Cause of death: a big heart

For the past week, I've been feeling dogged by a thought: How could my friend Lesha have died from an overdose? Because to take enough pills to do that, either she'd have to be a big freaking wigged out pill-popper -- which I've never known her to be -- or she would've been *trying* to kill herself.

And I just could not imagine suicide. The idea was so utterly counter to her character. Her ex-husband died from a heart attack a year or so ago, and her death left her two children -- 18 and 20 years old -- without parents. Family was the most important thing in Lesha's life, so ... ugh. It just didn't make any sense to me.

That's why I was relieved to get a call this morning from Lesha's exGF. She also knew suicide was not a possibilty and was utterly confounded by the coroner's suggestion that the cause of death was an overdose of something, even if it was an accidental one.

Yesterday, she found out the real cause: Congestive heart failure. Turns out Lesha had a bum ticker, one that was way, way, WAY too big. The average human heart weighs about 300 grams. The autopsy showed that Lesha's tipped the scaled at 548 grams. Such a large heart makes it very difficult to breathe, and Lesha apparently drowned in the fluid that built up in her lungs as a result.

It's a wretched situation because my friend apparently had gone to the doctor last year, complaining of shortness of breath (a classic symptom of her condition). She was diagnosed with asthma and given an inhaler. Over the past few months, she'd developed a wicked cough from all the effort she was spending trying to get the fluid out of her lungs. So a missed diagnosis ended her life a lot sooner than necessary.

But there's something appropriate about this, and it's simply the fact that Lesha died from a huge heart.

In my experience, there have been few people I've met who were so welcoming of people -- into her life, into her home. No matter when I dropped by, she always had friends visiting -- or friends staying at her home in between situations. When I asked a previous ex to move out, Lesha offered her a place to stay while in transition. When our friend Jill was trying to get her business up and running, Lesha let her stay for months. She took in orphans -- me, not least among them -- and made them feel like family.

And even though she was often beset with financial problems, thanks mainly to her work in low-paying jobs with disabled people and troubled kids, Lesha was always generous and hospitable. What food and drink she had was yours. When you came to stay the night, she'd evacuate the master bedroom. She threw a lot of parties. To this day, the best birthday party I ever had in my life was the one that she and I shared together at her home, as our birthdays were just a few days apart.

The amount of love people showed to Lesha that night -- and on many, many occassions -- was proportionate to the love she dished out. It was a HUGE amount. I always took note of that. She reminded me of my Aunt Liz in that way, which is probably the biggest compliment I can give to anyone.

So if she had to die of something, a big heart is the most fitting thing I can imagine. She had a terminal case of that all along.