With gratitude: In Memory of Faye T. Cavalier

I would like to take a moment to express my profound gratitude to all those who offered prayers, words of support, and memorial gifts at the death of my sister Faye Cavalier in early December. Faye and I were very close and shared a great deal of our history and ways of thinking.For the first fifteen years of her adult life, Faye was also a Dominican with the St. Mary’s Dominican Sisters of New Orleans. I was so proud of her courage to stand up for and beside the poor and oppressed. One of my greatest memories was when I visited her while she was serving with the Cheyenne-Arapaho people in Oklahoma. At the time, they were protesting the police’s unfair enforcement against the Native American population of an otherwise disregarded curfew law as an unlawful and un-American way to curtail their freedom of movement and association. On the night of my arrival, they had planned to march and picket the police station in protest. She picked me up at the airport and took me to the protest site, where she handed me a picket sign and showed me a place to march in the picket line. 

Eventually, they were successful in getting the law overturned. Such acts characterized Faye’s life. She was a fierce defender of the vulnerable. Many years later, she showed me that she had kept a clipping of a news photo of me in that picket line.

After fifteen years with the St. Mary’s Dominicans, Faye discerned a call to marriage and family and chose to leave the Dominicans. However, her new journey was immediately and dramatically altered as a routine doctor’s visit disclosed end-stage kidney disease, eventually requiring her to use dialysis to stay alive. About seven years later, she received one of our brother Reubin’s kidneys, which gave her a new lease on life and another 20 years of serving as a counselor to at-risk youth, a career that she loved. She was never able to fulfill her dream to have a family. Eventually, her kidney disease contributed to heart disease, and when “Chee” (her name for her donated kidney) fulfilled her years of service, Faye was no longer a candidate for another transplant. With her usual courage and realism, Faye decided that the quality of life she could have from that point was not equal to the effort she would need to put forth to go on living and decided to stop all treatment. She chose to conclude her life at home with hospice care, and I went to be with her during her final week. That time was equally difficult and graced, as I accompanied my sister, and she peacefully and bravely embraced the inevitable. One memory especially stands out because it was so characteristic of my sister: around midweek, she looked at me and said with great feeling, “Wayne, why is it taking so long??”  I didn’t have words to respond, so I was honest: “I don’t know, Faye.” But my thoughts were: “No matter how long it takes, it will still be too soon.”

You can read Faye’s obituary here: https://www.mourning.com/obituaries/Faye-T-Cavalier?obId=31296702