Just a few hours ago, I got back from my up-and-back drive to Richmond to bid farewell to Marlo. She is someone that could most accurately be described as a family friend, but she was so much more.
A few blog posts have addressed my childhood and being raised in the filipino community in Richmond in the 70's and 80's, including this one as a tribute to my friend and "sister" A. That post also gives you a small taste of what it was like to grow up with this "family."
It can be hard, even for ProMo, to understand the ties that I have with my Richmond filipino family, especially since I don't go home often. In fact since my parents moved away in 2003, I've only been back a handful of times at best. And since I graduated from high school in the early 90's, there are a bunch of families who have moved in, kids who have grown up, and bonds that appear stronger...and very well may be. But all it takes for me is to go back to the church I grew up in and see all my "aunties" to feel like that little awkward kid with the coke bottle glasses surrounded by love, laughter and lots and lots of food.
Marlo was my girl XT's little sister. XT, Slim and I were (affectionately?) referred to as the "3 musketeers" by our moms and the other aunties. Slim was a year older than me and I was a year older than XT, and our personalities complimented each other in such a crazy way that we could collectively cause our mothers to shake their heads and whisper tagalog phrases to each other that usually translated to something like, "What are we going to do with these crazy girls?" I mean, they actually probably translated to something much less benign, but let's go with that...
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| The most recent pic of the 3 musketeers. Slim (right) has known me since the day I was born and we've both known XT since she was born. |
Anyway, I think it's no secret to anyone who knows me that I'm a little bossy. [Actually, this was news to me the first time I heard it as an adult, but apparently it's true.]
I blame my sister. She's 6 years older than me and she bossed me around. I unfortunately had no little sister to boss around so instead I took it out on my younger friends, including (as she will freely tell you) XT. And luckily for me, Slim and XT had little sisters that they LOVED bossing around, so I happily joined in. Slim's sister didn't really take it too well, and Slim was very sporadic with her bossing (at least around me) so that left XT's sister to receive the brunt of our collective bossing. But she was great about it.
The evil genius part of this is that XT is hilarious and creative and I just had pent-up bossiness to unleash so between the two of us, poor Marlo was tormented. My particular favorite story was one time when Marlo was having a slumber party with her friends and they decided to watch horror movies: specifically, Nightmare on Elm Street. So XT, Slim and I decided to tape Q-tips to Slim's fingers, put "Pizazz," which was - yes - red tinted hair mousse [what? it was the 80's] all over her arm and hand, and pretend that she had turned into Freddy Kruger.
It didn't end there. While they were happily giggling, whispering and being little girls in Marlo's room, we took a Cabbage Patch Kid, hung it lynch-style from the door knob (while the door was closed) and pinned a sign to its shirt that said "You're next!" We then hid and flung the door open so that all they saw was a Cabbage Patch Kid dangling from the door knob with a crazy ransom-style sign pinned to it.
I said we were creative, I never said we were nice.
Anyway, the point of all that is that Marlo just took it. She was a sweet, honest soul. A middle child in a family full of big personalities. And because XT and I were so close, a lot of the time she was the little sister that I never had...
She faced chronic sickness for much of her life but, as cliched as it sounds, she truly lived life to the fullest and added so much to so many people's lives. And because the loss was so sudden and unexpected, I was once again reminded to tell my loved ones how much they mean to me, never take anyone for granted, and try to be the best friend that I can be.
No regrets, just love.
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