I was looking back at past emails from Kit and really liked this one from last fall, when I had written that I wanted to come and visit:
Dear Lynne,
You would have loved the kegger that we had for my B.D. And, I love you dearly and how wise we are to know that the only thing in this life that makes us rich is beloved friendships.
I'll look at my calendar and get back to you. Cass Owens is going to visit on Friday! Isn't that amazing.
more later,
kit
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Tubas, plastic ants and miniature donkeys...
I remember the first time I met Kit Webster (Mary). I had only been dating her brother Patrick a short time. She came up to Denver from Colorado Springs with her then two year old daughter Emily to hear an outdoor Tuba concert of Christmas carols in Larimer Square. That sense of fun and joie de vive followed Kit wherever she went or whatever she did. When Pat and I married in 1989 Kit playfully 'decorated' our wedding cake with realistic black plastic ants.
I remember introducing Kit to a friend in Castle Rock who has a pair of miniature donkeys. Kit though they would be perfect for the Palm Sunday service at church to engage the children and make the service more lively. I though at the time she must have the most unique contacts in her Rolodex at work (from places to order live butterflies to the donkey lady). Her work at Grace Church seemed a perfect expression of who she was. The colorful artwork that filled the hallways at Grace came from her inspired Sunday school students and was a joy to see.
If we can take a lesson from Kit, it is to find the joy in the everyday and then share it.
We miss you Mary Webster.
Tam O'Neill
I remember introducing Kit to a friend in Castle Rock who has a pair of miniature donkeys. Kit though they would be perfect for the Palm Sunday service at church to engage the children and make the service more lively. I though at the time she must have the most unique contacts in her Rolodex at work (from places to order live butterflies to the donkey lady). Her work at Grace Church seemed a perfect expression of who she was. The colorful artwork that filled the hallways at Grace came from her inspired Sunday school students and was a joy to see.
If we can take a lesson from Kit, it is to find the joy in the everyday and then share it.
We miss you Mary Webster.
Tam O'Neill
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Lynne's column about Mary
Two really funny people died recently. Art Buchwald was one. As much as I liked his witty political and social satire, I was really moved by his decision, along with friends Mike Wallace and William Styron, to be public about each of their battles with depression.
The ability to share one’s biggest problems, most threatening experiences, is a gift to others.
Which makes me think of the other funny person – Mary Catherine Webster -- my friend since our freshman days at Forest Quad in 1972. An Irish wit and storyteller, she attracted friends like a magnet.
We took several Religious Studies classes together during our years at IU, each on a quest to find our spiritual home. Eventually, she changed from her childhood Catholicism to Episcopalianism. I converted to Judaism. We often spoke of what a favorite religion professor, Anne Carr, had said: that the kind of questions you’re asking are more important than the answers you think you’ve found at any given time.
I think our friendship endured because we were always asking the same kinds of questions. And, if we had talked a week ago or a month ago, our conversations never failed to illuminate the important things -- where we were going, what we had learned, our goals, our hopes -- sometimes, our weaknesses. And always with laughter.
When I visited Mary last fall, I spent Sunday morning at Grace Church in Colorado Springs, watching her as she worked with teachers and students in her job as Director of Religious Education there. (We joked about how well she had put that degree in Religious Studies to use!)
In January, as she began a workshop for her Sunday School teachers, she prayed: “Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory” before she became too short of breath to continue. She did not survive a massive heart attack that day.
For Mary, interest in politics and thoughtfulness about material goods and charitable giving was a natural extension of her spiritual life. To observe her 50th birthday a couple of years ago, she wrote a letter to women friends asking them to contribute to charity instead of a gift; and began a course of study which would have resulted in her becoming a lay deacon of the Episcopal Church, a role in which ministering individually to people plays a big part.
How does thinking of Mary Catherine Webster connect to Art Buchwald, besides their ability to make life more colorful by the stories they told?
During our sophomore year in college, I was very, very depressed – enough to skip a couple weeks of class, weeping, feeling sorry for myself, wrapped in my wounded pride.
Mary was the friend who called and said “I love you and I want to be friends forever. But if you don’t call today and get yourself into some counseling, our friendship is over.”
