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A mentor of mine died last night.

She'd been sick, with leukemia, and had undergone both a stem cell transplant and chemo, but her cancer had been in remission, and it seemed as if she was traveling rapidly down the road to recovery.

She must have had a turn for the worse, though, because her mother said her death was unexpected and quick. These kinds of tragedies always make you think about the things you wished you'd said and done, and I immediately realized that I'd never told her, never said that she had been a mentor and that I was grateful for it.

I first met Heather Hutchins when she taught a fiction writing class that I was in. I'd taken the class, even though I had years of professional writing under my belt, because I felt like nothing so much as a fraud at novels. I could dash off a news story in 15 minutes, but fiction came slowly, painfully, and I had to drag it out of myself sometimes.

It was hard, and it was hard because I was sure I was no good at it.

On the first day of class, Heather handed everyone a sheet of paper, a simple photocopied form. She'd signed each one. It was a permission slip, she told us, and it allowed us to be, and to call ourselves, if we desired, a writer.

"If you need permission, here it is," she said, with a brusque, wry kindness I'd come to realize was her defining characteristic. I didn't realize until that moment exactly how much I did need permission, how much I needed to be told that it was OK to dream, to take on a challenge I was worried was too much.

After the class ended, I joined a writing group that she and a handful of other students started. I felt intimidated there, even as a peer, to be sitting alongside people who'd written entire novels, who were editing them and moving on to second, third and fourth ones. I thought I didn't have the motivation or the dedication to see my own novel to completion.

But Heather always treated me as if I did.

"I can see this on a bookshelf," she'd write in critiques of passages from my novel, which I would eventually finish. She was fond of saying to me and the other writers that we would one day attend each other's book signings. It seemed luxuriously grandiose to imagine myself signing a book I'd written.

Later, two of the members of our critique group would attend my book signing, an event in support of the release of a collection of my syndicated columns, though at that point, Heather was still recovering from leukemia and couldn't make it.

She gave me notes on my recent fiction project, a mystery I'd started, and gave honest feedback -- but she always wrapped it in the cotton gauze of fandom. It seemed she knew I could do it.

I'd picked up additional work in the last few months and wasn't able to attend as many of our critique sessions as I wanted to. Heather was working on a book about Rochelle, a spitfire of a woman (Heather's protagonists were as lively, as smart as she was) who was undergoing chemotherapy. I was interested to see how it would turn out, what adventures Rochelle would have.

One of the recent selections featured Rochelle getting a call from her mother.

'"Darling, you look terrible,"' it began.

'That was her usual greeting, and it hadn't changed since I was diagnosed with cancer.

What was unusual was that she was on video. I wanted to ask if her assistant, Claude, had set up her phone. She was a wily old besom, more Wife of Bath than Real Housewives, so she could have done it herself had she wanted to.

"Hello, Mama. You look well."'

Heather's own mother was the opposite of Rochelle's, sitting at her bedside in the hospital as Heather was treated for leukemia, bringing homemade pumpkin pie when her daughter had no appetite because she knew it was her favorite.

I think Heather tried to appear tough, sometimes, but her grittiness was such a thin veneer over the soft marshmallow filling of goodwill underneath.

Before I met Heather, editors had only used the red pen on my writing, pointing out the errors and flaws, rewriting and suggesting changes. She was the first professional (not a family member or friend) who told me, unreservedly, that I had talent, that I was creating something worth writing and worth reading. She believed in me far more than I believed in myself.

And that, I realized after she died, is what a good mentor does.

All that's left now is for me to wish that I had been a good mentee in return, that I'd thanked her, when there was still time left to do so. I hope that somehow, she knew, that she felt the return waves from all the positivity she'd sent out into the world.

I want to believe -- have to believe -- that she did.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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