Many of you knew Kristi as an accomplished educator, administrator and as an advocate for medical research. Over the years, she had gained the respect of friends, family and colleagues. She was thought of far and wide as a wise counselor and trustworthy confidant and was a mother and friend who had the capacity for unconditional love. She lived her life with her head held high, deservedly proud of all she had accomplished through her independence and fortitude. I’d like to share with you what I knew my sister to be and how she became the person that you knew.
Kristi sprang to life on September 18, 1950… 2 years and 5 days after I was born. Mom said that when she was little she had big violet eyes, from which she could turn on the tears in order to get what she wanted. From an early age, Kristi lived according to two simple principals: I will do what I want and I will do what needs to be done. Kristi tore through life at break neck speed and didn’t need or seek the approval of anyone. She was a gambler and lived on the bleeding edge all of her life.
When Kristi was growing up she was cute with big eyes, she was always quick to laugh, she had strong athletic legs, thick straight hair, a steel trap mind and a zest for life. She gathered friends and dragged them along in her wake. Many of those old friends she was still in touch with when she died. While I had polio, other than a bout with pneumonia at the age of two, that nearly took her life, Kristi was too fast and agile for health problems to plague her childhood. But because she was healthy and I had polio, Kristi grew up helping me. She buttoned my buttons, hooked my garters, and carried the bulk of the heavy load of being sisters. We were close. We slept in the same double bed until we were in high school. We shared clothes and secrets and a past.
By the time she was 15, Kristi was pregnant. By the time she was 21, she had four children. She didn’t listen to my advice about how not to pregnant while still in high school. In fact, she looked at me as if to say, “Who are you to try to tell me how to live my life. You’re not doing such a good job yourself”. Kristi was choosing to live her life as she wanted. She never once asked or cared about my approval. She was choosing her own way through life.
Kristi, for all intents and purposes, had 5 husbands. She married the first one twice; that was Mark, the father of her first four children. Mom and dad tried their damndest to stop their baby from having a child and from marrying at the age of 15, but Kristi did exactly as she pleased. Then there was Tom, then Randy, then Don and finally Rocky. With Randy, she had three more children, that’s seven children altogether. All she ever needed or asked was that we also loved each one of these men in turn and all of these children.
Kristi lived up and down the I5 corridor as far as northern California and out Highway 30 as far as Rainier and out on the coast a couple of times. Moving and raising and loving a growing family were what she did. From the age of 15 until she was in her 60’s, Kristi was either moving from house to house or from town to town. She would find a place and fix it up to make a home, casting all care to the wind. She lived in a school bus, in motels, in apartments and in houses. In all this time, she never asked for approval. She didn’t need it.
This type of life was not easy for Kristi and she wasn’t always happy. She always hoped that she would find forever love, a love that cared enough to provide the bare necessities of life: love and sustenance for her and her children. And though she loved with all of her heart, she never found that forever love; because of that, Kristi struggled to keep her family clothed and fed, but she never lost her zest for life. She danced on tables, laughed at the top of her voice and built community where ever she went; she loved her children, taught them to love and to depend on one another and never lost touch with the extended family. Her house was open and she dispensed love and advice freely. This was advice not learned from books, which was to come later, but it was guidance based on what she had learned about life from her own hard experiences. Every man, every child and ever y town was a gamble that she was willing to take with gusto.
Kristi’s children know that they caused her to worry, as all kids do. As they struggled to find their way, she had countless sleepless nights filled with tears and anguish, but never did she withdraw her love nor did she stop offering the advice that she so often rejected as she was growing up. She wanted them to learn from her mistakes.
Kristi never had a new or newer car and yet she tore up and down the highways to see and care for her friends and family however wide apart they lived. She often would leave my house very late and I knew that she would not get home for many hours, sometimes not until the sun was rising. Usually she would be leaving because she would have some other long drive to make the following day to see one of her kids or pick up a grandchild to take home for the weekend or a week.
On the way to the beach a few weeks ago, I asked her if she wasn’t afraid of driving old cars all over the place, because I always worried about her. At the time we were in my air conditioned car. She had driven to Clackamas to meet me in her ’93 Honda in near 90 degree weather. Only one window would roll down and it had no AC. I turned the air on full blast and she adjusted all of the vents to point in her direction. Her face was flushed and she had beads of sweat on her upper lip. She talked how she was hoping to buy a “new to her” car in the next week or so. In answer to my question, she simply said, “If it starts, I’m going”. Every trip was a gamble, but she was fearless. Just months ago, when the new baby John was born, she called late at night from the parking lot of the hospital where he was clinging to life, and her car wouldn’t start. We talked long while she waited for someone to come and pick her up. She worried that this car, clinging to its life, might be towed while she could not afford to get it out of hock if she left it there. But she was not scared. She was right where she wanted to be, doing what needed to be done regardless of the risk.
All of her life, Kristi did what she wanted to do. You might say that she sacrificed for her children. Instead of buying new clothes for herself or a decent car, Kristi loaned money to those in need or bought a Christmas or birthday gift for a child or bought extra food for people coming to stay with her. This was not a sacrifice for Kristi. This was exactly what she wanted to do. She didn’t ask what people thought of the risks that she took to show up at all of the family gatherings, sometimes attending a grandson’s or granddaughter’s game, then dashing to make another child’s birthday party, then coming to my house to spend the night on the way to a meeting.
Kristi might have sought your advice or your opinion, but she never once looked for yours or anyone else’s approval. She was not open to acting upon what you might have thought was good for her. You might have thought that she was sacrificing for you or for others, but if so, you were wrong.
The day she died was probably a typical day for her. She had dressed Emma and Bella; given them breakfast, packed them up in the car and driven the round trip of many miles to take Emma to school. She had gone home and might have worked on her Sarcoid Network responsibilities; she had fed Bella, and laid her down for a nap, done dishes, probably put some laundry in, tidied the house, and started preparing dinner or a snack for the girls after school. She had probably called or texted at least one if not more of her children or friends and sometime around 2:00, she buckled Bella into her car seat and headed to school to get Emma again in her ’93 Honda. At 2:35, Kristi came to the end of her life in a car.
In order to believe that she had really died, I had to see her body, I had to know what I was doing when she passed, and I had to see where she died. So Hannah and I went to the crash site. It is right at the entrance of a pristine home, with a perfectly manicured green lawn with a large fountain in the center surrounded by pastures. Down a long lane horses were grazing and across the road cows were peacefully chewing their cud. At the door of the house, two peacocks were perched at the entrance. In the field on the other side of the lane, peacocks were walking and poking at the ground.
We were so struck by the peacocks that Hannah looked up what might be the meaning of their presence at the crash site. Gregory Wilbur, of the Parish Presbyterian Church and Dean of the Chapel at New College Franklin, Tennessee, has a deep interest in how symbolism reveals the nature and character of God. He says: The peacock has been seen since ancient times as guardians of the gates of paradise. And because they lose and gain their feathers annually, just as the phoenix rises out of the ashes, they represent immortality, renewal and resurrection. As well, the peacock often appears among the animals in the stable in Christ’s nativity. Oft seen images of two peacocks drinking from a chalice symbolize rebirth and angels are often depicted with four wings of peacock feathers.
Many have described Kristi in their messages over the last week as an angel on earth. She was truly an angel because you said so. But as a sister, I knew her as a gambler, someone who would take chances and seize opportunities regardless of anyone’s concern. I knew her as someone who did exactly as she pleased.
Kristi tore through life and tore through to the other side. I don’t have her anymore and I wonder what I will do without her. I loved her so much and I will miss her forever.
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