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Remembering Serafina

Found this online today:

Oh that's sad, she was so young. My local paper is the Daily Hampshire Gazette. I was looking at a photo that Ski Diva posted on Facebook for International Women's Day, and I'm pretty sure I saw Laura (I forget her screen name), another beloved Diva who passed away. And then there was Amy. Life can be short, carpe diem!
 

Tvan

Angel Diva
From Facebook:

Lori Holder-Webb
1967 -2022
When Lori Holder-Webb was in college, she had a close call with Death. She made a deal with him then, that if he gave her more time, she would use all of that time and waste none of it. She spent her life keeping that promise.
Knowing as she did that her time here was limited, she did not suffer fools gladly or at all. You knew immediately if she didn’t have any use for you, and you would be best advised to stay out of her way if this was the case. Nonetheless, she was fast in friendship and was once adopted by an entire village in rural France when she was visiting. People tended to feel as strongly about her as she did about them, one way or the other.
After earning her Doctorate in Accounting at Texas A&M she traveled north. In Wisconsin, she skated for the first time on a frozen river, discovering in the soaring speed the place where her spirit lived. She was also at home in the cold wind and the speed of downhill skiing, a sport that suited her quick and bold spirit like no other. Apres ski, she could be found with her ski tribe bonding over runs and gear, combining her passion for elite ski gear and locally brewed Vermont double IPA. In summer, she loved the Maine coast, and she never met a lighthouse she didn’t like. She and her husband spent time every summer in Maine, where she could find the best hikes, the best beer, and the best kayaking.
She shared a passionate bond with her husband, Jeffrey Cohen, building a life of adventure backed by a soundtrack of Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane. She proposed to him at the top of the Eiffel Tower, which gave him fair warning of what the rest of their time together would be like, as she didn’t have time for other people to make up their minds about what she knew was the right thing to do. With him she found and accepted an unconditional love and caring that to her old friends seemed as unlikely as a July snowstorm in Texas.
One of her other great loves was her horse, Huey the Wonder Horse a Dutch Warmblood of superior pedigree. The two of them had a bond that allowed them speak to each other without speaking, even at a distance. She often regaled her friends with the hilarious things that Huey had told her, and we knew that she was relating these words exactly as she’d heard them. She had a remarkable way with animals, especially horses and cats.
She loved good food, and good beer, and always had the best Scotch whiskey. She could mix the exact cocktail that you needed, even if you didn’t know you needed it. She was famed for her cooking, which she learned while young so she could spare herself from eating food that she deemed unworthy. She did not have time for bad food any more than she had time for bad company. She displayed her light and fire to the world, and everyone who encountered her knew they were in the presence of the divine spark. This was reinforced by her Hebrew name, Serafina, emblematic of flaming wings that spread light to those open to it.
She was also a fiber artist, creating felted, spun, knitted, and woven creations that were her delight to share with her friends and family. She leaves behind an enormous fiber stash that will be divided (and possibly fought over) by her friends who shared her enthusiasm for this art form.
When the time came, she met Death as an old friend, and he saw that she kept her promise. The memory of her will be with us when we feel the cold wind before the snow in the winter, when we see the fireflies in the summer, and whenever we hear the opening bars of Moonlight in Vermont.
May be an image of 1 person, standing, horse and outdoors
 

Tvan

Angel Diva
A tribute from her husband:

