How does one write the story of a beautiful and talented daughter who valued life so much and fought so hard to hold on, and whose loved ones -- all of us -- fought so hard to keep her safe but finally had to let go? How can one encapsulate a life that, even though cut off in its prime at age twenty-nine, was so full of love and joy and accomplishment and, yes, struggle? How can one reduce her life and our loss and the world's loss to a few short pages? 

 Charis was born to my husband, Donald Greenwood, and me in Logan, Utah, February 18, 1941. Don was teaching while working toward a degree at Utah State University at the time. Charis was in such a hurry to be born that, had we not lived across the street from Budge Memorial Hospital, we would never have made it there in time. As she developed out of infancy, our insistence that she was precocious proved to be more than mere parental pride. At eighteen months, while sitting in her high chair, she drew two circles connected. In the upper one she placed eyes, nose and mouth, topped it with hair, and handed it to me saying, "Baby." It was a child's usual first sketch of the human figure -- but at age eighteen months? On her second birthday, I started a list of her vocabulary and finally stopped writing when I reached one hundred. In spite of her fragile health, talents began showing up while she was still very young. 

 Charis had six siblings: Donald Eugene (born June 9, 1943) Julia Ann (January 1, 1946), Robert Foster (April 21, 1949), Patricia (December 15, 1952), Walter LaMont (December 29, 1958), and David Clark (August 8, 1960). We were active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.  

 We moved frequently while the children were small. During the Second World War, Don took a job at Geneva Steel Company and moved us to American Fork, Utah. After the war, the steel company closed. He was hired as Utah State Supervisor of Industrial Education and moved the family to Salt Lake City. Shortly after, Geneva Steel was sold to United States Steel Corp., and Don was rehired. We then moved to Midvale, a suburb of Salt Lake City, and Don and my father, Wm. Eugene Wagstaff, together built homes adjacent to each other. 

 Charis and her brother, Donald, began school at Union Elementary. Charis was always at the head of her class and spent many after-school hours writing stories and poems. She took piano and ballet lessons and participated enthusiastically in church activities.  

 During her childhood, she was a natural teacher and second mother to her younger siblings. They would gather around the kitchen table and sketch or make villages with modeling clay. At bedtime she read to them or invented stories, often engaging them in the game. During automobile journeys, she would keep order in the car by leading them in word contests or inventing rhymes and limericks. Her roll as second mother became intensified when, in July of 1948, my mother, who lived next door, was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage making it necessary for me to divide my time between two homes and put responsibility on my older children as well as Elaine Wagstaff, my teenage cousin who lived with us. 

 In 1952, Don was transferred to San Francisco, California, making it necessary for us to leave my invalid mother, which was traumatic for all of us, especially Charis who was strongly attached to her grandmother. We purchased a home in Los Altos. Two years later, Don was transferred to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we moved again, this time into a three-story rental in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh. 

 At Mount Lebanon Junior High, as before, Charis excelled in school. She began ballet lessons at Carnegie Institute, and, in a short time, was invited to join a local ballet company that rehearsed and performed in a small theater there. At the time she had developed some troubling health symptoms, and we declined, convinced that the daily rehearsals and commute to Carnegie on top of her school schedule, would add too much strain. She had just turned fourteen years old. 

 As a newborn, Charis had had difficulty digesting her food. The doctors at that time called it a milk allergy and advised me to wean her. Then began a series of trying various prepared formulas, canned milk, goat's milk, boiled cow's milk, and finally settling for simmered canned milk with an additive to aid in digestion. In addition to the usual childhood diseases, she had frequent fevers, diagnosed either as colds or flu, and one long extended low-grade fever. Rheumatic fever was suspected but not definitely diagnosed. She was treated much too often with the new miracle drug, Sulfa. 

 While living in Mount Lebanon, Charis again became ill with a low-grade fever accompanied by joint pain. Dr. Stechschulte prescribed a new drug that was a combination of aspirin and cortisone. It muffled symptoms and she seemed quite well until an undetected ear infection became severe, and she entered St. Claire Hospital Emergency. A series of tests revealed kidney damage. Lupus was suggested to us as a possible cause. At home her temperature continued. Dr. Stechschulte stopped the aspirin/cortisone therapy and prescribed bed rest. 

 The school provided her with a home teacher. I asked for a reading list and received one with all the usual teen-age novels. When I secured an armload of these from the library, Charis said, "Oh Mother, you must be joking. Get me a history of Egypt," which I did. Also, I introduced her to the novels of Jane Austin and the Victorians -- the Bronte sisters, Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy -- and she introduced herself to the British and American poets.  

