February: Ann's Eulogy

Grief is such a trip.

It's this invisible cloud surrounding me and through which my entire life is filtered, but nobody else can see it. I really GET why people used to wear mourning or mourning symbols in previous - whether recent or ancient - cultures: it's because you can ADVERTISE your state of mind.

So I'm trying to do small things in my life which both speak to my feelings of grief and process them. Like deliberately bringing my sister into conversations (not mindlessly, but relating experiences with her more deliberately than I used to, just to be able to TALK about her). And taking time to do a lot of silent, mentally untaxing tasks, like sewing, leaving my mind free to focus on that process.

So THIS post is a copy of my notes from her eulogy.

Giving a eulogy at a Mormon funeral was full of unexpected pitfalls, which is a completely different post about how out of touch I am with my roots, so much so that I hadn't thought I'd feel like such an outsider in that world at my own sister's service, and maybe a bit about the collision of my disbelief in an afterlife with the grieving of people convinced they'd see my sister again. But that's not today.

Ann's funeral was attended by 350-400 people, and it was held at the same church I attended my entire childhood, at which my father served as a Mormon bishop. The meeting house was packed, so full that I gave an involuntary squeak when I stood up at the speaker's podium and realized that the room was full all the way through the chapel and attached gymnasium.

Ann Marie was really loved and really impacted many many people. I miss her terribly.

Ann Marie's Eulogy - 12/16/2009___________

Hello and welcome.

I don't know how many of you ever spent much time with my sister, Ann Marie, on the telephone.

Ann is not a chatter. I doubt in the past thirty-odd years we ever talked about the weather, current events, movies, or our hair.

Phone conversations with Ann, like everything else in her life, were held eclectically and passionately. No detail of anyone's life seemed uninteresting to her. With her amazing mind, she knew and catalogued information about the smallest details of everyone's life, and would always respond to any confidence with a lot of heartfelt advice.

I never spoke with her without taking away information about what I should eat, a book or article I should read, a lecture I should locate, or some other specific, personalized symbol of how much she was listening to me and caring about my well-being.

Right now I have saved on my cell phone the last voice mail I'll ever get from Ann Marie. It's nothing unique in the history of our relationship: in the course of 2 minutes, she gives me the name of a supplement she thinks I should be taking, the website where I can order the supplement, the name and telephone number of a doctor she looked up for me to see in Portland who would prescribe the supplement if I needed, the location of the article she first found mentioning this supplement, including publication, issue and page number and it's author. She left that message three weeks before she died, when surely every bit of her energy was precious.

I grew up in a family of bright, intense, highly spiritual people. And of all of us, I think it's safe to say that Ann amplified those gifts to megawatt brilliance. I doubt there is any facet of her life that she didn't approach with a deliberate, scholarly thoroughness, whether it was child-rearing, home decorating, cooking, gardening, and, of course, reading.

Her passion was health, particularly nutrition, but no subject seemed unworthy of her intense scrutiny.

Ann had a wonderful sense of the ridiculous. Her eyes were always full of sparkle, and I can't think of her without picturing her gesticulating and rolling her eyes at something that made her laugh, whether from pleasure or disdain.

Some of you may know that Ann studied and could read in multiple languages, mostly to support her private scholarly pursuits and read historical and biblical texts in their original form. The few I remember are Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, and I think Korean, as her husband Marshall spoke that language.

In Marshall, Ann was so lucky to find a partner who could match her brilliance and intensity. The two of them have always seemed so in love, and I have many early memories of observing their courtship and thinking how well suited they are.

I've always loved Marshall, but I have to tell you that these past few months seeing and hearing about his work to help Ann fight this, the worst battle, Marshall has been not just her partner, but Ann Marie's hero. During several conversations this summer and autumn, Ann repeatedly said that Marshall made her feel like a princess in a story.

I said that we never talked about movies, but many times she noted that she felt like Princess Buttercup from the movie The Princess Bride, with her Wesley telling her he would always come for her.

