[Read today at V.'s funeral, after other remembrances by H. and one of her French relatives.]
With Vanessa, the sheer range of enjoyable things to remember about her is a bit daunting – so much hard work, so much fun – writing, shopping, dancing – talking with people from all over the world.
The endless drive she showed in her research, her teaching, her projects: she was so involved, so energetic. She seemed always to be making passionately, and politically, committed articles, talks, symposia, concerts – she was always in the midst of things, always doing so much with so many people who could hardly keep up with her. I was always about six months behind her on the book we were co-editing, but she would push me back to work without rancor, gently but quite persistently nagging until I got back on track. She was instantly kind when we lost the thread – Ian talks about how she would sit next to him, rest her head on his shoulder, and say, “you okay, sweetie?”.
She seemed to know simply everyone: she wasn’t only part of every network –across the university, and across several disciplines, continents and time zones – at times it seemed as though she was the network, she was what held us all together, flashing around the room, meeting everyone, and introducing them all to each other. She recently finished an Internet center for her students that was so successful and so obviously beyond the call of duty that even the University administration was impressed. I honestly don’t know how we’ll stay in contact without her – the mass of e-mails from North and South America, Australia, the Caribbean, and across Europe, telling us how much fun they’d had meeting her at one conference or another, how lively and interested she was in such different things. Her blog has a photograph of her hang-gliding in Rio, when she was there for a conference two years ago – and that, as her mother-in-law pointed out, says it all.
One of the Latin Americans gave her a fine compliment, especially from a Southerner to a Northerner – that “she could not only talk the talk, but also dance the dance.”
Because she could dance, and she did have fun: she enjoyed a wide variety of things, most especially luxuries – chocolates, liqueurs and good wines, rich foods, bath oils and lotions – she taught me how to get through northern winters, strewing candles and essential oils in her wake. The sheer indulgence of shopping with her, or the movies and restaurants we went to in groups she pulled together with an organized barrage of e-mails; or just wandering among shops where she knew just where she wanted to go, and in what order. Picnics in the tiny back yard, where she and David would produce a variety of cocktails for a day-long marathon of fantasy or vampire movies, and you’d realize you should have eaten less of the first courses because there were always more. She bought wonderful things for friends, too – the impressive gamut of professionally organized Christmas presents; as Anne sadly pointed out, who will buy such birthday presents now?
And her clothes: transforming her thinness by making it an excuse to wrap beautiful fabrics in layers and scarves around herself like a model, using her own palette of oranges, pinks and browns, which she sometimes set aside for a dazzling creation in white silk embroidered in blue: a flash of southern France, of the Caribbean islands, brought to Newcastle, and Middlesbrough.
Lastly, an aspect of Vanessa that was remarkable, and one that, if you’ll allow me, I know something about: facing her own health, her mortality, without flinching. Of the people I’ve known for the past twenty-five years, including many dealing with terrible illness, Vanessa was among the most clear-headed of them all. She handled hospitals, surgery, doctors, and an obscure condition nobody understood with a firm hand, not allowing them to get to her, to stop her from living her life. It seemed as though illness and death were just – a thing: a difficult thing, an annoying thing, but not an important one – less important than her life, than the people she loved, than her work – far less important, in fact, than this lively, demanding, strong, affectionate jewel of a woman.
When we lose someone who matters, we try to keep a little bit of them with us, to keep us going, to remind us of what they gave us. The little bit of Vanessa I’ll carry around will tell me, when things get rough, to keep my head up; to get some work done; and, above all, to enjoy the day, and all that it gives us.
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