The Year of Loss
Stacy Kimmel in her princess crown. When she was too ill to take her place in the 2020 Rose Parade, her community in Pasadena held a special parade 9 days later just for her. (Outlook Pasadena photo)
I’ve heard it said that our sense of loss is directly related to how much we value those who are gone. Two weeks ago, I knew for certain that this year will be one I’ll remember for its feelings of loss.
The night began with a text from my friend Fran. It bleeped just as Jacques and I were settling in for our regular “what-was-the-name-of-that-show-and-which-streaming-service-was-it-on-anyway” effort.
The text contained sad news. Our former work colleague and friend Stacy, the talented and effervescent graphic artist and designer, had passed away earlier in the day.
Despite multiple years of recurring cancers, our friends were convinced Stacy would outlive us all. She survived round after round of treatments for the wily scourge that kept finding new places to show up in her remarkable self. After every treatment or surgery, she would emerge with the same warm smile and her great sense of fun and energetic personality.
Stacy joined us for a few Jewish holidays in Pasadena, when her daughter was a mere 8 or 9 years old. Guinevere was a precociously talented child who easily engaged with the adults around her. As Stacy said at the time, her goal was to stay around until Guinevere turned 18 – and that talented young woman is now 19 and nearly done with college.
As Fran said, when Stacy had a goal, she crushed it. Definitely a loss, yet her life was a valiant miracle.
A few hours later, my brother called. When my brother calls after 8:00 pm, it’s rarely good news, but it’s usually something that can wait for a response. It was then 11 pm, and we were ready to call it a night.
I thought, “I’ll just listen to the message and return the call tomorrow,” and logged on to the voicemail.
“Hey Mary, it’s your brother. Your niece Megan is deceased...” And that’s when the world tilted.
I immediately called back and learned that my brother and sister-in-law had each returned from work and, thinking it strange that Megan hadn’t come out of her room to greet them as usual, they knocked on her door. When there was no response, they broke in to find her dead body in her room.
Although the circumstances remain mysterious, what’s not mysterious is that 29-year-old vivacious nieces aren’t supposed to die. Certainly not before their relatives who are too old to die young.
Megan was a smart, gregarious young woman, a spunky striver who always had a new idea or plan to further her progress on a path to success. She was talented and loving with her family and friends, and was in the midst of a late 20s pivot as she was deciding where she wanted to live next, after an interlude with her parents in Texas.
She is the youngest of our siblings’ children and now will always be 29 in our memory. And no, I still can’t process the impact of Megan’s death.
This was already a year of loss as two of our dwindling number of Aunts passed in the first few months. Neither of those were wholly unexpected.
My Aunt Marge passed at the age of 103. She had what we call a long and vibrant health-span – a life lived well and fully engaged until she simply didn’t wake up one morning.
I got to know Aunt Marge better while we lived in Southern California and learned how much she loved Sees Chocolates. She was fiercely independent, and lived alone in her own apartment for nearly a decade after my Uncle Paul passed. When she was 100 years old, she chose to move to an assisted living unit. It was too hard to get out of the bathtub, she said.
Aunt Marge on the lawn with her mother-in-law, my grandmother - in the early 1950s.
She grew up in my hometown, married my father’s brother, Uncle Paul, and they set off to California where Uncle Paul plied his knowledge of farming and cows to the benefit of Carnation Milk.
They raised their boys to enjoy surfing and California life, and when she left, there were five grandchildren, and at least four great-grandchildren still on the west coast.
Losing Aunt Marge was definitely a loss, but not a shock.
It also wasn’t a shock when our 107-year-old Aunt Mimi passed in April.
Aunt Mimi in 2007 before she left New York.
Mimi was known outside of our family as the secretary to Oskar Schindler who typed the now famous list of those who were saved from extermination by working in Schindler’s factories during World War II.
Mimi grew up outside of Vienna, Austria and when war broke out, was living in Poland with her husband and infant son. When her husband was killed early in the war, she hid her son with another family before she was taken to a Nazi labor camp near Krakow. Her impeccable German and a course in shorthand saved her life when Schindler chose her for an office job.
Mimi was a beautiful woman who experienced the worst humankind can throw at a life. She lost her first husband and the father to her son to violent hatred, and outlived her second husband and a daughter. Yet she was always kind and interested in the lives of all around her. She moved to Israel to be near her son Sasha when she was 92, and became the bridge champion of her condo building until the end. Another remarkable health-span until she was gone.
Again – the sad loss of a life lived well, in spite of the horrors she experienced.
Each of these women were remarkable either for lives lived long and well, for valiant efforts to retain joy despite illness, or for being spunky individualists. Each taught me important lessons in life, and if I hadn’t valued them so much, it wouldn’t feel so bad.
Yet it’s Megan that feels like the biggest loss – the loss of potential, the loss of reaching for the dreams she was beginning to articulate, the loss that feels so personal and close and unnecessary. This one is leaving a painful hole that will be difficult to move beyond.