While I was in Colorado, I got the news that Trisha Creekmore was no longer able to get treatment for her cancer. I’d known Trish, as Trish Smith, since 7th grade but we hadn’t run in the same social circles. The most interaction we’d had in high school had been when we were in dance class and in theater productions. I started catching up with her when she friended me on Facebook in 2009. For an outline of who she was, please read her husband’s eulogy of her.

I wanted to do something for Trish. Sending flowers seemed redundant. I was pretty sure she was getting enough of those. A drawing however, some kind of cartoon, that I could do. This was the first of a series of cartoons that I drew and posted to Trish’s Facebook account. One of the things that Trish had wanted to do before she passed was to swim with a whale shark. I’d first thought to draw a depiction of that but then I thought, “Why stick with the possible?” Trish was going so she might as well go big.

I didn’t hear what Trish, herself, thought of the cartoons. I didn’t expect to. I hope that, if she saw them, that she got some amusement out of them. I do know that they gave her husband comfort. After Trish passed away he asked me to send them to him. I gladly did so.