What I Said...

As I thought about today I knew we would hear about Carole’s professional life and the impact her passion, intelligence and tenacity left on the world of faculty development and family medicine. But I, along with the Second Generation of Camp Tummy and my fellow godbrothers and sisters, also wanted to give thanks for the role she had in raising us, inspiring us, and challenging us to be the best version of ourselves. I don’t speak for every one of Carole’s ‘kids’ but I do bring observations from a few of us. Those, that I spoke with often used the word ‘mother’ as they tried to bring words to the depth of our feelings…with that in mind, we are still a bit raw, numb as we try to figure a world without Carole…it is the smallest of things that makes us think of her…chocolate milk or the frozen food aisle in the grocery store, a watch or item of clothing she picked out for us, her email address and the many things we want to forward to her, her voice or smile just comes back to us…here is just some of what we are thankful for…

It seemed we spent a lot of time just watching her. From the time we were little, she was someone we just wanted to be near…to listen to as she led the charge on some topic we didn’t even understand, or watch her body language as she attentively listened to others. My sister has vivid memories of sitting in Carole and Dick’s bathroom near the sinks, watching Carole putting on lotion after lotion and make up…alternating between swigs of Diet Coke and spoonfuls of bran. My earliest memory is brushing her long, long hair…over and over she would sit as I combed and fittled and fussed. As I grew up I could have sat for hours and watched as she and the other women of Camp Tummy got ready in the mornings…they graciously let me enter the mysterious grown up realm of being a woman…as they slathered and curled, supported and pushed, laughed and cried…I listened and absorbed.

What I learned, what each of us learned, as we cuddled up near her or sat across the table, or joined in a board game was: how to be a friend…how to be gracious…that rules shouldn’t stop a good time…that asking ‘Why?’ is ok and should be expected….that assertiveness is not a bad thing when done kindly…how to take care of yourself and not apologize for it….to be genuinely nice, even in the face of pressure and disagreement...to speak your mind and to never get settled or comfortable with your knowledge basis---there is always more to learn and discover.

Of course we wanted to be near her because she granted us the one thing every kid craves growing up…to be treated as an adult. I don’t think it is any secret that babies (at least before she began to have Grand God Children and the third generation of CT came along) babies eluded Carole, in fact when Sarah and Josh and Chad and I each had our second child she was genuinely, deeply concerned for how we could possibly manage two young children, I was thankful for her concern but assured her that it had been done before…it was her way of taking care of us, reminding us to make ourselves a priority. No, she hit her real stride in influencing our lives when we hit 15 or so—from then on she and Dick generously took us in to live with them whether it be during a summer internship or the college years….she took us in and she took us on with gusto...

Perhaps more gusto than we might be ready for…many of us wrote or shared stories of being on the ‘hot seat’ when it came to Carole’s passion to mentor and direct—the learning opportunities weren’t just for her dogs. There are times as you wander through high school and college or graduate school or dating or in marriage…where you just don’t know what the heck is going on, whether you love this person or that person, whether you should go to school or take that job…at those times it wasn’t always comfortable to talk with Carole. If you didn’t have a game plan, and you were dumb enough to let her know that, you best get ready for questions, and a serious problem solving effort on her part. You weren’t leaving her presence without solution. Part of any solution was to get more education and if it were a love situation and education couldn’t fix it then she would…she was big on match making. So if we, her ‘kids,’ felt the gentle and loving pressure, just imagine how those men and women who would marry us felt. (Especially, since most of us found our loves without her help…) Sarah Weaver, married Josh Larson a member of Camp Tummy, and wrote to me saying that while she felt the questions from Carole they never felt like judgment—“they were just encouraging, supporting and hoping to expand where I was with myself and my challenges. After talking with her I felt like any challenges were soon history—I could indeed do what I needed to do….or I would have to answer to Carole at our next family gathering.”

She was there to support us in all our life events…baptisms, confirmations, graduations from HS, College and beyond, our weddings and she was even there to help two f us pick out our wedding dresses—offering her humor and much needed support to our mother and the moment.

But let’s face it, we wanted to be near her because she was cool. She was young at heart. She always had the latest technology or device, she loved star wars and star trek…(although I’m not sure that made her cool—one of her godsons did think I should translate this to klingon in honor of her), was up on the latest movies, read People magazine, she was the first one to jump on the jet ski, she loved to hang out at Disneyworld, she and Dick took fantastic trips where they scuba dived and rode horses and drove around in jeeps, she was always finding the latest and greatest exercise class or spa treatment, she had wonderful, unique dogs—our other siblings, she always had a fast sports car—that she let us drive, she had gorgeous clothes and shoes—that she let me wear, she loved to spent time at the pool—which she shared with everyone, she was extremely generous and she knew it was important to have guess jeans and betton sweaters in Junior High and the latest gadgets to play with…but she also knew that they were just things—people mattered more.

And no matter how close we were to Carole we knew we weren’t the most important one…that spot was reserved solely for Dick—her man. Most of us are in the early stages of marriages and relationships--while we may have watched and hoped to learn from their love affair, we are just beginning to really discover what a special and unique gift they gave each to each other. Theirs is a relationship we would all love to emulate for a day, let alone 40 years. In this world as it is, it is easy to lose sight of how loving we humans can really be, how gracious and devoted…Carole and Dick together modeled this for us and we can only hope in our relationships for a fraction of what they shared.

Carole will be remembered through classes and grants, books and awards, by colleagues and students that have been touched and changed by her influence in their lives…but she will always be present in our lives, and now in the lives of the third generation, those babies she celebrated and delighted in, referred to as her Gran-godkids…she will always be present perhaps not by DNA, but through love, she is woven into our very being...we will do our best to live up to and to live out that love—for it, we are forever changed and most thankful and we will celebrate her with our whole lives.