Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

She was her family's princess

Cynthia Sargent usually got what she wanted. One thing she did not want, though, was to die.

By ERIN SULLIVAN
Published January 22, 2007

SHADY HILLS - Her stepfather leaned over her deathbed and said he was going to the store.

"Do you want anything?" he asked.

"Yes," Cynthia Sargent said, her voice weak and her body even weaker.

After four years of fighting, the breast cancer had taken charge, though Sargent refused to believe it. She never did anything she didn't want to do - and she definitely didn't want to die. People usually did what she wished, without complaint, because they loved her.

After 42 years of getting her way, her body was the first to refuse.

"Bring me back three ripe, organic, unblemished bananas," Sargent whispered.

"Please."

After several hours of searching, Dave Paulsen came back and carried the bananas gingerly in his palms like a newborn baby. If he had bruised one, she wouldn't have eaten it. Even before she got sick, Sargent wouldn't eat a bruised banana or meat still on a bone, or meat not well done, or thick-sliced tomatoes, or ... the list is long. She ordered food like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, with everything just so and on the side.

"Cindy had things her way her entire life," said her older brother, Rob Hunt. "That's what made her Cindy."

Her family called her "Princess." And they never stopped calling her Cindy - even though, as an adult, she wanted to be called by her full name, Cynthia, because it was more elegant. She did things her way, on her terms. Always.

Her mother worked three jobs - at a sawmill, an egg farm and a truck stop - to keep their Shady Hills home after her divorce from Cindy and Rob's father. One time, their roosters scratched precious Cindy on her legs. Her mother grabbed the shotgun and "no more rooster."

One day, her mom got a call from Cindy's elementary school, Sanders in Land O'Lakes.

"We've lost Cindy," they said.

"What do you mean you've lost her?" Sandra Paulsen said.

"She's not here," the school said.

Sandra left the sawmill on State Road 52 and sped to the school. By the time she got there, the staff had found Cindy - on her own, singing to herself on a swing. Cindy, as usual, was unapologetic. When the rest of her kindergarten class lined up to go inside, Cindy didn't feel like going.

"You scared me half to death," her mother said, scolding.

"But I'm singing, Mommy," Cindy said sweetly.

Cindy grew into a gorgeous young woman - blond, 5 feet 4, maybe 110 pounds, curvy in all of the right places. In the early 1980s, central Pasco had one high school - Land O'Lakes - and Cindy was the it girl. Beauty pageant queen. Homecoming queen. Varsity cheerleader. Voted biggest flirt of her senior class of '82.

"She was so popular - but she wasn't this snobby, arrogant, prissy thing," Rob said, echoing the opinions of others. "She was very human and very flawed, like the rest of us - trying desperately to hold together this image but, at the same time, being just as much of a wreck."

Even into her 40s, Cindy stayed at her high school weight (though she thought she was fat). She and her son, Cameron, 11, lived in modern Tampa apartments. (Cindy was divorced from Cameron's father.)

She wore tailored, designer clothes and dressed Cameron the same. (Rob called him "Little Lord Fauntleroy.") She even starched and ironed his boxers. Cindy was a paralegal, so she hung out with lawyers. She drove a Saab. She got Cameron into elite sports - lacrosse, golf, tennis - and dreamed of him attending an Ivy League school someday.

Even Cindy's cat, Contessa, is posh. She spent several hundred dollars on the Himalayan kitten.

Cindy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and fought it and thought she beat it. But it came back and spread. Her family sent her to California for specialized treatments. Cindy devoured information, searching for a cure. She found a book that said she'd get better if she ate only organic food, so her mom hauled logs of timber and bags of fertilizer and planted an organic garden in the back yard, and Cindy cried for a long time when she saw it.

"You did that for me," she said between sobs. "I can't believe you did all that for me."

Sandra remembers a time when the chemotherapy burned Cindy's palms like she had pressed them down on a hot skillet. She and Cindy were going to Wal-Mart to get bandages. But Cindy still took hours getting ready - wig, scarf, outfit, polished toenails, pretty sandals, makeup.

"Cindy," her mom said, exasperated, "what does it matter?"

"But Mom," Cindy said. "I might see someone I know."

Hospice arrived in December.

One day, her mother walked into her room.

"I don't know who all these people are," Cindy said.

"Honey, it's just you and me," Sandra said.

"I don't know who they are," Cindy said softly, seeing and hearing things Sandra couldn't.

Then Cindy smiled.

"Oh," she said. "They love me."

Cindy had a strict rule for people to never cry in front of her, so her mother left to sob in the garage.

On the morning of New Year's Eve, Cindy struggled to get up.

"I'm going home," Cindy said.

"Darlin', you are home," her mom said.

"Mother," she said, looking hard into her mom's eyes. "I'm going home."

She didn't say another word. She passed away soon after.

Cindy left no will or instructions because, to her, she wasn't dying. But she was so strong-willed, it didn't take much guessing. Champagne (her signature color) casket with champagne velvet lining. White dress. Pearls. She didn't want to be buried, and she didn't want to be cremated, so her family scrimped together the money to get a space in a mausoleum.

Sandra did Cindy's hair.

"She would have haunted me if it wasn't right," she said.

Cindy's spot is high, on the fourth row. After the funeral director shut her casket inside, Rob said dryly: "Well, now, Cindy, you've got what you always wanted. We're all standing here - looking up at you."

A quarter century after Cindy's high school reign, her obituary listed these accomplishments:

Beauty pageant queen.

Homecoming queen.

Cheerleader.

And a photo of Cindy, taken only a year before her death, looking as gorgeous as ever.

Erin Sullivan can be reached at (813) 909-4609 or esullivan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 22, 2007, 07:18:30]