Eulogy given on Thursday, June 29, 2023.

Marie Lenora (alias to protect privacy) was larger than life.  As I stand here, it is absolutely clear to me that she continues to be larger than life, because she will remain an important part of my life and the life of every single person here.

Today is bound to be a day of sadness, how could it not be?  Especially for Marie’s children, Marcus and Lexus, and her mother, my Dear Grandmother, Elizabeth (alias to protect privacy).  Marcus, Lexus (aliases to protect privacy), Gram Cracker, her sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, her loyal friends, I feel your pain and it makes me anguished.  I know that pain does not come to us when losing someone if there was not always great love for the person lost though.

We are here because we were a part of Aunt Marie’s life as either her family or her close friends.  While the pain is inevitable and automatic, I know we will only honor Marie today and going forward if while acknowledging the pain, we also make the conscious effort to celebrate her life.  Today must be the celebration of life, because I know of no one else who lived the entirety of her life so well aware of the intersection of great joy and great tragedy.

My Aunt, Marie Lenora, was always kind to me.  I could always count on Marie to tell amazing stories.  Stories about herself or others, stories about politicians and glamorous movie stars.  She was so invested in her stories.  Because what she gave to her stories, the imagination and fierceness she imparted to them, it was never simply a retelling.  It was a coming to life.  She infused everything with her own soul and vivacity.

Over the last month, I have been thinking of the stories she would tell.  I have been thinking about the last conversation I had with her earlier this year in January.  I was not sure how to construct any of these conversations into a narrative worthy of Aunt Marie.  I wanted a story with enough force and love that Marie herself may have told it.

When I was very young, I lived in Baldwin Park with my mother.  I had the good fortune of living in that home with many incredible people.  My mom, my Grandma, my brother, Marie Lenora, and her two children, Marcus and Lexus.

I was a part of Marie Lenora’s family in the most intimate sense possible.  We lived together, but still, we had separate worlds.

My Grandma was and is my hero.  My Aunt Marie was sweet and kind to me.  And I absolutely loved my cousins Marky and Lex.  I loved them so much because they were kind to me.  Marky taught me games, Lex taught me a very specific way to wash my hands, and it is the exact same way I wash my hands to this day.

Their kindness was important to me, because while I was almost entirely unaware of the pain and trauma my cousins who lived with me were experiencing, let alone the pain and despair my Aunt Marie was experiencing, I was aware at that young age of a certain loneliness.  I was aware of living in a small house with so many people and not feeling anchored or tethered.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt says that loneliness is never experienced in isolation.  Loneliness is always inherently something social, because it is only among other humans that we can find ourselves being pushed away from those we would want to love us for who we are and thus alone.

It is incredible that as such a young child I felt that.  It is even more incredible that in feeling our own pains so deeply in this small little house in Baldwin Park, we may never have been aware of each other’s pain.  I am sorry for that, that I could not have been a better support for my Aunt or my cousins.

I was just a child though. More than that, I think even any adult would be forgiven for not seeing Marie Lenora’s pain.  She was capable of anger and fury, there is no doubt of that.  But when Marie Lenora was telling her stories, all one could ever see was a triumphant heroine.  A winner, a survivor, an eternal optimist.

It is this larger than life woman, who could have been a movie star with her personality that I knew.  It is the part of her that she wanted me to see.  And I honor her for that today.  It was an act of courage and resiliency that what she chose to share with me was the person she wanted to be.

In my loneliness, I always felt either apart from my family, or an accessory to it.  I loved my family and their fierce and unflinching personalities.  I was never able to tell the story of my family in a way that a character named Patrick could fit in though.  The greatness of my family was external to me.

My mom loved me, yet that love came with its own masks, of both hers and my own creation.  I remember playing slug bug in the car with her and my brother.  Calling out every Volkswagen Beetle we saw.  “Blue slug bug!  Red slug bug!”  It was just a game.  It was exciting to play because my mom seemed so excited when explaining the rules to us.  Yet, slug bugs were so different from any car I had ever been in.  They were exotic, noisy, interesting.  They would drive by us on the road or freeway indifferent to us, even as my brother and I excitedly called them out.  In other words, these slug bugs stood in the exact same relation to us as my family did.

I remember that changed though, the narrative was entirely inverted.  “Do you want to come to Taco Bell with me, mijo?” My Aunt Marie Lenora asked.  I said “yes” because my Grandma taught me to always be respectful of adults.  I thought “yes” was the answer that she wanted.

