Yesterday morning we buried my sister-in-law Michelle, something I would not have dreamed in a million years we would be doing that day. There were many times when we half expected it to happen, when we came within an inch of its happening. You see, Michelle was both a leukemia survivor, and more recently, a breast cancer survivor. Her latest battle with breast cancer tested her already overtaxed body and pushed it to the limits, and yet again, against unfathomable odds, in true Michelle fashion, she recovered. That's why the news of her death last Friday evening came as a real shock to us all, who loved her so dearly and who had come so close to losing her so many times before.
Now that I have a minute to sit and reflect on the tornado that has been our lives these past few days, I have come to realize how very little we actually knew about her. As I stood helplessly in that sad charade that is the receiving line at the viewing, where family members are forced to share their pain with and, in an ironic twist of fate, put on a brave face for mostly strangers who come to pay their respects, my disdain for the formalities of death slowly morphed to a deep sense of gratitude for all those people who took time from their daily lives to come and share with us pieces of Michelle we were not privy to. Parts of her life that were theirs, but not ours, and in sharing their memories of her, they opened a whole new perspective on the person we thought we knew, and that I now realize we still have so much to find out about.
As her family, we knew that for the last few years of her life, Michelle battled many demons, faced many fears, had many flaws, but who doesn't? It was all too easy to see Michelle as someone who needed protection, and in so doing, we sometimes missed the opportunity to see the other side of Michelle, even though it had always been there, in plain view, for all to see, because she had never had anything to hide. While we tried to come up with things to say for the obituary and the eulogy that would sum up Michelle's life, we realized that there was not enough space to confine Michelle's life, that for a person who always appreciated simple things, her life was far more complex than what a few lines in an obit could express.
And then came all those strangers, who one by one shared their deeply felt sorrow and fondest memories, whose grief was only a fragment of ours, and yet it was still so heartfelt and sincere. Little by little we pieced together those parts of Michelle's life that we didn't know about, and learned of the impact she had in other people's life. We learned that, even in the midst of her fear for her own mortality, Michelle never stopped caring for others. She soldiered on, even when things were not so great in her private life, to bring a bit of sunshine to those whom she loved, to a makeshift, odd family made up of people who shared her love for all things football and Jimmy Buffet. Her patients and fellow nurses remembered her as someone who took a personal interest in her patients, who saw in them, not only a patient who needed medical attention, but a whole person, with depth and mind and feelings. Because she had been such a patient herself, she was truly able to connect with them at a level not many others could. And she always, always, always followed up with them, to see how they were doing, even long after they had stopped being patients.
We will never get to know the full person she was, but we are comforted by what we did know about her. That all of the good, wonderful and selfless things she did in her life to make other people's lives better overshadow whatever flaws she may have had, that like a shooting star, her brief life passed through the sky shinning so brightly that for a brief moment everything else was cast in shadows.
Personally, I feel immensely blessed to have known her for 16 years. I bless the hands of the doctors who performed the bone marrow transplant 22 years ago that saved her life, because thanks to them I had the privilege of knowing such a kind and unique person. Thanks to them, my children got to know their aunt. A true blessing.
