Community mourns Waterville junior

By Doug Flanagan

Related story: Website gives mourners an outlet

Lauren Ludeman liked to express what she was thinking and feeling in creative fashions.

She loved to do artwork. She was able to complete a self-portrait of herself, sketched in pencil, shortly before she died Dec. 1 after a long battle with cancer at the age of 17. She blogged extensively, chronicling her emotions and thoughts of dealing with the disease in a deeply personal manner.

She also dabbled in writing poetry. Two of those selections, titled ‘‘I Hope” and ‘‘I Wish,” were read by two of her close friends, Mars Chambers and Brianna Hinderer, during a celebration of her life, held Dec. 8 at the Waterville School gymnasium.

The poems revealed just how aware Ludeman had become about herself, her life, and the maturity and perspective she had gained through a series of tragedies that her family had fallen victim to.

‘‘I understand that tomorrow is not promised to us,” she wrote in the concluding stanza of ‘‘I Wish.”

‘‘I know that life is short, and that I am only a child.”

‘‘She would write about how she was feeling,” Chambers said. ‘‘That was something very special about her.”

In a lot of ways, though, Ludeman was a typical teenage girl.

‘‘She was a private girl, but fun-loving,” said Waterville School principal Cathi Nelson. ‘‘She was really loyal to her friends in family. She was a pleasure to have in class and very active in a lot of extracurricular activities. She was an important part of the school community and the Waterville community. There will always be a void there that will never be filled, but people here are strong and very supportive, and everyone will get through it.”

During the memorial service, it was revealed that she had somewhat of a goofy and mildly rebellious side, as a lot of kids her age do.

‘‘At a coffee stand, she would hold up traffic until she confirmed that nobody had coffee with mismatched straws, because that would just ruin her day,” said the service’s main speaker, Daniel Miranda, a pastor at Waterville Federated Church. ‘‘Also, a little birdie told me about the time when she drove to Orondo on a search for Mexican food before she had her driver’s license.

”She barely beat her dad home, and thought that she had pulled the wool over his eyes. But imagine her surprise when people started to call her dad and tell him that they saw Lauren driving home.

‘‘Her brother, Alex, remembered that she liked to throw things for some reason — remotes, heavy-duty tools, silverware. But she wasn’t very accurate, so everything was OK.”

But when she found out that she had cancer, Ludeman’s serious, reflective and caring qualities started to come out.

Of course, she wondered, ‘‘Why me?” a fair amount, and despised being known as ‘‘the girl with cancer.”

She yearned to return to a normal life, and for her family and friends to do the same. She wasn’t necessarily scared about the prospect of dying, Miranda told the audience.

She was more concerned about how her father, Joe, brothers Alex and Joe Curtis and sisters Natalie and Maddie would move on without her.

‘‘She wasn’t depressed or sad,” Miranda said. ‘‘The only good thing she saw that came out of this whole thing was how it brought Joe and Alex closer together.

”She was more curious about death rather than afraid.”

Ludeman wrote in her blog, dated April 27: ‘‘Before, I never believed in God, but since I found out about the cancer, I’ve been praying. At first it was weird, but I’ve been healing so fast, and now I believe. I don’t have as many questions as I did before. I’ve become closer to my dad. He’s the only one that can relate to what it’s like to fight for your life. God is watching over me.”

Joe Ludeman was seriously injured in August 2004, when the truck he was driving lost its brakes and crashed into boulders and trees off Badger Mountain Road. He lost his right leg in the accident. In 1998, when Lauren was 5 years old, her mother, Julie, was killed in a vehicle accident in Pine Canyon.

But through all of the hardships that she endured, Lauren emerged with a positive, resilient attitude toward life.

‘‘She didn’t outwardly show a lot of things that had happened in her life,” Nelson said. ‘‘She took it one day at a time. She was a great spirit.”

Lauren’s uncle, Kevin Anderson, said at the memorial service that losing her battle with cancer ”may be the first time she didn’t get her way.”

‘‘She was strong-willed, even as a little girl,” Anderson said. ‘‘She was full of life. We’ll all miss her and remember her forever.”

Miranda asked the gathered crowd to mourn Lauren’s passing, but be happy for the fact that she’s no longer in pain.

‘‘On the night she died, she knew she was loved very much,” he said. ‘‘Her dad, seeing her struggle so much, leaned over and whispered into her ear, ‘I give you my permission to stop struggling.’ Then we prayed. It wasn’t a long prayer. When we opened our eyes, she was gone. She died very peacefully.”