An ode to Lori
This is Jeff, Lori’s spouse who many of you know me from Facebook as “person B” or something to that effect but I wanted to share my feelings on Lori.
Lori as you all know lived life “large” and to its fullest. This applied to our romance/love/marriage and a soulmate connection that we used to say was made for infinity and beyond. Her three favorite phrases to me were:
I love you
That’s right Sugar
And my favorite, “For ####’s sake” accompanied by a certain look and eye roll.
All of these were delivered with love and spaciousness and it was so typical Lori.
We met at of all places an academic conference where on 915 AM EST, Feb 7, 20003 she opened her mouth and spoke and I fell in love at voice at first hearing. We proceeded to talk for 2 days and a gazillion times I invited to show her around NYC. We went with a crowd to go dancing on the last night of the conference and on the ride back she sneezed and I said God Bless you. She said I guess I need all of the help one can get and I turned to her and said no, you are perfect the way you are. She later said that the look I gave her, made her realize that I was already in love with her. Of course, I did not make a “move” but I emailed her with an academic paper and the phrase, I hope our paths cross someday soon. In typical Lori fashion she emailed me back immediately to say she thought I was interested in pursuing a relationship and if so, let’s make plans and if not, no worries and all is good. The fact is she had a great life already as many of you know from her Texas days as an edgy, passionate practitioner of the life that said experience life and ask questions later. We decided immediately to connect and we met up in Chicago where we had our first date, a 5 day affair where on day 2 , I asked her where she wanted to go this summer, Tahiti or Paris. The woman didn’t hesitate and said Paris and the wheels were already turning in her mind that this was it. Fast forward to a whirlwind romance interspersed with Lori making a trip to be with her Burning Man mishpacha at Flipside and soon we are in Paris. In typical Lori fashion, she set in motion an amazing sequence of events where we were on the Eiffel tower at around midnight where after some academic discussion by me on conjunctive probability pertaining to our meeting, she asked me to marry her. Of course, she asked in the ear that is deaf from too many loud rock concerts and she had to repeat herself twice more before I heard what she actually said and of course I said yes. Fast forward, to a passionate conversion to Judaism, mystical visions, travels through Europe and a sense of urgency to consummate out connection through a ceremony that would conjure up magic to protect the bond through the multiple planes of the universe. The wedding in 2005 was typical Lori being fun, relaxed and memorable and bliss continued. Then in Fall 2006, the first MS flare happened and life changed. From that time forward, Lori and I used our creativity and passion to make her life and our lives together as “Lori-like” an adventure as possible. For the next 15 plus years, we found ourselves thinking like the Wayne Gretzky quote of not thinking about where the puck is now, but where will it be in the next 30 seconds. We constantly adapted to Lori’s physical limitations and found ways to make her fulfilled. This is where spoon theory developed, whereby she had a limited number of spoons and we would find ways to maximize the spoons over time to make it work in any feasible manner. The goal was to maintain Lori’s incredible passion and living life large within the increasing physical constraints that she and I found ourselves in. Cycling was too much so she got the best trike possible replete with a pirate flag. She couldn’t manage cross country skiing any more so she took up downhill skiing and was skiing “Blacks” within 6 weeks and she found a culture in the apres’ scene that fit her to a T. It took me a while to get in to the apres ski scene as I am your typical lefty Northeast academic progressive with all of the positives and negatives associated with that representation. I came around as soon as I realized that this gave my one and only juice that magically rejuvenated her. We did some more traveling in Italy, France, Canada and the US but all of the travels needed to be managed so she could continue. I treated it as my 24/7 occupation to find ways to allow Lori to continue to be Lori. We discovered Maine and Lori said, she had seen the lord himself when she had her first lobster in Maine. For 15 years, we went to Maine and there she said her soul could be found in the harsh cold but beautifully eerie Maine coast. For all of her life, Lori had been a “horse girl” but it had been a dream not realized. About 11 years ago her dream was fulfilled when she and Huey, (AKA Wonder horse”) became connected. Huey was somehow bound with Lori in a seamless fashion and when she spoke to Huey, it was clear that Huey truly and unequivocally understood her. Huey was one of her true loves of her life and she joked I was number 2 after Huey. Being the dutiful horse husband I became, I embraced that role as Lori found unadulterated and pure joy in Huey that was transcendental to experience. The years went on and our love of hiking became front and center as we would find what Lori said were the best hikes that gave us the biggest bang for the buck. She always used creativity to find these amazing hikes that she could manage if it was followed by hours of rest. The difficulty of these hikes inevitably diminished and towards the last year of her unique existence, the hikes turns into birding strolls and communing with nature. It would take us about an hour to walk a mile but that mile was pure heaven to Lori as she identified birds, plants and wildlife in every manageable manner possible. We found this flat 1-mile loop trail in a wildlife refuge that became her go to place to find her happy place. At the end, she passed as she loved. With mindfulness, love and Lori being Lori micromanaging to the end. The sounds of jazz and laughter filled her room in the weeks preceding her passing and she even requested a cocktail party a couple of weeks before passing. The joy she had for friendship and sharing was a wonder to behold. Now the end came and I reflect that we used to say, “We loved each other too much.” One of us was going to remain and that person would have to hold in their hearts the memory and legacy of the other. Lori though always knew it would be her and she even wrote a long letter of all of the things I was supposed to do and take care of while she left the physical plain. The notes from Coltrane’s “One and only love” are wafting in the air as I salute the love of my infinity and beyond and to all of the people who made Lori be Lori.
With love, spaciousness and gratitude, Jeff
 

VickiK

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
She was special, and she found how to make life more special. Very sad.
 

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
My favorite thing: "She proposed to him at the top of the Eiffel Tower, which gave him fair warning of what the rest of their time together would be like, as she didn’t have time for other people to make up their minds about what she knew was the right thing to do."

I can tell I would have loved her in person.

Her husband's tribute was glorious. Made me smile.
 

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