I really did not want to go though.  I was too busy being lonely.  I was scared I would make a fool of myself alone with my Aunt.  Aside from my Grandma, I really did not like being alone with any adult.  I always preferred groups in which I could be quiet and alone by myself without anyone making a fuss.

When Aunt Marie wants you to feel comfortable and loved though, it’s not easy to be Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh for long.  Up until that point, and for many years after, that car ride to and from Taco Bell was the single scariest and funnest roller coaster ride I had ever been on!

We flew through the streets of Baldwin Park into Covina.  She used her stick shift as a wand.  The stick shift and her own bubbly voice saying  “mijo” and “sweetie” just about every other word were the only things I could hear over the roar of the car.  I am sure I was scared, how could I not be when it didn’t feel like the seatbelt was going to keep me in place long or when I felt a sense of weightlessness on just about every single corner turned?  I must have been scared indeed, but how could I have been aware of that?  Marie Lenora and her narrative was in charge.  All she allowed me to feel was excitement and wonder.

There was a real poetic significance too.  The car Marie Lenora treated like a fighter jet was a Volkswagen Beetle.  An Orange Slug Bug.  That wasn’t lost on me either.  I was confident that Marie Lenora got that car for just this occasion.  She was tired of me looking outside of myself for cars worth mentioning and getting excited about.  I felt she knew all about my game with my mother and brother, and she wanted me to know that I could be the one on the road with my powerful and adventurous aunt that strangers stare at in awe.

Maybe Marie Lenora never felt like a star.  I don’t know.  I honestly don’t.  I am also not sure if she ever knew that on that day (and a few others besides that I wisely kept from my mom and Grandma) she made me feel like a star on the way to get Taco Bell.

About two years ago, I mentioned this to her at a sunny outdoor family gathering.  That I remembered us going to Taco Bell in her Volkswagen.  She smiled .  I didn’t see much recollection in her face though.  I dropped it, figuring she didn’t remember.  So I did not get to say what I had been planning to, that that was one of the most important events of my childhood, where I felt like I belonged.

I dropped it, and I regret that.  I don’t think her response had anything to do with if she remembered it or not.  I was relating to her a suspense thriller from childhood that she had authored, one that in hindsight, came with quite a bit of risk along with the excitement.

But I didn’t use the magic that Marie Lenora always did.  I made it boring.  I might as well have said “I remember going to Taco Bell with you a few times decades ago.”  I didn’t bother to make it the sort of exciting story that allows people to be someone else or somewhere else for a few moments.  I hope the story that I have told today is worthy of Marie Lenora.

Because her stories were acts of bravery and love.  She is entitled to all of her stories.

Still, my Aunt and I come from the same family.  I know that as much as her stories were acts of creation, they were not always truthful.  My Aunt carried pain with her.  I know she visited that pain on people who never deserved it, including her children.  I believe that they will always carry the marvelous stories, the spectacular truths of their mother along with a very raw pain.

I also know that Marie Lenora loved her children.  She loved everyone here.  The part of Marie Lenora that was hurt and blindly hurt others didn’t want that to be its story, its legacy.  So even in life, she created worlds to escape into, worlds she hoped others could escape into.  Her stories and her truth have to live side by side.  I know she wanted her story to be her creations: her amazing children and the stories she wanted to be true.

I relate with my Aunt Marie Lenora.  She wanted all of her stories to be true so much because she didn’t think her pain was worthy of love.  It was.

The parts of you that are hurting, they deserve to be given voice to.  They deserve to be loved, comforted, and even proud.

I know Marie Lenora would want us all to continue telling fantastic stories full of life and flair.  She would tell us to tell the hurt parts that they don’t have to be in a car looking out at those stories playing themselves along the road.  The stories we tell ourselves can become our truths if we learn to love ourselves wholly in ways Marie Lenora was not always able to.  By doing this, we give Marie Lenora the happy ending she always wanted and deserved.  Because what mother, daughter, sister, friend could want more than to see all her loved ones loving themselves as much as she loved them in her own imperfect larger than life way?

I am mindful that my truths here may not have spoken for everyone.  We all have had our own relationships with Marie Lenora.  Whatever yours was, with its unique combination of love, pride, joy, and pain, I hope you know it is valid and it is true.

Thank you.