As promised, I am posting the final 2 eulogies for Anne Marie. The first is mine. I was originally going to read this at the Church, however, there was too many readings there so I decided to read it at the reception. But of course not everything went as smoothly as expected and it was never shared. The second one is from Anne’s best friend Annette. This eulogy was read as well in California, at her memorial there too. Between my brother’s and Annette’s eulogies the churches were all in tears.
My Final Thoughts about Anne Marie
Hey Kiddo,
I know that you are still here among us carrying us through this right now… so to begin I want to THANK YOU Anne for your strength, courage and help with this.
It matters not how someone dies, but how they live.
I remember one of the final days she was here in Toronto and we were on our porch she turned to me and said, “Sam, go with the flow”.. That is how she lived her life. Anne lived a short life of 54 but she lived a lifetime of someone that lived to be 80. She made life amazing for everyone, especially my brother Tony. I have never in my life seen two people in love more than them. I have always wanted to have even a fraction of the love they have for each other with my partner because it would be more than most have experienced.
“Life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.” I know that Anne’s breath was taken away many times. She lived the life that she wanted and not the life that was dealt to her… that is especially true of her in Vegas…
Like the ripples in a pond, the work of one person can spread out and touch the lives of many others.
There are only a handful of people who come into your world, and touch your life in a dramatic fashion. Some of the people are just flickers of light during a long life, while others are consistent glows for years. For me, Anne was my consistent glow. She was my most favorite person ever.
Anne is in heaven now and we are here at her memorial. This is not the time for us to grieve her death but it’s our time to celebrate her life. Don’t ever forget Anne Marie. She never wanted to see people cry. She wanted to make everyone happy. So at this moment, let’s all think back and remember how Anne touched our lives. How she made us laugh and how good Anne was as a person. This is not the moment for us to shed our tears but we should all be thankful that we were given the chance to have known a strong, loving and compassionate friend named Anne Marie.
Tony said it right … To meet her was to love her. I miss you dearly and look forward to seeing you again and having a Latte Grande at SSHTARBUCKSHH
Bye Anne..
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- Anne and Garfield
A few words from Annette McLeod, one of Anne’s closest Toronto friends.
It would be very easy, when talking about Anne Marie, to resort to clichés. She had a heart of gold. She could charm the birds out of the tree. She was down to Earth. Being with her was as easy as falling off a log. She’d give you the shirt off her back.
They’re all true, those and a thousand others like them, but they don’t begin to convey the person she really was. She was a true rarity – in all the years I knew her, more than two decades, I never heard her say an unkind word about anyone, no matter how unkind the person. Strangers used to come up to her on the street and tell her she had a beautiful aura, and although I don’t necessarily believe in such things, it seemed so obvious to me that she would, that I believed it when it came to her.
She was generous, not just with her money and her time, but in spirit as well. She possessed such congeniality that strangers, after a short time in her company, began to feel like friends.
She had an impish sense of humor, a goofiness, that was legendary among our mutual friends, and she never shied away from making herself look silly to make someone else laugh. I don’t suppose I will ever again meet someone with her degree of warmth. There aren’t too many people who can do justice to the word “whimsical” but she did, much to the delight of anyone lucky enough to know her.
She never wanted anyone to feel bad, and when it came to coping with the illness that finally took her, she did so with typical grace and largely by herself, so none of us had to suffer with her.
Mostly, Anne was remarkable for the sheer volume of love in her life – the love she inspired, the love she gave and was equally gracious about accepting. Once she loved you, you always felt like maybe you were OK after all. And you knew her love would never be withdrawn. If she loved you, she loved you, and you never needed to question it.
I will remember her best for everything and everyone she loved: for Tony and his family, for her parents, Cy and Shirley, whom I am quite sure were waiting for her when she got where she was destined to go, for her family, her friends, that darn cat, Garfield, whose picture I still have on my cell phone because she sent it so often. She loved California and I am so happy that she got to spend her last years here.
We shared a love of movies, books, puzzles, games, travel – just about anything that had the potential to capture her imagination. Maybe it’s no accident that the things she loved best have the power to whisk you away to another world. Her reality, as wonderful as it was at times, wasn’t always easy, but no one has ever handled hardship with more grace.
Mostly, I will remember her and be forever grateful that she loved me, because I loved her too, from just about the first time we met, back when I was 17 and she was 31, when we both still had our parents, and the world seemed like a boundlessly entertaining, awe-inspiring, mystical place, and cancer was just a word. In Heaven, I know that’s where she is, with her mom and dad, drinking a dirty martini or maybe a margarita on the rocks, in the sunshine, by the ocean, not in any hurry, but looking forward to the day we will all see her again.
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