A Tribute to My Cousin Sue

Today I want to write a little different post than I usually do. I’ll call it a tribute- to my dear cousin Sue who passed away a couple days ago.

Sue is a special person to me who lived with passion and flare. She was quite a presence- with the loudest, most infectious laugh in the room and the most animated gestures and hair-flipping during story-telling. Ever since I was a little girl I remember looking up to her and just wanting to be near her. She spoke her mind with boldness, fought for causes she believed in, sought hard after truth and listened intently with an authenticity that made you feel like she loved every minute of being with you. And she loved her family!

You see I (or should I say we, all of us Garretts) grew up in what I’d call a man’s family. At Garrett family reunions there’s lots of shouting (the kind that everyone enjoys, although maybe not the new in-laws), very intense card games (euchre!) usually accompanied by chain-smoking, continuous rotations of softball and eating… like I said, a man’s family. But, Sue always held her own with the guys. She knew how to put them in their place and love them all at the same time. And she was the one who sort of held the family history together, teaching us about our roots and who (in our huge extended family) were our second cousins and who were “twice removed”. I’m still not sure if I know what that means even though she explained it to me every year.

But, what I love most about Sue is her humility and her passion. She was able to admit where she went wrong and be grateful for where she was…even in dying. Although I was away in Kenya while she was suffering in great pain from cancer (it broke my heart not to be able to see her), I was able to email her a couple times. Here’s a bit of what she said to me in those exchanges; to think she wrote these words facing death really touches me:

“Our wonderful God has been blessing me with peace, joy and lots of love and expressions of caring. He is so faithful. So many times in my life I've turned away from HIM and he loves me back to him any moment. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for all he's done for me all my life and especially now.”

When I think of Sue, one story keeps replaying over and over in my mind:

The first opportunity I got to go to Africa was in 2004. The church I was going to invited me to join a trip of young professionals to looks at projects being done by various humanitarian organizations and think about how our church could partner with their work. They asked me, because someone told someone else that I was a water resources engineer. What they didn’t know was that this opportunity was exactly what I had been looking for, and a passion for using my technical skills in the developing world was bubbling up within me.

I knew that I needed to be on this trip, so when I got the phone call, despite the lofty fund-raising and time off work required, I instantly committed to be part of the team. I was thrilled! I wrote a letter about it and sent it out to close friends and relatives. I brought a few along with me to the annual Garrett family reunion. When I handed Sue hers, she tore it open, sped through it mouthing the words with a huge smile on her face and getting to the closing line that asked a question like: “Do you want to be a part of this?” she emphatically answered out loud as she stood up: “YES! I want to be a part of this!” And, although she recently lost her job, she whipped out her check book and gave me a generous donation that helped send me on that trip.

That’s Sue. I'm inspired by her, I love her, I miss her and I can’t wait to see her again…in a little while.