Originally Posted By Razoreye:
TC I'm in Florida and can swing by Tampa at most any time. Did her daughter or sister give any more information?

Originally Posted By tc556guy:
ARF has lost another member.

Some of you may recall Splint Nicket posting over the years. She took a break from the site for a while and came back a couple of years ago.

She and I started corresponding a year or so back after I responded to her about a post she'd made, and it became a regular exchange of messages and phone calls after a bit.

A few short  months ago she very rapidly lost the use of an arm and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer that had spread to her brain. After that she wasn't on the site much, both  because of the difficulty posting due to her mobility issues and the treatments were pretty wearing on her.

I have stayed in touch with her daughter and sister when calling and texting became an issue for her due to the disease and the treatment.

She overcame a lot in her personal life and leaves behind a teen aged daughter.

Some of you regulars had also been in contact with her during these recent hard times she's been having, and I thought you might want to know

Jane suggested that this pic belongs in the OP, and I agree

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q72/tc556guy/disney_tram-1.jpg
I have tried to post a longer commentary, but my computer crashed and I am going to try again.

As I previously mentioned, I started talking to SN purely by accident.
I PMd her about a post she'd made, and it started a chain of PMs that moved on to IMs on Yahoo, emails and eventually phone calls.
Someone else mentioned about how SN disagreed with them on issues but that it never got out of hand or rose to the level of an angry exchange.
Thats a rarity in and of itself in GD, and speaks to SNs character.

Someone else mentioned that she had a low tolerance for BS, and that was my view of her as well, both on ARF and in her personal life. She often asked me why I bother with the sparring I get involved in in GD, when she was more apt to simply walk away from a topic she disagreed with. Still, many times though we'd be chatting or on the phone and she'd mention some thread that she thought I might be interested in that she'd seen, just because she knew it interested me....

She had pulled herself up from a rough marriage and escaped from it with not much more than the clothes on her back and the thing that mattered most to her in her life...her daughter.... She trained herself in computer graphic arts and made herself a living at it to support her family and not asking anything from anyone in the process. Apparently the folks who do her line of work create unique avatars they use while working in the public spaces of the projects they're on. People will actually log on and follow the avatars of the SNs around the program while they work on the project. SN's work avatar was what she called  the "Space Elf", pictured below:

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q72/tc556guy/th_space_elf_002.png

There were a few times we'd be talking and she'd plug me into her program to watch her work. I have to admit that it was all above my head and I had a lot of respect for what she could do.

She enjoyed life, loved going to Disney with her daughter and a weekly trip to the beach where, after we'd started talking, she would love to send me pics of her feet and toes in the sand and surf while I would complain about the NY weather. She was endlessly teasing me about the evil yankees and snow she'd escaped from when she lived in the north for a while, and how much she loved growing up in FL before the development and yankees ruined it ( her words ). She almost had me convinced more than once that this crazy yankee should move to FL after my retirement and see what she found so interesting about the place through her eyes. More than once we would debate the merits of okra in a persons diet. That woman was all southern when it came to culinary stuff

She'd grown up in FL and lived in places like MN, the Northeast and TX. She did eventually make her way back to FL and found that it was too developed from what she remembered from her childhood, so she had two dreams she wanted to fulfill once her daughter was grown and moved out. First, she wanted to move back to TX and live on a large piece of land far from anyone. Secondly, her experience in picking herself up from nothing had instilled in her a  minimalist approach to many aspects of her life. She wanted to travel to India, and she would often tell me how she planned to travel there with only a toothbrush for luggage. Sadly, neither dream was fulfilled in the end.......

She was full of compasion..My mother was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, and SN would lend her support to me while my mother was undergoing her various treatments. Even after SN was herself diagnosed with cancer and was under-going treatments that left her drained and often unable to keep up our former frequency of contact, after she heard of my mothers passing in October SN was on my phone sending condolences. That was the kind of person she was.

In the end, I can't believe how short a time it was. One week she was living life as if nothing would change,.and the next she had completely lost the use of her arm. From there until her passing it was a scant 4 months, much of it filled with the pain of various treatments that in the end proved unsuccessful. She would still joke to me in those times though about how some in GD would look down on her as a "taker" rather than a "producer" because she was so reliant on others at that point. She absolutely hated not being self-sufficient due to her illness , and when the treatments at one time seemed to give her enough mobility to work for short periods and again post on ARF, she was thrilled. As recently as September she was texting me, telling me not to worry about her, and that while she was tired, she was doing well.

Those of you who took the time to visit with her or reach out to her in her rough period these last few months, she appreciated and treasured those times immensely.

I think that she is probably the closest thing to a friend I have developed from being on this site, and I will sorely miss the sound of her voice on the phone or seeing her on-line here.

RIP, Rebel Cookie

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q72/tc556guy/feets2.png

Originally Posted By coldair:
any word on how her daughter is doing?

Originally Posted By tc556guy:
I've stayed in touch with her daughter since Splint passed.