Laura's Eulogy

Before I begin I would like to thank everybody who has taken the time to be here today. I would especially like to thank the family members and close friends who constituted the support network that meant so much to Laura.

My first memory is of my sister. I don’t believe I was older than 2 or 3, and her no older than 5. I was sitting at the edge of a mud puddle doing what toddlers do best, getting dirty, when she came running up, a look of pure joy on her face. “Torry,” she gushed breathlessly, “I found some horses. Let’s go see the horses!” I don’t remember the horses, or anything else that day, only her happiness and the fact that she wanted to share it with me. That is my first impression of life.

From that point on I became her shadow. She took on legendary proportions in my eyes. She was smarter than I was, bigger and stronger as well. She could run faster, even when I had a new pair of sneakers. But she never ran so fast as to leave me behind. If I was too slow, she waited for me. If I was too tired, she carried me.

A few years later, around 1970, we moved into a house on Main Street in Essex Junction. It was an old house, and sometimes spooky. We did not live there long, by adult standards, but measured in the long drawn years of childhood, it seemed an eternity. It was in this house that we began to form the ideals and perceptions that would define us in later years, laying the foundations upon which our adult lives would be built.

We never used the front door. That was for salesmen and the paperboy when he came to collect his check every week. Instead, we entered through the kitchen by way of a musty old shed that connected the main part of the house to a barn which had been converted into a garage. The only other door out of the kitchen led to a large windowless room in the center of the house that served many different purposes over the course of years that we lived there. If you continued straight across this central room, you found yourself in a dark corridor that seemed to lead nowhere. Portraits lined the walls, including one we called Samuel. Samuel’s eyes would follow you as you traversed this hall. For this reason we would run through, so as not to linger too long under his scrutiny.

At the end of this hall, if you turned left, you would find yourself at the foot of the stairs. After the darkness of the eerie back hall, the light streaming down the white stuccoed stairway was always a welcome relief. Climbing these stairs into the light one seemed to shed pounds with every step, feeling as light as a feather at the top. To the left was my bedroom; to the right was Laura’s. While the adults ruled the lower part of the house, this was our kingdom, separated from the rest of the world by the menace of the dark hall and the uplifting experience of climbing the stairs.

A small bathroom lay in between the two bedrooms, built almost entirely into a windowed dormer. It was from this window that the light would flood down the stairs. A small frame hung on the wall of this bathroom. This frame contained a poem. So many times I gazed upon it that to this day I can still recall it word for word. It is called “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking,” by Emily Dickenson and I would like to recite it for you now.

It is not a long poem, only 41 words comprising 7 lines. It is not a complicated poem either; it is so simple in concept that a child can grasp its meaning. Yet while the lesson of the poem is easy to understand it proves hard for many to apply. Yet Laura always knew how to put this unassuming principle into practice. There are many examples. Some are small. When her son Derik’s hamster became ill, she cared for it, wrapping it in a soft cloth and holding it gently until it passed. Some are large. Against her doctor’s wishes, she traveled to Mississippi during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Some are huge. After her surgery in Baltimore when she was told that her condition had become inoperable, she looked around the room at all of us and asked “Are you guys ok?” So if someone were to ask me, “What was your sister like?” it would be to these 7 lines of simple poetry that I would point.

As we entered our teen years and moved into young adulthood, we inevitably lost some of the inseparable closeness we shared as kids as other people entered our lives and filled those roles. But we never lost the feeling of mutual confidence and trust that had always been our bond. She was the person I called when I had a problem I didn’t know how to handle. I called Dad when I needed to fix the faucet; I called Laura when I needed to fix myself.

About a year and a half ago she told me that her greatest fear was not death, but that she was worried she had become marginalized and inconsequential, a “non-person” so to speak, someone unable to actively and meaningfully contribute to family or society. I know this not to be the case. Some people are natural born teachers. They teach unconsciously, not through rote memorization or recitation, but through passion and example. They live according to what they believe, and believe according to how they live. My sister was one of these rare people. It was impossible to know her and not come away with a better understanding of yourself and the world around you. Such people also know that each moment is not just an opportunity to teach, but also to learn. “The nice thing about moments,” she wrote in one of her essays, “is that you always have one.”