 Again she was hospitalized, this time at St. Francis Hospital for tests. Specialists there diagnosed her illness as rheumatoid arthritis. They gave us dire predictions of her future life in a wheelchair and recommended she be started on gold therapy, but Dr. Stechschulte was uneasy about the treatment and held off. Our first year in Pittsburgh had been one of almost solid rain or snow, and he felt that the climate and trauma of the move from California -- leaving her friends at a sensitive age -- might have been, if not the cause, a contributing factor in her illness. He suggested a change of climate, probably Arizona, might be beneficial. 

 In March 1956, Don drove us to Thatcher, Arizona, rented a cottage for the children and myself, and then returned to Pittsburgh to apply for a transfer back to the West Coast. Almost like a miracle, Charis's health improved. She entered high school, made friends, including the devoted attention of a handsome boyfriend, and was happier than she had been since leaving California. Her doctor there warned us that patients coming to Arizona for health often experienced a sudden improvement that did not last. He was right. Charis's temperature recurred and again she was confined to bed, this time with the diagnosis of rheumatic fever. Meanwhile, Don had secured a transfer back to San Francisco and, as soon as school closed for the summer, we drove back to Los Altos. 

 During the journey, we stopped in Midvale, Utah, to consult our old family physician, Dr. Alley. He diagnosed rheumatic fever and recommended daily aspirin. After we settled back in Los Altos, her doctor had her continue the aspirin and prescribed bed rest.  She continued her high-school studies under a home teacher provided by the school district. 

 But her health declined. In February 1957 she developed a high fever, fluid in her lungs, and a worsening of the nephritis. I telephoned her doctor, who frankly said there was nothing he could do. By Saturday the 17th, she was much worse. I telephoned him again, but it was the weekend and he was unavailable. His assistant answered. I requested that they call in a specialist and was told that it would be done if Charis's doctor considered it necessary. In desperation, my husband appealed to his company's medical director, who drove forty-five miles from San Francisco to our home in Los Altos, examined Charis, diagnosed lupus, and recommended immediate hospitalization with cortisone therapy, a treatment that was fairly new at the time. I telephoned him that evening and pled with him to take over her care, but he refused to intervene in another doctor's case. He told me Charis's condition was terminal. She might live two weeks. If she rallied temporarily, the most we could hope for was two years. 

 Sunday morning, a friend, who was a nurse at Stanford Hospital, gave us the name of Dr. George Snell, a noted internist, practicing in Palo Alto but who was on President Eisenhower's medical staff. Again I dialed the doctor's office and talked to his assistant, requesting that Dr. Snell be called on the case. I was gently chastised for attempting to go over our doctor's head. 

 "Charis is entering Stanford Hospital today," I answered, "and Dr. Snell had better be on the case." 

 The next morning, Dr. Snell was at her bedside. He told me sometime later that when our family doctor had said to him, "You know she's going to die," he had answered, "No, I'll save her." And he did. 

 They drew a quart and a half of fluid from her chest and she was put on very high doses of cortisone. I recall asking about a small wooden peg wrapped in gauze on her bed stand. She said, "That's for me to bite on if I have a seizure." 

 The next morning, Dr. Snell asked Charis what she would like for breakfast. She requested beefsteak and received it. Her recovery was slow but remarkable. Under his expert and benevolent care, her nephritis was brought under control, and she returned home in a month. Lupus was the final diagnosis although the bone marrow test did not verify it.  

 Charis was eventually able to return to Fremont High School and live a fairly normal life. She was on prednisone as well as a low-sodium diet and, being very slender, was given orders to gain weight by eating fatty and high-calorie foods.  

 At that time, the Mormon Church offered a wide variety of activities for young people -- dramatics, speaking, music, and especially social dancing. There was always a dance to go to -- ward dances, stake dances, and district dances, a ward being the equivalent of a small parish, the stake a cluster of wards, and the district covering the entire San Francisco and north peninsula areas. Charis and her friends attended the dances, sometimes in groups, sometimes with dates. Charis was popular and had no shortages of boy friends, but whenever one of them got serious, she would explain her illness and he would soon fade away.         

 She excelled in high school, even though the first two years had been mostly home study. She graduated with honors, won an award for being the most outstanding student in the field of fine arts, was one of four commencement speakers, and was awarded a scholarship to San Jose State College. She entered the humanities program, which was [at that time] open only to top students, and began working toward a degree in the visual arts. Her prednisone was gradually reduced to about 15 mg per day, and her health remained fairly stable. 

 The first time I heard the name of Charis's future husband was in her response to my casual remark that one of her boy friends was good-looking. "If you think he is good-looking," she answered, "You should see Elder Bill Southwell." 
  
