Obituary
I got word on Sunday, December 14, 2003, that Annemarie Schnibbe had died. She was 50, three months younger than me. She had Hepatitis C, and was waiting for a liver transplant. There were about a million other people on the liver transplant list her mother, Anne, had told me two months before, but she was hopeful about the prospects for her daughter, whom she fondly called Amber. When I checked, it turned out that there were about 18,500 on the waiting list for liver transplants, but what difference does it make? For Annemarie, it might well have been a billion. (Click here for information about organ and tissue donation.)
The next day, a lengthy paid obituary ran in the Journal News, Westchester's daily newspaper. I was glad to see that it did not leave you guessing as to the cause of death (“after a long illness”; “suddenly”). The lead graph stated Annemarie “died from complications of liver disease.” But liver disease was just the manifestation of the disease that really killed her. She had been clean and sober for 15 years. As I had e-mailed a friend the day before, she was “another Hastings victim of drugs that most people will never know about.”
Annemarie had devoted her sober life to helping others. Her obituary in the Journal News read in part:
On Monday afternoon, Deirdre suggested that I send a notice about her death to the Hastings Parents Network, an online discussion group we moderated. I scratched my head at first because Annemarie was not a member of the list, had not lived in Hastings in many years (even though the wake and funeral Mass were to be held here), and did not have any children. Eventually, I decided to do so because her family was well known in the community, and because I felt that Annemarie wanted her story known, although I wasn't about to turn my notice into a temperance screed. I wrote:
The characterization seemed a little presumptuous to me when the e-mail boomeranged back to my In box. Why? Well, for one thing, I was speaking in code: “liver disease” and “seen it all” suggested a seamy side without talking about Annemarie's recovery. But most of all because during my entire life, I'd talked to her for only a few hours. Still, although other people may have richer remembrances of Annemarie (and recovering drunks and addicts leave a trail of memories, both good and bad), I felt I'd captured her goodness in those words.