Happy Birthday, Deb
Debra Kay Robinson Moss
September 20, 1954 - June 29, 2002
My world changed on Sept. 20, 1954. I was pretty young, nearly two years old, a single child living with my parents. Suddenly, there were two of us. (Suddenly for me, anyway. I'm pretty sure my parents were aware of what was in store, and I'm sure they explained it all to me.) I went to stay with my grandmother for a few days, and when my mom came home, she had a baby sister with her. I don't remember this, although I have a black and white photo of a very small me holding a fuzzy-headed baby in my lap with my grandmother hovering protectively just to my right. The caption, written in my mother's hand is "See baby sisser!" I had to get used to sharing my parents. And share them with this sister I did, for 47 years.
From early days, Debbie manifested the family art-gene, something that passed me by entirely. Our grandmother was an accomplished artist, as was our father's brother. Deb had the bug too, and she would draw and paint with a concentration that excluded the world. At an early age Mom signed her up for lessons at the Art Institute of Chicago, and on Saturday mornings she'd get on the Blue Island commuter line and head off downtown for her lessons. I think she was still in elementary school at the time, and that sounds like Mom; she encouraged us to be extremely independent from an early age (as her mother encouraged her; mom was left alone in the evening at the age of 5, expected to put herself to bed when her parents were out). She loved those art lessons. She and I and Sherry took dancing and acrobatics after school too; Deb was the least flexible little kid you ever saw. Gymnastics was not her forte, but she had art and she had music and that was good enough.
Deb and I had the usual sibling squabbles and arguments, but when she entered high school during my junior year she suddenly seemed much more a peer and less a pesky little sister. She entered the University of Illinois at Urbana two years behind me, met the love of her life there in her junior year and never came home again. She married at 22, she earned a master's degree in art history and her husband earned one in architecture, and and they moved to Colorado, because they liked to ski. (Hey, you have to choose a destination some way.) She and I overlapped at the University two years of undergrad and one of graduate school. We saw each other during these years, and that was good, because we didn't see much of each other after that. Distance (Colorado and New York are a long way from each other) and the poverty of young married life saw to that. She ran a licensed day care out of her home (you know all those jokes about government cheese? They're all true.) so that she could be home with her kids. Katy came along in 1982, then Kellen in 1984. When Kellen entered school, Deb started working in the school cafeteria. Her favorite t-shirt said "I have an MA in Art. Do you want fries with that?" Her career choice, though, wasn't because of the inutility of her education. It was her way of being a stay-at-home mom. It worked.
One of the cornerstones of her life was her faith. We were raised kind of laissez-faire Protestant, but Debbie started serious Bible study as an adult, and never let it go. She argued with the men in her church who were pretty sure that St. Paul was right when he said (to a particular congregation) that women should be silent in church, but who didn't seem to think that Jesus was serious when he said "If you have two coats, give one away." She believed in living a scripturally-correct life, but argued that either you did everything as the scriptures demand, or you admit that you don't, and decide the best way to live a godly life in interpreting the scriptures. She was a fundamentalist Christian with a brain; a dangerous woman.
Sometime about 2000 (this is fuzzy for me) she went for a consultation for a sleep disorder. The doctor examining her wondered about her lung function, took an x-ray, and kicked into motion the vast and dreadful machinery of oncology. Deb, the non-smoker, the exercise nut, the woman who used her Nordic Track for an hour a day while singing hymns and disco music at the top of her voice in the Colorado altitude, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Surgery first, to remove a lobe of one of her lungs. Remission, for a while, and then a resurgence of the beast in her brain and adrenal gland. Chemo gave her about another year and change, and the first months were good. The last ones not so good, but she had been aiming to attend halfdreams's high school graduation for several years, and she made it. We wheeled her into the auditorium, she waved and whistled "whoo hoo!" after halfdreams's valedictory speech, and came to the party afterwards. Two days later, we hospitalized her here in Rochester, and her husband came to take her home via air ambulance. She died a week later, surrounded by her family and friends.
My sister Debbie would have been 54 yesterday. She was a daughter, wife and mother, a musician who taught piano in her spare time, an artist, a Christian whose faith never faltered, right up to the last, and a sister to me and Sherry. She was not here to see her daughter marry (although she knew who she would marry, and approved), and she will not be here to see her first grandson who will be born in December. That is a cosmic crime.
But she was here, for 47 years, and that was a cosmic blessing. She touched a lot of lives in those years. I still miss her every day, but the memories now feel happy (most of them). We who loved her won't forget.