Eulogy To My Sister

Amy Elizabeth Greenstadt Dec. 28th, 1966-February 9th, 2024

bad Poloroid shot of us, maybe 12 years old.

She had pure magic coming right out of her head. The deepest, lushest, thickest, most vibrant head of auburn hair you’ve ever seen. People would turn to look at her in the street when we were kids. Sometimes I’d get jealous and yell “it’s dyed!!!” I keep thinking about these ridiculous Easter dresses and bonnets her mother Inez insisted on, in flimsy pastel crepe, with lace and bows. The colors didn’t really work with her hair, and she was dressed up like a doll, like a specimen. As an adult she was prone to wild color combinations, oranges and purples and reds all mixed together. Amy didn’t care. She liked what she liked, and her aesthetic was important to her identity, not to look or seem cool. Her adult style was a rebellion against those pastel Easter dresses, and also the control of her mother. I cared so much more about fitting in, about having the right jeans, the right clothes to make me part of the crowd, doing things I perhaps didn’t want to do in order to belong. In that way we were different.

Amy slept long and deep. I’d bounce up in the morning ready to take on the city. If we weren’t having a sleepover I’d call on the rotary phone every half hour until she was finally awake at ten or eleven and demand she get ready for our day, always slightly dangerous roaming around NYC. I was the bossy one, brash and decisive. Amy was the spacey one, lingering over decisions and ideas. But boy did we click.

We were inseparable during the formative years of eight to fourteen. Then different magnet high schools separated us, friend groups and lives that didn’t quite match up. College days were much the same, in different states, doing our own things. I visited her only once at Wesleyan, she rarely came to me at Sarah Lawrence. We always knew where the other was but weren’t nearly as close. When Amy finally got a professor job at Portland State and I was permanently in Seattle with a husband and two small kids, we reconnected, and never separated again after that. As only children, we knew we needed each other, like sisters.

Halloween 1977?

We both ended up on the west coast, not be accident I think. Amy got her PhD from Berkeley in Renaissance literature—it took longer than it should have, no surprise. I graduated from UC Santa Cruz, moved to Seattle for grad school, decided impulsively not to go, and moved into the world of business, Starbucks in the early years, one of my few right time right place career moves. Ours was an odd friendship but one that many will recognize—you don’t see each other for a while, then get together and it is as if no time has passed. The catching up results in fits and giggles, uncontrollable laughter and sometimes tears.

My mother and Amy were very close, kindred artistic souls. My mother, and my father too understood and appreciated Amy in a way her own parents could not. She escaped to our apartment just around the corner from her, and she w ownould tell long drawn out stories, draw pictures, take baths, read books, and there was a relaxed comfort she found there, comfort in our brand of unconventionality.

one of Amy’s many comics

Other than a few random texts over the past two weeks, about the cancer trial she was going to take part in, our last time together was three hours on zoom, on her birthday, a year ahead tarot spread, and catching up. She was throwing herself a birthday party at a wine and cheese shop in Portland, and getting dressed up.

Today I will drive the three hours to Portland, to bury my friend, my sister. Amy leaned heavily into her father's Jewish side of the family later in her life, her husband Sean even converted recently. It will be a Jewish burial, and I will lean on the Judaism on my mother's side as I attend and the internment sit Shiva with Sean afterwards. The Jews bury quickly. This is all happening quickly, in real time I write it. There is so much more to say about her, about us, about where she is now.

My eldest son Ben told me he thinks that Bubbah (his name for his grandmother) and Amy are together now, which struck me as odd because we don’t usually speak as if there is somewhere you go after this life on Earth. But if let’s say this idea is real, they are wearing purple, with scarves around their necks and jewels on their fingers, and are drawing pictures and telling stories about me, yes me, and laughing their asses off.

Amy’s tarot card for January was the Five of Swaords, followed by the Ace of Swords in February. What happens to a year ahead spread when there is no ahead any more? I’m not sure but I do know this lady I loved so much really wanted to live and tried so hard to live and endured so much after the cancer came back ten years after the first bout, and did live vibrantly for almost six more years.

Today I will bury my sister. I will be changed then, someone else, who will have to remember my life all by myself, because she was a memory repository for us. I did what? She said that? What was that guy’s name? So much I don’t remember, but she did, her own version of course, but that was fine with me. I’d take her memories any day of the week.

Today I will bury my sister.

Last Birthday, Dec. 28th, 2023