We lost our dear Joanna this week, the first of our little group called Sisters of Sorrow and Hope. We are alumni of the first cancer caregivers writing group founded in 2005 at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center by psychologist and cancer survivor Anjanette Cureton and artist, writer and cancer survivor Eleanor Schick. That group continues to this day as Family and Friends Journaling Together .
Members of that first group formed a tight bond. We cried and laughed and shared our deepest secrets, fears, and hopes. We lost husbands, lovers, parents, and friends. We encountered depths of feelings we had avoided confronting, and we supported each other.
Eventually some of us moved on (after those we cared for died). We no longer needed support to survive. New people joined the group, but they did not know all we’d shared with each other. It was time to make room for the new people with their fresh pain. But we missed each other. So, after a year or two, we informally connected again – no longer meeting weekly, but getting together every two or three months. We realized how deep our friendship was and how precious the bonds that united us. We were sisters who shared our sorrows and our hopes.
We met in each other’s homes and shared food and wine along with our stories and writing. We continued the structure established by Anjie and Eleanor, who sometimes joined us. Check-in, meditation, writing, and then reading or sharing our writing. We scheduled our first Zoom meeting for early January 2021. Then news came from Joanna that a recent CAT scan had revealed metastasized cancer and she did not have long to live. Her time was, indeed, short. She died yesterday morning, leaving her beloved dog Ziggy to her friend/sister-in -sorrow-and-hope/dog-walking companion, Melissa.
Joanna was not only our sister in sorrow and hope; she was a renowned cellist who shared her talent generously, playing in benefit concerts, the local Sunday Chatter group, and at the university’s cancer center. She was also a devoted care-giver. Announcing her final professional performance at Chatter in 2017, the Chatter group shared a three-part video of the young Joanna de Keyser many years before, playing in a Master Class with Pablo Casals.
This morning I tearfully listened to that beautiful recording of Dvorak’s music, pondering the mysteries of life and death and our grief at our loss of Joanna’s talent, generosity, and friendship. What happens to all our talents and all our accomplishments when we die? Other than some bits remaining in memories legacies they are gone. My thought is: be generous, give of ourselves now, for our gifts are ours for only a short time.
Blessings on you, dear Joanna. May you be making music with Pablo Casals and the angels this morning. Your spirit is with us.
Note: I just did a Google search for Joanna de Keyser. There are several recordings and stories about her amazing career, including a review of a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York; but to us she was mainly our cherished sister in sorrow and hope.
Update: March 2025. The Sisters of Sorrow and hope met this week in memory of our sister Valerie, whom we last gathered with in July of 2024, and who died on November 25, 2025. I don’t think any obituary has been or will be published, but I will write about her very soon.
After I wrote about Joanna on this blog, an obituary was published in the Albuquerque Journal:
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/abqjournal/name/joanna-keyser-obituary?id=7666309
Please also read the comment by Joseba from Barcelona about Joanna. It was through this blog post that he found me. I am delighted to see that this post still turns up near the top of the list in a Google search for Joanna De Keyser.
And to access the Chatter Facebook post with links to her performances and a lovely photo of the very young Joanna performing for Shostakovitch.
Caminobleu 
Linnea,
Such a lovely tribute to Joanna. It made me cry.
Melissa
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Thank you Linnea for sharing your big hearted friendship with these sisters of sorrow and hope. You are blessed.
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Friends who share all our experiences, especially through all our trials and tribulations, our difficult times, definitely become our “family”!What a lovely tribute!!!
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts of your friend Joanna. The special memories she made with sister of sorrow and hope will live on.
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Hello,
I’m just someone from Barcelona who met Joanna three years ago, months after she died. It was a coincidence, I met her through Pau Casals, whom I met through my Japanese teacher Katsumi Mamine. I was watching a Dvorak master class, class 2, and around minute 4 of the class, Joanna’s music touched my soul, elevating me in every way. I was practicing Katsugen undo, a beautiful Japanese practice of very simple movement that I sometimes accompanied with music by Pau Casals or others, and when I heard Joanna in that minute 4 it was something that I had never experienced before, it is as if I were next to her and We both rose as she continued to play. I wanted to know more about her, then I discovered that she had recently passed away. I found what little there is of her on the internet, that wonderful charter concert with Faure’s piano, it fascinates me at minute 59 when the cello enters with Joanna. I also found a Kodally sonata that Joanna played when she was young, it gives off so much strength. Because of her I started playing the cello a year ago, and I’m 50 years old, but I don’t care. So Joanna and her music, even though she was not alive, touched my soul. I read about that benefit concert in 1971 in New York, I would love to find a recording and see Joanna play when she was young. If I had known her in life I would have done everything possible to cross the planet and see her perform live. I think my instinct did not fail me and when I saw and heard her for the first time in that master class, I felt that she was someone special and reading about her confirmed what I felt. This weekend I discovered your blog by chance and I read it, and I simply wanted to share it with you. I didn’t know this part of her life, and I think she was an incredible woman, I never felt a bond like that with someone I didn’t know in life. So I think that music without filters, as my teacher and friend Katsumi said, with Pau Casals and his cello, must have this ability to transmit energy, spirit, life. I felt it with Joanna, I didn’t feel it with Casals and I like listening to his music. My mother overcame breast cancer, my father died from the consequences of prostate cancer and its treatment. I send you a big hug and if I were around I would love to share with you a Katsugen undo practice with Joanna’s music. My English is not very good, I have used Google Translate.
Best regards
Joseba Sierra Ruiz
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