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Okay, time to cheer up. I had forgotten how much I liked rathergood until somebody linked to We Like the Moon today. Hilarious stuff, and I love the punkish aesthetic of their Flash movies. While you’re there, don’t miss the Meatini.
It’s been a strange weekend. Yesterday I went to Wichita to attend the memorial service for my sister Marty. She died in her sleep, completely unexpectedly, in early June. Because she was in Tanzania (a missionary, she had been there since 2000), it took some time for her husband and daughter to return to the States, so the service was delayed quite a bit. Her husband used a canned website service to quickly put up a memorial for her, which has been the sole source of information for most of us in the meantime.
The woman who organized the service asked eight people to share some memories of Marty at the service. My own thoughts (as written, not exactly what I said) follow after the jump.
It’s a weird weekend for any number of reasons, but not anything I feel like going into here. I do get the feeling that huge changes are in the air, not just for me but for everyone. A feeling that wheels are turning and a new era is coming soon. There are all kinds of reasons I feel this, not just because of my sister or the fact that our celebrities seem to be dying off in droves. Whatever. We shall see. In the meantime, if you feel like reading a few memories of my sister, follow the link below.
Memorial for Marlita (Marty) Kay Tomek Jansen McFarland, 18 July 2009
You can try to be prepared for your parents' death. In our case, we had a fairly long period of time when we knew they didn't have long to go. Of course you're never prepared, even when you know it's coming. Death is always a surprise on some level, I think.
But Marty's sudden passing was a whole different thing, of course. Just that morning, she had sent a personal email to our brother Steve and me. We got the newsletters and such regularly, but this was a personal note about what she was doing, the things she was spending time on, and she apologized for not writing more often. I'm very glad she happened to drop us a note that morning.
Marty was my older sister. She was always there, had always been there. I know we fought, but not nearly as often as I fought with my younger brothers. Occasionally we were co-conspirators: one time we were both home and supposed to be sick, but instead we just played around all day. In a panic because our mom was supposed to be home soon, I remember she was frantically searching the medicine cabinet to find any kind of sedative so we could be asleep or at least appear to be sleepy. Another time we were both “sick” at the same time, our medicine was Coca Cola syrup poured over crushed ice. I can't imagine now what that was treatment for, but it was the best medicine ever!
Two years difference in age and a difference in gender were pretty large barriers, especially in as individualistic a family as ours was, so I wouldn't say we were close confidants. I do know I missed out on a lot of the Beatles' early albums because Marty was a huge fan, and so therefore I couldn't like them. But then somebody (Marty? I can't remember) gave me a copy of Sgt. Pepper's for my 15th birthday, and it was all over from there. Of course, by the time of Abbey Road even our dad was a fan.
But still, despite our differences—differences our adult lives probably magnified rather than diminished—there was always a bond between us, a feeling that though we might come to different conclusions about a lot of things, maybe even most things, we had, after all, started in the same place. A feeling of understanding, of knowing where we came from. In a world where ultimately all of us come and go alone, that is a connection to be valued.
Marty was one of the funniest and smartest people I've ever known. I can't quite grasp that she's no longer in this world. It's going to take a long time for me to wrap my head around that, and I'm guessing that is true for many of us here. Perhaps that was her final lesson to us: you'd better live each moment to the fullest, because death is a surprise. The exact nature of that surprise is something I don't suppose any of us will know until we get there ourselves. All I know is I miss my sister, and I can't imagine a time when I won't.