Lorena Le'Chance Watler

OBITUARY

Lorena Le’Chance Watler

November 14, 1959 – January 18, 2017

Lorena Le’Chance Watler dedicated her life to children: her children as well as the children of friends and neighbors. After completing her undergraduate degree in education from Long Island University in 1981, her dedication to children was most evident in her work as an early childhood education teacher at such schools as P.S. 21 in Brooklyn.

In thinking about the life and work of Lorena, Maya Angelou’s poem ‘When Great Trees Fall” comes to mind: When Great Trees Fall – Maya Angelou When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.

When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us.

Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away.

We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

Lorena Le’Chance Watler was born on November 14, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York as the fourth of seven children to Cleveland and Lillian Watler.

She was a mother to two wonderful children: Jeffrey Watler and Aja Niara Nixon. She successfully dedicated so much of her life to the health challenges Jeffrey faced, making sure that Jeffrey graduated from High School and could live a full and independent life, despite any physical disability. The New York Times dedicated an incredible story about Jeffrey in 2007 that summed up something Lorena taught all of us: “I can do the same

things anyone else can do. I just do it in my own way.” She guided her beautiful and smart daughter Aja through a first-class education from elementary school through college. Even as Lorena struggled with cancer, she managed to attend Aja’s graduation from Canisus College in Buffalo this past May. She was a truly dedicated mother.

Lorena enjoyed the outdoors, sports and socializing with her close friends. She spent time going to the theater, talking politics and staying actively involved in social issues. She made it her point to vote and even though she was wheel chair bound, she voted in the past November’s Presidential election.

Lorena was a loving and devoted daughter, sister and aunt. She was predeceased by her father, Cleveland Watler; sisters Camillia, Melida and NIlka; and nephew Devaughn Watler. She leaves to cherish her memory: her son Jeffrey Watler; her daughter Aja Nixon; her mother, Lillian Watler; her brothers Carlton ‘Nando’ Watler and Michael Watler; her sister Yvonne Watler; her God children Marques, Delseah, Crystal; and a host of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and an abundance of friends.

In closing, Lorena would say to us: “Say not in grief that she is no more, but say in thankfulness that she was. A death is not the extinguishing of a light, but the putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come.”

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Rabindranath Tagore