 Under the direction of two Mormon missionaries, a group of young people from our ward (Sunnyvale) started going weekly to Moffett Field, a naval air station in Mountain View, to hold church services for Mormon boys stationed there. Charis and her friend, Colleen Smith, directed the hymns. It was at these meetings that Charis met and became enamored with Bill. Being a missionary, he was not allowed to date or even show an interest in a girl, but after his release and return home to Lyman, Nebraska, Charis received a much cherished letter from him. A regular correspondence developed. When Bill registered at the Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah, she pled with us to allow her to attend BYU during the summer session of 1960. She argued that she must have a chance to get better acquainted with him. We reluctantly agreed. Bill returned to Los Altos with her after summer school, and they informed us they wished to marry and return to BYU as man and wife fall term. 

 Before their marriage, we talked openly with Bill about Charis's health and suggested that we would continue to assume her medical expenses. He declined our offer, saying that he loved her and wanted to take care of her. Her health was not an obstacle to his choice 

 We held an open house in the Sunnyvale Church and then traveled to Salt Lake City where they were married in the LDS temple September 21, 1961, followed by a reception in the East Midvale Church. The newlyweds started their married life in an apartment for married students on the BYU campus. 

 Changing her focus from art to Literature and Writing, Charis intensified her interest in poetry. Each of the first three years she was at BYU, she entered the Hart-Larson poetry contest and received first place, the first year for SEABIRD, the second year for DUST, and the third year for REFORMATION. Her senior year she declined entering because of health, and the judges announced there would be no award since no poem entered had reached the standard of former years. 

 Charis graduated cum laude. Bill, after receiving his Ph.D. in physics, accepted a position as professor at the School of Mines in Rapid City, South Dakota. The couple moved there and bought a small ranch house. She found a good physician, one who would consult with her almost as if she were another doctor, since he realized she had read everything she could find about her disease and understood her symptoms and treatment. 

 She wanted to adopt a child, since doctors had warned them that pregnancy would put her at serious risk. She applied but was turned down by the South Dakota adoption agency because of her health. They were considering moving to Salt Lake City, where they would have a chance of getting a child through the LDS Relief Society, when a good friend who knew of her predicament unexpectedly contacted them. A private adoption was arranged. In October of 1967, Bill and Charis traveled to Sunnyvale, California, and returned to Rapid City with Paula, a beautiful, healthy infant daughter. Charis was so happy. 

 She continued to write, but her declining health was a dark cloud hanging over them. She dealt with her fear of impending death through her poems, which, after many rewrites, she collected in a folder for eventual publication. 

 As her health worsened, her doctor recommended dialysis, but they didn't yet have the technology in Rapid City. In the fall of 1969, Bill resigned his teaching position and drove his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They moved in with us, and Bill secured a job as research physicist with Owen-Illinois Glass Company. Bill planned to buy a house and have it equipped with a dialysis machine, which he would learn to operate himself. Through the U. S. Steel medical staff, Don was able to put them in touch with a noted specialist in rheumatic diseases. The doctor accepted her case and then, unfortunately perhaps, turned it over to a younger member of his staff. 

 Thirteen years of prednisone had taken its toll. Charis had developed dangerously high blood pressure as well as a depletion of platelets that caused her to have unstoppable nosebleeds. A few days before Christmas, she and Bill attended a performance of Nutcracker in which her sister, Patricia, was performing. During their drive home, Charis started hemorrhaging and ended up in a suburban hospital near our home. The staff doctor there suspected internal bleeding and declined to discharge her for Christmas. She pled with him, expressing a fear that it might be her last Christmas and she wanted to spend it with her child. He agreed to let her go if she would enter a Pittsburgh hospital Christmas afternoon under the care of her regular physician, which she did. It was determined that there had been no internal hemorrhage so, after a series of tests, she was allowed to return home. 

 In February she was hospitalized again, this time to start dialysis, but her vessels were so deteriorated the doctor was unable to insert the shunt in her wrist. She was taken to intensive care and administered abdominal dialysis. In a few days, the doctor told me he would have to repeat the process. I pled with him to try the shunt again. He did and this time succeeded in inserting one near her ankle. 

 But dialysis didn't go well. It was a new technique not yet fully perfected. The heat control on her machine was unreliable, and she was moved from intensive care to a room shared with a pneumonia patient. In just a few days she developed pneumonia and died March 6, 1970 while receiving dialysis. We took her back to Rapid City for burial near the home she and Bill had lived in and loved. 

 While sorting through her personal effects, Bill found poems everywhere -- on grocery lists, envelopes, any scrap of paper she could grab when inspiration struck. Many of them were just fragments, unfinished, not polished as they would have been had she lived, but still remarkably well constructed and sensitive, revealing her unique gift for capturing a fresh metaphor and applying it to her loves and losses. Bill chose those of her poems he felt to be the best and had them published under the title, Collected Poems of Charis Southwell.