I got the counseling. It changed my thinking. It gave me the tools to recognize, later in life, when I again needed some help.
Just as Art Buchwald called Mike Wallace every night when Wallace was on the road, helping him to make it through his depression, Mary was the one who gave me the push to make it through mine.
She would have made a great deacon.
Lynne Foster Shifriss is assistant to the editor of The Herald-Times.
Note: A favorite book of mine is “Seems Like Yesterday,” by Ann McGarry Buchwald, about their romance and lives together in Paris in the ’50s. You can find used copies on Amazon.
The ability to share one’s biggest problems, most threatening experiences, is a gift to others.
Which makes me think of the other funny person – Mary Catherine Webster -- my friend since our freshman days at Forest Quad in 1972. An Irish wit and storyteller, she attracted friends like a magnet.
We took several Religious Studies classes together during our years at IU, each on a quest to find our spiritual home. Eventually, she changed from her childhood Catholicism to Episcopalianism. I converted to Judaism. We often spoke of what a favorite religion professor, Anne Carr, had said: that the kind of questions you’re asking are more important than the answers you think you’ve found at any given time.
I think our friendship endured because we were always asking the same kinds of questions. And, if we had talked a week ago or a month ago, our conversations never failed to illuminate the important things -- where we were going, what we had learned, our goals, our hopes -- sometimes, our weaknesses. And always with laughter.
When I visited Mary last fall, I spent Sunday morning at Grace Church in Colorado Springs, watching her as she worked with teachers and students in her job as Director of Religious Education there. (We joked about how well she had put that degree in Religious Studies to use!)
In January, as she began a workshop for her Sunday School teachers, she prayed: “Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory” before she became too short of breath to continue. She did not survive a massive heart attack that day.
For Mary, interest in politics and thoughtfulness about material goods and charitable giving was a natural extension of her spiritual life. To observe her 50th birthday a couple of years ago, she wrote a letter to women friends asking them to contribute to charity instead of a gift; and began a course of study which would have resulted in her becoming a lay deacon of the Episcopal Church, a role in which ministering individually to people plays a big part.
How does thinking of Mary Catherine Webster connect to Art Buchwald, besides their ability to make life more colorful by the stories they told?
During our sophomore year in college, I was very, very depressed – enough to skip a couple weeks of class, weeping, feeling sorry for myself, wrapped in my wounded pride.
Mary was the friend who called and said “I love you and I want to be friends forever. But if you don’t call today and get yourself into some counseling, our friendship is over.”
I got the counseling. It changed my thinking. It gave me the tools to recognize, later in life, when I again needed some help.
Just as Art Buchwald called Mike Wallace every night when Wallace was on the road, helping him to make it through his depression, Mary was the one who gave me the push to make it through mine.
She would have made a great deacon.
Lynne Foster Shifriss is assistant to the editor of The Herald-Times.
Note: A favorite book of mine is “Seems Like Yesterday,” by Ann McGarry Buchwald, about their romance and lives together in Paris in the ’50s. You can find used copies on Amazon.
Thinking about you, Kit
Dear Kito,
I'm just thinking of you so much today. I was in California last week, with my friend Sue and her daughter Talia, and our daughter Abby. Amalia was with us a lot of the time, too. In the early mornings, I would get up and work on my laptop on a column I'm writing about you. It's for the religion page, so I have to cut it to 400 words, and it's about 550 now. I'm going to post the long version on this site later. I find myself talking to you all the time, or thinking "I'll send her that article!" It has been one month today since your death, and I still can't really believe that you are gone. I guess that, to me, you will never really be gone. You will always be in my head and my heart.
Love you, dearie,
Lynne
I'm just thinking of you so much today. I was in California last week, with my friend Sue and her daughter Talia, and our daughter Abby. Amalia was with us a lot of the time, too. In the early mornings, I would get up and work on my laptop on a column I'm writing about you. It's for the religion page, so I have to cut it to 400 words, and it's about 550 now. I'm going to post the long version on this site later. I find myself talking to you all the time, or thinking "I'll send her that article!" It has been one month today since your death, and I still can't really believe that you are gone. I guess that, to me, you will never really be gone. You will always be in my head and my heart.
Love you, dearie,
Lynne
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