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We all knew that she had been ill and that she was in the hospital at the time of her death, but still we were caught off guard by the loss. Suddenly she was gone.
The huge turnout at her memorial service in Villa Ridge and the honor of the Chamber of Commerce naming her Citizen of the Year were both lovely. But I wanted to add my voice to the accolades of her life in Pacific and what knowing her meant to me.
The best physical description of her is that she was tiny. She dressed like a country and western singer, complete with miniskirts and cowboy boots, and she had the best hair color I'd seen since I moved here from California - where everybody had that California blond color. One of her closest friends Morgy Coleman gave her that color. She had a standing appointment every four weeks. She also had a great haircut. Sometimes she topped it off with a cowboy hat.
Here's the thing about Michelle. She surrounded herself with color. She loved flowers, big, bold, colorful arrangements. She was a sap for jewelry, colorful pieces with things that dangled and jangled. Her house was a refuge of painted china plates and teapots, some that she painted herself and some she collected just because they were beautiful.
Her walls were - and are - a mini art gallery of paintings, bas reliefs and metal sculpture. At Christmas, she put up five Christmas trees in her small living and dining room. Each one had enough lights and ornaments for 10 trees. I'm not exaggerating.
She got me wearing jewelry again. I had ignored my jewelry for I don't know how long, going so far as to give some to my granddaughters to avoid any disputes about it after I'm gone. Anyway, it didn't exactly go with my growing collection of khaki.
Michelle had a tiny mannequin with gold arms on her dresser that she hung dangling jewelry on. I was fascinated with it and when I saw one at Marshalls I bought it for my bathroom counter, where it became a clutter of earrings and necklaces. I would catch myself grabbing a necklace before walking out the door, especially if going to see her, but sometimes just because I thought of her.
The house that I moved into in Pacific - Ches Summer's house - was pale pink, almost white, all the way through. Michelle thought I needed some color. I now have two red walls, a gold dining room, bright yellow and white TV room fashioned from an extra bedroom and an antique green living room that shows off the large flower arrangement she made for me long before the repainting began.
To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what to do with the oversized pot of gold and burgundy colored flowers when she first gave it to me. I kept moving it from the dining room chest to the mantel to the top of a bookcase. Michelle never commented when it showed up in a different place.
To me, the thing seemed overstated for the pale pink walls. She must have thought so too because suddenly, Dee Walton, her mate of recent years and the man she called her special friend, was changing the look of the place. He's a genius with a paintbrush
I had a set of dishes - 12 of everything with bright yellow and orange flowers and butterflies - that had been boxed away for years. I've always liked to eat on white plates so I just left the flowered plates in boxes. But when Dee painted the inside of a built-in wall cabinet in the dining room white and the doors black I put the yellow and orange dishes in there.
"They look beautiful," Michelle said. And she was right, they do. But I wouldn't have gotten them out of the box without her influence.
At her memorial service when the minister asked whether anyone wanted to stand and say something about her, I wanted to speak, but my story seemed too personal and I lost my nerve. Her brother and sister-in-law, Mike and Janie Parisi, who my husband Bob and I have spent some time with, were in front of me. They didn't speak, so I kept still. What I had wanted to tell the other mourners about was a tiny little Christmas project that Michelle had done for my family.
The year my grandson Jason was 13 the family lived with me in Robertsville and Jason attended Lonedell School. For an art project, he cut the outline of a sleigh and two reindeer from thin plywood and mounted them on a board. Then he cut about 25 1-inch square pieces of wood for gifts on which he painted ribbon ties. The cutting and the painting were a little rough around the edges, but he was only 13 and he did the whole thing himself. He got an A from the teacher and we set it under the Christmas tree that year.
He left it when they went back to California so I became the custodian of it. Most years I put it under my tree. When I packed it for the move to Pacific, I thought of asking Michelle to help me paint it like a Russian troika, in deep reds and blacks trimmed in gold. We were going to do it in 2007, but she was sick that entire November and December so we postponed it. But last year she said she was up to the project.
We sat in a corner of her basement workshop, at a glass table, and she walked me through the steps to create the deep mahogany colored red finish. She handpainted the gold scrolls on the side and rear panel of the sleigh. She showed me where to paint black and where to paint gold. She took the brush and carefully went over the gold outline of the sleigh then sprayed the whole thing with varnish to make it shine. Then together we painted each of the small wood gifts that went in the sleigh.
The ones Michelle did had miniature Christmas paper designs. She tied gold string on each box and used a glue gun to hold it in place. After I painted the deer, she went over them with a fine brush to give the appearance of hair.
I have to tell you . . . the outcome was breathtaking. She and Dee helped box it up in a way that the carved antlers couldn't get broken and I shipped it to Jason and his new wife for Christmas.
Jason is 32 now. He just re-enlisted in the Marine Corps. He previously served eight years then took time out to get his master's degree in math. But he likes military life so he's back in. And, of course, he'll be an officer now. When he telephoned Christmas morning to thank me for the sleigh we had the best conversation we had ever had.
"I didn't exactly remember it at first," he said. "I kept looking at it thinking, 'This is really something,' then I did remember carving it. It was just amazing that you kept it. And I didn't know that you could paint like this."
He said he would always treasure it and put in under his Christmas tree every year wherever he lived.
Some people remembered Michelle for the bluegrass festivals she organized and the weekly music and meals she arranged that raised money for the senior center, but I have a picture of her and Dee standing next to an antique Ford painted fire engine red with a shiny chrome grill that is just fixed in my mind.
It was Cruise Night 2007 and they presented a sponsor's trophy to the owner. That was her pick of a car, red as all get-out. Dee is wearing his white summer cowboy hat - he wears a black one in winter - and Michelle is in a yellow denim miniskirt and yellow top with three strands of orange, pink and turquoise beads dangling from her neck. I have that same necklace. Some ladies had been selling jewelry at one of the booths. I picked it up and said, "Boy, that's pretty." Later that evening, she was wearing the necklace and when I touched it, she handed one to me.
I didn't want to accept it and I didn't think I'd ever wear it, but the absolute joy she exhibited at giving it to me got the better of me so I took it. As it turned out I did wear it. Like my red walls and yellow flowered plates and the red car in my favorite picture of her the necklace has its place in the grand scheme of things.
She was a splash of color in an otherwise khaki world.
