My sister Betty planned to visit me in John Day this week, but cancer came to call instead, taking her quietly away as my brother and I held her hands in a small hospital room in Portland, Oct. 22.

She died peacefully, on her own terms, after she told the doctor to scrap the antibiotics, other medicines and life support.

“I’m ready. This is it. No more…I’m not scared. It’s time,” she said. “I’ve had fun. I’ve had fun.”

She was 59, the same age as our father when he died.

I had raced to her side from John Day, speeding through the canyons of Picture Gorge, past the rim rock, following the fast river north. I told myself, “She’s not going to die. She’s beat it every other time.”

I also thought, “Wait for me. Wait for me. I want to be there.”

I flew past the beauty of the brown and beige escarpments, the uplifts of the volcanic age, the darkness of the John Day River and green rocks clutching hillsides.

My sister loved to hike in such places. She cherished the outdoors. She liked to camp and sit by rivers, to scurry up hills and pull her binoculars out to spy on interesting birds.

As I hurried to the hospital, I drove through Kimberly, Spray, Fossil, Condon and Wasco, then headed to Biggs Junction.

On the drive, I thought of the past 16 years when my “big sister” became my sister with cancer. I thought of her beautiful smile, her unassuming quiet manner and how much I loved her.

I thought of how much we’d been through since a doctor told her she had multiple myeloma bone marrow cancer in 1990.

She beat all odds. At a conference this past July, we learned she was among the top one percent in the country to survive myeloma so long. She did it with a combination of eastern and western medicine and good old-fashion pluck.

She used mind over matter, spirit over body and kept going when things got difficult. She had recovered from a major infection last year that hospitalized her. It had been her third, near-death experience in four years. Each time, I would go to Portland from my home in Eugene to be with her. She lived alone.

This final infection gave no warning. I had just talked to her two nights before she fell ill, and we discussed her plans to visit me in John Day and to go hiking.

The day before she became ill, she visited friends and exercised in a yoga class. That evening, she started to feel sick.

Always independent, she waited to call for help until the next morning. She dialed 911 at 6:30 a.m., Oct. 21, calling for an ambulance. Luckily, a neighbor who saw the ambulance alerted my cousin, who called my brother and me.

When I exited Interstate 84 and reached the hospital critical care room, I heard a doctor say, “Call me when the sister gets here.”

I said, “I’m the sister.” I thought, “I’m the one with health care power of attorney. He wants to talk to me. This is not good.”

He asked me if I wanted to talk to Betty first.

“Yes,” I responded.

I entered her room, joining two of her friends and our cousin. Betty was hooked up to IVs. Monitors flashed. She was alert, with a small, removable oxygen mask on her face. She took it off.

“I love you so much,” I said.

“I am so glad you are here,” she said. We talked for awhile, and then the doctor entered.

Betty was lucid and clear. The doctor said he had rarely seen anyone with such a raging sepsis infection be able to make her own life support decisions. Her clarity and control saved me from having to make what could have been the most difficult decision in my life.

The doctor gave her these choices: Continue life support and add kidney dialysis and see what happens. Continue life support without dialysis and see what happens. Stop all measures and wait for death, which might likely happen even with the first two choices.

She chose the latter, quickly. I was caught off guard. She had fought death so hard and so long. When had she made that transition?

Before I arrived and, perhaps, even earlier?

She told me, “This morning when they were hooking me up to all this, I thought, ‘What am I doing? What am I doing?'”

She waited to end life support measures until my brother arrived. But fairly quickly after that, she said it was time.

When hospital personnel stopped all the medicines, I asked the nurse to take away all the tubes, all the ports in her veins – except one needed for pain medicine – all the Band-Aids and anything attached to her that did not need to be.

She was done with all this. No more.

Betty continued being able to talk for many more hours. She said she liked the “smiles” on people’s faces. She reminisced about our family’s recent crabbing trip to the coast and about outdoor trips with friends.

She told me, “I couldn’t have done it without you. I wouldn’t have lived as long.”

I told her, “Thank you for being such a good friend to me.”

She later received medicine for pain and drifted into a peaceful sleep.

About nine hours after she stopped all life support measures, she took a few finals breaths. My brother and I each held one of her hands. As Betty’s breathing suddenly deepened and quickened, my brother grabbed my free hand with his free hand and the three of us essentially formed a circle.

She died, enveloped by our love.

“I want to die gracefully and with dignity,” she had said sometime during the evening and early morning.

She did.

About 150 people came to her celebration of life.

I brought her new Subaru Forester with me to John Day. Betty offered it to me when I moved here to be interim editor. She thought it would be good on ice and snow. I hadn’t taken her up on the offer.

While driving it to John Day from Portland, I saw the most beautiful rainbow over the Columbia River near The Dalles. I thought, “Betty’s saying, “hi.'”

The Subaru and I sat in Clyde Holliday Park and watched the river one Sunday afternoon. The other day, “we” drove the hill by the airport and saw the amazing views. This past Sunday, the vehicle took me to the snowy Strawberry Mountains.

The rig and I are on a mission to visit sights in the John Day Valley. In my mind, I’m showing Betty some of the places I wanted to take her for her visit here this week.