released back into the wild after recovering from 2 broken legs that occurred when she was startled out of her nest before she could completely fly.  We did find her on Tuesday, but we were able to see eagles perched and on watched and in flight.  We also briefly dropped by the ranch to visit the golden eagle and bald eagle that can’t be released into the wild.

Tuesday morning we started at 7am (ok, a little later as I couldn’t get moving).  We headed out and soon the rain started to visit.  Now Catalina has all dirt roads with one exception.  So a 4WD truck was a must along with a great driver and tour guide.  Maria managed to find K-46 using the radio beacon that K-46 has on her back.  You can see in this picture that she’s absolutely soaked.

Maria laid out some mackerel for her to eat and we stayed back and watched the fun.  Here’s a link to a video where you can see a raven trying to get K-46 to look away from her food and think that something was going to happen.  We made it up to two harbors and then after lunch we had to call it a day as the weather was making the roads too dangerous.

The next day we got up and everything in town was closed.  It seems that Avalon rolls up the sidewalks when it rains.  We had a continental breakfast at the hotel as no real breakfast places were open.  I decided to message our pilot and let her know we'd be getting to the airport early as we had nothing to do.  As I was preparing the text I received the following message from her:

I just want to give you a heads up.  Currently the visibility at the airport is 1/4 mile because of the clouds.  I am not able to land or takeoff from the airport with the visibility so low.  

Hmmm...   not a good message.  I called her and it was concluded that we needed to take the ferry to the mainland and then taxi to Long Beach Airport where she'd meet us and take us home.  This was what I was trying to avoid, but it was either that or hope for the clouds to break and that didn't look promising that day.  So, ferry -> Uber -> LB Airport and then home.

For more pictures, you can see my FB photos at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205277468674770&type=1&l=b50f6520fc.  The folder is public, so everyone should be able to see the pictures whether or not you use Facecrook.

OK, now for the update on Laurie….

Stent

The ureter stent that was put in during Laurie’s last hospital stay has been really bothering her lately.  For the last 2 weeks it’s been causing Laurie to wake every 90 minutes and that means she’s extremely tired and a cascade of challenges then emerge.  We had a CT scan done on Friday Dec 12 to see if it would be safe to remove the stent following the radiation.  The conclusion was that under normal circumstances they’d leave the stent in as there are other active nodes in the area.  However, we’re not in a normal situation and given Laurie’s comfort is paramount it’s time to remove the stent.  We will deal with any consequences when they arise.  This afternoon (Dec 17) Laurie will have the stent removed in an in-office procedure.

Hospice

In general, Laurie feels like crap and is not able to do the things she normally does.  I mentioned she's extremely tired, yet I'm not sure that really explains it.  She sometimes will go for walks with the dogs and I, but in general she doesn’t have enough energy.  Most mornings she is sleeping as much as possible so she can get an hour or two in the afternoon or evening where she feels functional.  In general she eats because she knows she needs to, but she doesn't have much appetite and most food tastes bitter to her.  We made the decision on Monday that it was probably time to invoke hospice.  This is a milestone, but is not the watershed that people often associate with hospice.  We want to do this so that Laurie can get daily visits from a nurse and active monitoring of her condition on a day to day basis to ensure that everything is done to ensure she’s comfortable and can get back to doing things she wants to do.  The plan is that the hospice nurse will do her "intake evaluation" on Thursday.