https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.wilson.98478/posts/pfbid036NcRkvRGkh15jmJWdmXrr1xw4Fcyd1FGq2K1h1LSCxvAbK89X3HHfMCDY21N5DVMl

My friend Georganne died this morning, in the company of her sons and daughter-in-law. I’m part of a tightly knit modern American family and Georganne was Philip’s wife before me. I knew of her before we met – she worked for my department chair at Michigan State; she probably arranged for my first office to have a desk and computer. She grew up in East Lansing, in the Flowerpot District (which was her grandfather’s creation). She was a cheerleader at East Lansing High School, a graduate of MSU, and learned early on to take care of her body. She loved all kinds of sports. She started a fitness company with a friend and taught aerobics classes, East Lansing’s own Jane Fonda. She played tennis, lifted weights, swam, canoed, kayaked, paddle boarded, and in her retirement, biked around her neighborhood on a recumbent bike when she wasn’t playing pickleball. She loved art, and artful things – glass, paintings, fabric, jewelry. She was also a guidance counselor, helping students in the Lansing Schools learn how to navigate college admissions and financial aid. She continued that work for several years with students who were marginalized by the system in Tennessee when she retired and moved there.

Above all else, Georganne loved (fiercely) her four children. She and I did not meet during the first year Philip and I were seeing each other. But at the second Christmas we were together, Brendan, their younger son (still in high school), showed up with a pair of earrings from the two of them and a kind note. She never made me feel marginalized in the family and – over time – she and Dave (her husband) and Philip and I became friends. Georganne and Dave drove to our NY farm from MI every one of the first 20 years that we owned it. First they hauled their own water and a small RV/camper to sleep in; later they took up residence in the blue room. Every year for the first five years, she washed every window in the house during their stay when she wasn’t reading a novel in the sun. When I told her how sad I would be to put up a wall between the kitchen table and the room next to it that has a full view looking south over the fields, she told me to put a window in the wall. It’s where a bouquet of flowers sits all summer, and I think of her every time I place a new one there or sit at my kitchen table and watch the farmers planting the fields. The second year they came, she planted some of her grandmother’s irises in our front yard. They are blooming today in the rain. I love that my yard – which will one day be her children’s and grandchildren’s yard -- has flowers in it from her mother and grandmother.

Georganne’s parents lived well into their 90s, and given her history of healthy living, we were all presuming she’d outlast us all. Cancer cut that short, and took her too soon and there’s a yawning ache in our family. But Philip and I got to see her for a couple of days this past week, and we were blessed to just sit with her, hear her stories, listen to her reflect on her life, and tell her how much we loved her. So, I sit here near her window, watching the rainfall on her irises, knowing that she will always be close by. I'll plant her another patch of irises, this time in her name.