What I have learned from my sister can never be taken away from me. Be kind. Be tolerant. Every person has worth, and every opinion has merit. Just because someone looks different does not mean they are different. Judge for yourself, and form your own opinions from your own experiences. The best way to help yourself is too help someone else. I could list many more. These values will not end with me, but will be passed on to my child. Marginalized? No. Inconsequential? Never.

Laura’s accomplishments were many. They exemplify her intelligence and motivation, yet also her concern for others. She graduated High School with honors, obtaining her diploma in only three years. As a single mother, she worked and went to school full time, earning a degree in Business with a concentration in Operations Management from the University of Vermont and receiving the Alumni Award for the School of Business Administration. She excelled at her job and earned glowing recommendations from her supervisors. She volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, as I have already mentioned, as well as working at Camp Ta Kum Ta, a camp for kids with cancer. She knitted hats for patients undergoing chemotherapy and interviewed for a video to help others with the end of life patient experience that will soon be published by the Center for Communication in Medicine. She was close to obtaining her Masters Degree in Individual Studies from Goddard College. Despite all this, Laura considered raising her son to be her greatest accomplishment. Her happiest moment was swimming with the dolphins in Mexico.

Laura’s last request of me was to compile her journals and other writings and make them available to other people facing end of life challenges, a project I am honored to accept and to which I will fully devote myself. In that spirit, I would like to end by reading one of her own works, entitled Death, Breath, and Life.

I always considered death something to avoid, if I considered it at all. I even turned away when, near 40, the concept of my own mortality and physical frailty slapped me in the face and Death sought to catch my eye. “I am here,” it called. “I am real” it whispered. “I am just a step away or a life time away, but I am here and you will know me.”

“I know you enough already” I thought back. “I know you in theory and in the abstract. I know you from a distance. Everyday you enter my world through friends and acquaintances and in the news. Every day you appear and everyday I brush you aside as if to keep you at bay. I don’t want to know you, because I don’t understand you. I am busy yet being immortal. Come back when I am a very old woman and we’ll talk.”

Then, my life changed unexpectedly. Going in for a minor surgery I had ever-so casually and confidently signed approval for ‘just-in-case’ contingency plans. Those contingency plans became a reality I was ill-prepared for. I woke up staring right into the eyes of Death and I was not able to look away. Waiting and without answers, the last shred of my immortality perished. Death borrowed my soul and held my heart. It danced in my dreams and captured my waking moments. Unable to see anything but an ending, my days were wrapped in a shroud of loneliness and shadow. Unable to visualize alternative futures, I felt lost and abandoned and hopeless. Perspective sought a foothold in my daily life, but found none. I drifted alone in an emotional sea of helplessness. For long weeks, Death woke me in the middle of the night and would not release me back to sleep. It crowded into tender moments with loved ones. It instilled fear into everyday activities and thoughts. It kicked me loose from the roots of my life and tossed me into the whirling unknown. It haunted every living moment I tried to have, making them surreal by trying to capture and preserve the essence of life in each one.

Feeling suffocated and distanced from the life and people I loved so much, I cried. I cried for what I would lose, and who would lose me. I cried for all the things I would miss and all the things I would never do again. I cried for not knowing and I cried for the sheer weight of responsibility of going away.

And then Time came and I breathed. I took one conscious breath and then another. I opened myself to the prayers of others when I could not pray for myself and when I feared I could not pray enough. I breathed deeply into the parts of me where I couldn’t feel the fluid motion of energy and being. I named my biggest fears and I spoke them out loud even when I and others would have preferred denial and even when there were no answers. And I breathed.

I kept breathing. Some moments it was all that I could do. And in my breaths, I came to see that it was I who held so tightly to Death, not the other way around. As I breathed in more and more conscious Life, my grip on Death loosened slowly. With time, I came to see that Death did not hold me, Life did.

I came to realize my misconception that we come here and we stay for a long time until we are very old and unlucky people die early. The truth is that we come here and we live UNTIL WE DON’T ANYMORE. That’s it, just until we don’t. This is no secret. We are told over and over to live in the moment and to make every day count. I thought I understood that, but I didn’t. I do now. Now I spend my time doing things of the heart - doing things that matter, doing things that bring me joy. After all - no matter how long I’m here, there isn’t time enough to do anything else.

Death still stands closer to me than ever before, but I, newly reborn into a mortal being, give my embrace and my breath to Life.

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