The article in La Presse starts (translation), “It’s a story of a pair of jeans — an ordinary pair of used, washed-out jeans that started a voyage. It’s a story of a few dozen young women who live with advanced breast cancer — of a solid friendship joined together bypassing all geographical borders. It’s a story of a pair of jeans that, at each stopover — from Chili to the United Kingdom, from New Zealand to Canada — carries with it comfort.”

But what the article doesn’t tell and couldn’t know is that this is also a story about the Virtual Hospice community and Passirose (aka Suzanne Lemay). Passirose started a thread Starring the end in the face and living now on our forum, which captured the attention of the breast cancer community on Twitter (#bcsm) and in particular a blogger Anne Marie Ciccarella. Having seen the thread, she wrote Being Fearless and collected messages for Suzanne through her network.

As the network of connections spidered throughout the world, Anne Marie discovered the jeans of support through Jenny. The jeans had just arrived in New Zealand. Jenny, too, was living with metastatic breast cancer and she knew Suzanne. Together Jenny and Anne Marie made sure that Québec, Canada would be added to the flight path of the storied jeans.

For Suzanne, the emotions were overpowering – such as outpouring of support from more than 30 women, 8 of whom had died. Among them was Jenny. She died the day after sending the jeans and her love.

Read more of the background story on Anne Marie’s blog Celebration of the “Extra” Ordinary.