Marshall, Ann loved you so deeply and she knew how loved and cherished she was as your wife.

I've probably exceeded my allotted time. And in some ways, I don't think I will ever be able to stop eulogizing my sister. But I did want to tell her children - my wonderful nieces and nephews, who so obviously reflect their parents gifts - how loved they were and are. You don't have the smallest toenail that Ann wasn't interested in and devoted to, and I am proud and so happy that, while I will always miss her, that I will also always see her shadows and reflections in each of you.

1958-2009

My heart is breaking today. I will miss my "little mama" forever.

The knight and the beast

My sister, A, is in Germany this week pursuing an experimental treatment to stop her cancer from spreading. It's, oh, geez...I'm very happy that there IS an experimental anything to interrupt cancer's rampage. And this experience is such a perpetually delicate, painful thing. I'm not sure I can really write about how afraid and wistfully hopeful I am.

We had this great talk, she & I, about her husband and his efforts to find the right treatment for her. She compared him to Wesley in The Princess Bride, doing anything to keep his love safe, and I know he'd come back from the mostly dead to save her if he could.

My brother-in-law is just blowing my mind with his desperation and determination to help my sister get the treatment they believe may stop the attack of new tumors.

As a physician, my sister's husband has access to a number of resources (hospitals, doctors, cancer research institutes, medical investors and entrepreneurs), and the industry clout which gives him credibility when he assaults those resources with his agenda.

He has stayed awake nights compiling reports and packets and amassing and clarifying data on this experimental treatment, which he has then packaged professionally and sent to any credible institution or research facility that might put this treatment into place soon enough to help A.

I'm amazed, and very very moved, by his fierceness, and am clinging tightly to my hope that his tenacity, this German doctor who just gave A the treatment yesterday, and just the power of chance, medicine, and determination, will put cancer - that bitch - on the run.

Sweet and sour

Things have been a bit weird in Waffle land.

We had what was, with blinders on, a delightful holiday weekend. We didn't give or recieve a lot of presents, but what we did and had was meaningful.

We got to spend part of the 'smas with our favorite Naked Monkey friends.

On Boxing Day Jamie's sister and her daughter, who live in France, and a friend of theirs from Oregon, came for a visit and truly added to the pleasure of sharing in the best of Christmas spirit.

Minimal drama at home/maximum warmth. Lots of cooking, game playing and sweet, cozy times. In a normal world, the biggest blot on my horizon would be that the garbage pick-up didn't happen due to bad weather. Because? Chicken bones+wrapping-paper+boxes=Crap!

However, from an inner perspective, my holiday was...well, the suck. And typing this out makes my hands shake.

My oldest sister, easily one of the most vital, life-force-filled people I've ever known, collapsed on 12/22. Doctors found a mass in her pelvis and did a colonoscopy which found that her colon is riddled with tumors. Her liver shows some masses as well.

There are some good things to add, like her lungs are clear and the initial colon biopsy came back as precancerous. But basically, each phone call home delivered news that was/is more and more somber. By Christmas I was a wet wreck.

I don't know what to add to that. That she has 7 kids, the youngest of whom is 5? FIVE! That she JUST became a grandmother this year and needs to see him grow up? That she, more than any of my living family members, made the greatest impact on me as a person and I want her to keep doing that for a LOT MORE YEARS? That she talks more animatedly than anybody I've ever known and that a phone call to her is the most fascinating roller coaster about nutrition, green-living, education, and 45 other random topics which interest her at a given moment?

She's intense and a force of nature and SO opinionated. She loves books. She loves music. She loves helping people experience the best of things, particularly with regards to health and nutrition.

I don't believe in God, which is good for God and good for me, because I'd be SO FUCKING RADICALLY RABIDLY CRAZY if I thought there was a being anywhere in the universe who could change what is happening to my sister. Which is to say, I held it together for Christmas. Had fun with the kids. Was loving and loved. And now I'm trying to figure out all the random intricacies of being a supporter of someone with cancer.

How does anybody do this?