Auntie Charo's Soapbox

Sister Elaine Camacho was a Religious Sister of Mercy, the sister of two other nuns, a priest that predeceased her and a brother who is a monsignor, and has sibling who have passed before her as her parents have. She has thousands of people whose lives she has touched because she taught and loved them while she taught at the Cathedral Grade School in what seems to be a lifetime ago. (She probably has hundreds more that she taught nutrition at UOG) Her love in that lifetime was science. She never bragged about her achievements...but it's said that she attended Fordham University but you'd never know it because it wasn't like her to be a show off. She was one of the most humble people that you'd ever meet.
Sometime in the let 1980's, maybe beginning 1990's Sister Elaine's life would include the battle with cancer. Then, she was given months instead of years to live. Fortunately for those of us who love her, she chose to finish what she set out to do and looked cancer in the eye and told it to wait until her life's mission was completed. She had no time for the battle. She had a mission to complete and with that, she threw her life into her work at UOG.
She picked herself up from the ashes and helped every cancer patient she knew with nutrition information. She never focused on her own ailments and never brought attention to the things that were going on with her body. To Elaine, she was normal and cancer free and...healthy! She always had a ready smile. She was as friendly as she was kind and when you were in her company, you knew there was no one more special to her...she had that gift....as I write this...her being her your friend was God's gift. That knowing her, or that she was in your life was the gift because you ended up being a better person because you knew her. She was one of those people that made a difference....In the Catholic church, in the Religious Sisters of Mercy, she loved and taught by example. She was a nun, but she wasn't stuffy, she was strict but she wasn't mean. She was every bit a Christian and that people who knew her always wanted to be with her longer than she had time to spare.
My heart goes out to her family....what a loss of a wonderful human being....but what a gift they've had and to such a wonderful place she's gone, a place where there are no tears, no pain, no cancer but to be in God's Home. I'll never hear the name Elaine without remembering this beautiful human being that brought sunshine and happiness wherever she went. The world's a bit dimmer because you're gone Sr. Elaine! We'll miss you!