Randi Lee Gordon

It is with a very heavy heart that I am informing Randi’s friends on Facebook that she peacefully passed away December 15, 2020 at 2:30am after a fourteen year battle with cancer. Randi was first diagnosed in 2005 and after completing surgery, radiation and chemo, survived another fourteen years, until she finally lost the battle this morning while being made very comfortable in hospice at Duke Raleigh hospital.

During her remission she lived life to the fullest, traveling to far away places such as Cuba, Vietnam, Japan, New Zealand, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, China and Taiwan, and even Antarctica. To the best of my recollection, Randi had set foot on every continent. And she always tried to learn a little of the local language and culture before departing on a trip. While here in town she was always game to attend Hurricane hockey games, the Carolina Ballet, the Opera Company of North Carolina, The North Carolina Symphony, off-Broadway shows, rock concerts, blues concerts, the museum, or interesting and exotic restaurants with either myself or her sister or one of her local friends—she was game for just about anything else that came up.

Some of you knew Randi from high school in Scarsdale, New York. Some of you knew her from her years at Lafayette College, where she graduated with honors. Out of school, she had worked as an auditor for a “Big Eight” accounting firm, and then after that, worked her way up to being an Assistant Vice President at Chemical Bank in New York. Following a stint as dutiful housewife while living in Switzerland, she returned to the US and moved down to Cary, NC to be close to me. Not long after that, my other sister Linda moved here as well. And a few years after that, our parents moved up here from Florida. So almost the entire family was together and had some wonderful times to spend together. Most recently, Randi had been working as a paralegal at the Hutchison Law Firm until the cancer returned. Even then, she opted to continue the fight, with newer state-of-the-art therapies, but this time around, the cancer won. Our sister Linda and I were with her until a few scant hours before the nurse called me at home in the early morning hours with the sad news.

A sort of side note: as Randi’s health began deteriorating, I took two of her three cats (Caydee and Jesse) to my house (later I would take her third cat—Darwin to my house to care for). Jesse was a spry nineteen-year-old gentleman cat with a very friendly nature and amusing character. He would greet me when I got up in the morning with a loud meow meow. And he would say good night to me the same way. He could walk faster than poor old me. He loved to eat and had a great appetite. He would sit on my lap watching tv with me. Sadly, he passed away only about a month after moving in with me, after having gotten a pretty clean bill of health (other than being around 92 in cat years) by the vet I took him to for a checkup. I had Jesse cremated and his remains returned in a small cherrywood box along with his paw prints. Randi was sad about Jesse’s passing but very happy that I treated him like a son and made his last days comfortable and happy. On the box his remains came back in was a little card talking about the Rainbow Bridge and how one’s beloved pets would all be waiting there playing with all the other cats and dogs and whatnot, until their human arrived—and then they would look up and run toward them and kiss their human’s face and they would cross the Rainbow Bridge together into paradise—never to be separated again. A friend and fellow pet lover said to me that Jesse went on ahead so he would be waiting to greet Randi when she arrived. Perhaps a silly allegory, but it made me temper my tears with a smile, just thinking about that. Randi and Jesse and her other deceased cat Nicki all cuddling and kissing and crossing the Rainbow Bridge together into paradise. That also tempered my new tears for Randi with the image in my mind of Randi and her two beloved cats in paradise together.

I will remember Randi always for her wisdom, cheerfulness, sense of humor, compassion and empathy, and her big heart. She was not just my sister, but also my best friend—really! She was always there for me, and I’d like to think I was there for her as well. She in fact told me how happy it made her that I was able to spend so much time with her (one positive thing about Covid)—I was working remotely and could bring my laptop over to her house to hang out with her, make sure she had a good dinner, and prepare the next day’s lunch to store in her bedside fridge. We would talk about old times: the time in the mid-eighties when we were both single, that I scored two tickets for the Rolling Stones concerts both at the Meadowlands and at Madison Square Garden. She and I went to one of those concerts. And there was the time we drove up to Lime Rock, Connecticut to watch an SCCA auto race that featured Paul Newman driving a 240Z. There was a 30th birthday dinner she treated me to at the Windows on the World/Cellar in the Sky on top of the World Trade Center—a memory I will especially cherish. There were so many good times, that I couldn’t help but be glad that she had lived a very full and adventurous life and that I had shared in at least some of it.

Randi asked me to post something on Facebook to let her friends who were on it know—but she didn’t dictate what to say. This is all from my saddened heart.

Randi asked to not have any fancy funeral, but to have a simple cremation and I told her I would scatter her ashes somewhere pretty along with those of Jesse in the spring.

Randi is the daughter of David and Harriet Gordon, and is survived by her younger sister Linda and her three children (nephew Craig, and nieces Erin and Kelsey), her big brother Erik and his son (nephew Rob), and by myself (her younger brother Robert). The photo is one I took in March, 2019, at a restaurant, right after her first appointment with her new oncologist, but before starting chemo. This is how I will remember her.

— Robert J. Gordon

15-December-2020