Some people have asked if there are any updates about services for Erika, and I’m sure there are others who were wondering but didn’t want to ask. I can appreciate both as I’d be wondering too. The short answer is no, not yet. I’ll explain.

We’re not waiting until COVID is over, we’ll have something remote using video meeting software. This is because Erika has people who care about her from literally all over the world. In recent weeks, I’ve been contacted by her friends in Russia, in Abu Dhabi, in the UK and from all parts of the US. Even if there was no COVID, I’d still want these people to be able to attend. It’ll be a celebration of her life with her friends and family telling remembrances of her.

So what are we waiting for and when will it be? I don’t know when, but hopefully within the next couple months. The thing is, we still don’t have answers on specifics about what happened to her and we’re still waiting for those answers. I know that she had what appeared to be a cold. She had multiple negative COVID tests, I’ve had multiple negative COVID tests and I’ve also tested negative for COVID antibodies. That doesn’t definitively rule it out, but it makes me think that she didn’t have COVID.

We went to the hospital on September 30th for what we thought was dehydration. I thought she would just be there for a few hours, but they admitted her that day. Two days later, she was gone. I know what happened to her, but I don’t yet know why. It’s the why that I’m still waiting for. I decided that I wanted to wait until we know why, and have had time to understand it before being able to have the event for her.

We are told it can take up to three months to get the information we need, and the end of that three months will come at the beginning of January. We’d hoped that it would have come sooner than this, but it could, and should come any day now.

I do look forward to hearing from all of Erika’s friends and their memories of her, and also meeting some others (virtually) that I never got to meet. When we know a day and time, I will let everyone know. I plan to go back through all the messages I’ve received, the emails, the direct messages, and also to use her email contact lists and use her Twitter account one last time to let people know. And then when there is a “normal” time again, post-COVID that we want to share a bottle of wine, watch a hockey game, go for a bike ride or have another of her famous (infamous?) MoFos parties, we will do all of those again, in her memory.

I’ve received many notes and cards, and each one of those does make me smile, knowing how much you all care for her. She was just such an amazing, strong, incredible person who was unfairly taken from us way too soon.