Kirstie Alley has died.

[Igel]

25. Perhaps.

But my SIL wasn't a Scientologist and died years earlier in her struggle against cancer than Alley.

Didn't always approve of her, but I always appreciated her. She managed to get my mother to accept a caregiver when nobody else could--and that made the difference between having cops haul her off to "assisted living" against her will and not. Forced to move would have destroyed my mom. I owe her, but can never repay her. Oddly, I don't think she'd be okay with repayment.

At the same time, she was church treasurer for her Episcopal church. After years of fundraising to build a church building, a year after it opened the church split. The official church changed doctrine and her "heretical but faithful" group split off. The result was that the congregation was too small to pay utilities and grounds-keeping, and a few months later the building was put up for sale, to benefit "central office." Her new but same church started a new building fund. She forgave those she thought heretics--after all, a heretic is somebody who starts and promotes a faction at odds with historical precedent, and that was clearly "central office"--power and privilege wins most of the time. In her view, the heretics won. And she moved on. Only to die a year or so later, her will asking that large donation from her estate be donated to the building fund.

I attended a church that met at libitum of other groups. A grange met on some night? We met on Shabbat. Conveniently, almost always when they needed their hall a 7th-day group didn't observe the same day as sabbath. In the days before email and texts, it was totally possible to show up and find that it was a different group at the grange or meeting hall and wonder where you were to be. There were limitations on storage, on what was on the walls (invariably there'd be things opposed to our doctrines on the wall). We'd haul things every week, cover things every week. Kludges abounded.

Wasn't close to my SIl, who died at 72 but I still really miss her. As does my brother.