Gregory Husisian
I always thought that this was a good approach to a funeral oration. But it doesn’t really work for my sister. That is not to say that she was perfect. She was human, and made mistakes like all of us in this room. But she was the rare person for whom you could say: her vices were her virtues.
She could be impetuous. She would do whatever she thought was right, based upon her own evaluation, regardless of what anyone around her thought. And she would say exactly what she thought, or say something she thought witty, regardless of whether some people might think that the timing was “appropriate.”
Sometimes you might wince, and think “why did she do that?” But you wouldn’t change her if you could. It was what made her special. She always was evaluating everything, and always did exactly what she thought was right. And if she perhaps made a joke at what seemed an inopportune time, when you looked back, often you would realize that far from being inappropriate, it might have served a purpose. Maybe it helped defuse a tense situation. Or maybe it distracted people. And even if not, you would have to admit this: it was always wickedly funny. She had a great and irreverent sense of humor.
Every funeral has tragedies -- not only the obvious losses to family and friends, but the less obvious loss of what might have happened in the rest of the person’s life. I’m thinking of things that Chris might have done, the people she might have met, the influence that she might have had on people whom she had not even met yet.
And that, too, is a great loss in Chris’ case, because I know that this is true: I’ve met thousands of people in my life, and most of them thought the same things and always did the safe thing. And that made them deadly dull.
But never Chris. Her best virtue was that she was never, ever boring. She had a zest for life. She lit up a room when she walked into it. Not because she was beautiful -- and God knows, she was beautiful. But because of the way she was. She was a force of nature that swept you along in her wake and compelled you to notice her.
And this, too, I know is true: Because of the way she was, because of the way she thought and acted, she lived as full a life in 40 years as most do who live to 80. She did not live a half life, because she said more interesting things, had more interesting conversations, did more interesting things, thought more interesting thoughts, than all of those dull and boring people do in 80 years of life.
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. When I told my wife that Chris had just died, after a few minutes she said: This is how I think of Chris -- picking up Peter, my then three-year old son, and dancing with him in the Japanese restaurant in Aruba. And that was Chris. It was utterly inappropriate for her to do that. It was a fancy restaurant, set up for quiet meals, not dancing. No one else was dancing; no one else even thought of dancing. And the music wasn’t even quite right for dancing. But there she was, dancing with Peter, and soon she was laughing, and Peter was laughing, and we were all smiling, watching two people with an utter zest for life, a three-year old without a care in the world, and an adult woman who acted like she didn’t have any, either. And it was utterly the right thing to do. And I’ll bet if I asked Peter if he remembered this, he still would, even though he is now twice as old as he was that day.
That’s the hidden tragedy in all of this. We lost someone who was unique. Everywhere she went, you felt as if a silver pool of light followed her, and now that light has been extinguished -- and extinguished too soon. I miss her terribly.
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