In Memoriam: Sara Jane Campbell
In Memoriam: Sara Jane Campbell
February 3, 1959 - August 20, 1985
Sara Jane Campbell is dead.
She entered Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan on August 5, 1985, for major-but-routine surgery. The operation was uneventful. Sara was doing fine. She was going to come home on Sunday, August 12th.
At 5:30 in the morning on Saturday, August 11th, the phone rang. It was Sara's doctor. He needed to reach her parents. Now.
Because at 4:00 a.m. Sara Campbell, 26 years old, young, healthy, and with a brilliant future ahead of her as a writer, as a human being, had suffered a massive stroke. The right side of her body was paralyzed. She was unable to speak.
She was transferred to the neurological unit at Mount Sinai. When I arrived at the hospital, frantic and terrified, Sara set up a system of gestures and hand-movements that enabled her to express herself just fine, even without speech. She played a practical joke on me. I, always her straight man, fell for it. Sara made me do something I'd thought impossible under the circumstances -- laugh.
I thought -- I knew -- it was only a matter of time before Sara recovered. She was young. She was healthy. Dammit, she was Sara. She was my friend. We had plans.
CITYSPEAK was almost ready -- she'd just finished her novel, MEMORIES OF GREEN, for inclusion in the zine. CITYSPEAK was half laid-out; as soon as the last stories were in, it would be done. Then Sara and I were going to finish our LADYHAWKE novel. And we were going to collaborate on a novel set in our shared BLADERUNNER universe -- we planned to take it pro. We were going to travel. We had just finished redecorating our apartment --
This couldn't be happening. Not really. Not to someone I knew, someone I loved.
Tomorrow she'd be fine.
Between noon and one o'clock on August 11th, Sara started running a high fever. The paralysis spread.
The next day she was in a coma, on full life-support.
It was the day she was supposed to come home: August 12th.
She never came home.
On August 20, 1985, Sara Jane Campbell, aged 26, was taken off life-support in accordance with her own wishes and at her parents' request. Without machines forcing "life" to continue, her heart stopped. Her breathing stopped.
Sara was dead.
I am a writer. Words are my tools; I always thought they were poetic, eloquent, powerful. I prided myself on my ability to make them convey what I wished: actions, emotions, character. Life.
I was wrong. Words are empty things; words are useless. How can words on a page describe Sara to all of you who now will never meet her?
She was five-foot-ten. (She had a dimple that she hated.) She had short blonde hair. (She had prehensile toes.) She was a poet, an idealist. (She rescued a stray kitten and named her Zuul, after the refrigerator demon in GHOSTBUSTERS.) She was a writer. (She was a friend.)
She was my friend.
No, that's wrong again. These days the word 'friend’ describes everyone from your co-worker to your dentist; a word overworked until it has lost all meaning. Sara was not my 'friend'. She was part of me.
And nowhere in all the words in the world are words that can tell you truly about this sister not of my blood. None to describe the loss -- a loss not just of Sara, but of myself. None to describe the waste -- or to help understand why a brave, brilliant young woman with so much to give was not allowed more time in which to give it.
It has taken me a long time to keep my last promise to Sara. In the hospital, while she was still conscious, I told her I would make sure CITYSPEAK was published.
Here is CITYSPEAK.
I hope you like it, Sara.
Anne Elizabeth Zeek
August 1985/January 1988
