She waited until New Year’s Eve to deliver the sobering news.

She posted through social media that further tests had come back and revealed a fate that even she couldn’t change, and yet she still used humor.

“Miss hyperactive could not believe ANYthing could slow me down!” Che’ Gilliland wrote on Facebook.

“Well, apparently incurable lung cancer has come to visit.”

Less than a month later, on Jan. 29, Gilliland, surrounded by family members in her New Orleans home, died at the age of 52.

The news of her brief illness and death jolted friends on Whidbey Island who couldn’t imagine anything slowing down the spirited former school teacher and activist who inspired children, their parents and even her peers during her 12 years at Olympic View Elementary School in Oak Harbor.

Gilliland will be remembered at 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 28, during a unique celebration of her life that will start at Coupeville Town Park and include a Mardi Gras-style procession to the Coupeville Recreation Center.

Gilliland had lived in Coupeville during her time on the island.

And, boy did she live, according to friends.

“She had a great influence on so many kids and so many people she met,” said Linda Starr, communications secretary at Olympic View. “She was just a bundle of energy, this firecracker. I always called her the girl who could start five sentences and not finish one. There was so much going on. So much passion. And a child-like quality. She touched everybody.”

Susan Stockfeld and her husband Jeff Hume, both kindergarten teachers at Olympic View, are helping other current and retired educators organize the celebration for their longtime friend.

The touch of Mardi Gras is all Gilliland, who was drawn to New Orleans. A lover of nature and passionate about the environment and other causes, she had traveled to Louisiana on several occasions to help the people and the land after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Gulf oil spill five years later.

She had started a snow-cone business back on Whidbey to raise money to help with recovery efforts in New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana.

Two years ago, she left her teaching career in Oak Harbor and bought a home in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward, heavily flooded after Katrina.

“It was her dream to move there,” Stockfeld said. “After she went down there to volunteer, she could feel the love in the area. She said she felt like she belonged.”

On Whidbey, Gilliland joined other social justice causes over the years, participating in public protests against the war in Iraq and others against big banks and multinational corporations.

In 2013, she led fundraisers to raise money and create awareness for families of the Prescott, Ariz., Fire Department, which lost 19 members of a hotshot crew to a wildfire that summer.

At Olympic View, Gilliland instilled a love of the earth in her students and had them busy in gardening and planting activities, Stockfeld said. She was instrumental in creating a nearby nature trail, which will be dedicated in her honor on Earth Day, April 22.

Gilliland also led the school’s “We Day” program, encouraging youth not to be afraid to try to make a difference in the world.

“She was always looking at the kids and how to give them deep experiences,” Hume said.

Stockfeld, who started at Olympic View the same year as Gilliland in the fall of 2000, said her friend was shocked to learn in late November she had terminal cancer but “was really brave about it and courageous.” She had been hospitalized for what was thought to be pneumonia until a further diagnosis revealed something far more severe.

“She told me that she really believed that she could be a light worker on this side of the planet or the other side and that God and the universe has a plan for her, and she’d be working on the other side,” Stockfeld said.

Gilliland found out in late December that she didn’t have much time left. In her final month, she donated a lot of land in the Upper Ninth Ward that she had obtained through an auction to the Desire Street Ministries in hopes that it would be turned into a children’s garden where kids could play as well as a farmer’s market site.

“I always say she was the brightest, shiniest person I know,” Stockfeld said. “She was a ball of energy, extremely passionate about life and the environment and especially kids. She was constantly looking at ways she could help people and the world.”

Sunday’s celebration of Gilliland’s life will include a potluck at the Rec Hall after the procession from the park.

“It’s going to be a great, big Mardi Gras-style parade,” Carr said.