JOANN FLORENCE
My beautiful companion of 45 years and loving wife of 33 years died on Christmas Eve, 2024 from a quick acting front lobe dementia. She was golfing with her friends on August 1st and it went downhill quickly. She was in pain the last few weeks of her life from this most horrible of diseases.
She and her twin sister Elaine, (John, Peter and Molly Daines) were born on August 9, 1954. She had an older brother Tyke (Pam his wife and daughter Mary Tess) and a younger brother Jim. Her parents John and Tessie Tsakalos are both deceased.
I met her 46 years ago while she was working as a clerk in the Weber County and Ogden City Court. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and I was smitten from the start.
She worked for many years for Carmen Kipp in SLC, driving to and from work every day. She worked for me in her last few working years.
There will be no funeral services or celebration of life party. I have donated her body to the U of U medical school for research after which she will be cremated. I will take her ashes to Greece and spread them on the property owned by her aunt and uncle (Alex and Ifigenia) where she and her sister spent many weeks in that small village over the course of their younger years. She and I spent time with them on each of the three occasions we traveled to Greece.
She still has many cousins and nieces and nephews living in Greece whom I will visit while I am there. She also has cousins and extended family here in Utah.
It was painful to watch her rapid decline, going from a strong willed, outspoken, beautiful soul to someone who could not walk, talk, and in the end, even eat.
She was terribly fond of Gracie Champneys, who was her first CNA at Avamere and continued to visit once of twice a week when I moved her to the Peaks in South Jordan, doing her hair and nails and taking her clothes. Thank you Gracie for your kindness. You’re the only one who could get her to talk.
The first things she heard after we were married were me telling her I loved her and Niel Diamond’s “Hello Again”. The last thing she heard before she died was me telling her I loved her and “Hello Again”. I will miss her terribly as I’m sure many of you will as well. If there is a heaven, she will be a cherished soul there. Prior to her death she was administered Last Rites by Father Mario of the Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church.
Postscript:
A humanitarian plea. Our Congress and medical profession need to come up with a better way handle dementia patients. We have transferred leper’s colonies of old for fancy buildings owned by for profit organizations. Locking terminally ill folks up just waiting for them to die, is not humane. And keeping them alive as long as possible, just means more profits for the company and does not consider realistic alternatives to the care for the non-verbal, non-walking, unable to deal with their own hygiene, patients.