Elizabeth Olmstead Mackenzie
June 4, 1964 – July 29, 2004

 betsy

Memorial Service August 4, 2004
Head of Christiana Presbyterian Church
Newark, DE

Farewell remarks:

Remarks by Julianna Baggott:

Betsy Mackenzie lived brilliantly—with more brilliance and I mean incandescent lovingness—than anyone I’ve ever known.  She listened to music and heard it with more sweetness with more ache with more devotion; she read with more compassion and more empathy; she joked with more intelligence and wit and self-deprecation; she hostessed, she took us in, with more generosity—wouldn’t she just give us anything?—and with more graciousness than anyone I’ve ever known.  

She loved us when we were good.  She loved us when we were less than good.  She loved us even when we were awkward, even when we didn’t quite know how to show her how much we loved her.  

She was tough and she fought valiantly every day for a very long time because of her love for us—and mainly her awe-inspiring love for her children—and that love remains.

She didn’t judge us.  She always forgave us.  She handed her joy over to us fistful after fistful, and she shielded us from her deepest sadness.  

We want more time.  We want more of her brilliance, more of her listening, more of her compassion.  We want more of her generosity.  We want more of her wit.  We want more of her love.  We want more of her forgiveness.  

But we forgive her because we know that her love is still here and she still takes us in—despite our failings maybe sometimes even because of them.  We forgive her because she would have forgiven us (hasn’t she already?) and because as God well knows, she has given us all so very very much already.

I can speak for myself.  She gave me more than my share and for my time with her, each moment, I am thankful.


Remarks by Robin Elliott:

The older I get, the more I accept that I will not understand the mysteries that life presents to me.  I have no idea why God decided to have my path cross with John’s and Betsy’s that first day we met at Girls’ Inc.  Their daughter Sarah and my son James were in the same class.  I suspect God knew that I needed a friend, and boy, what a friend he provided. Betsy helped me through some very tough times throughout the years of our friendship.  She brought me into the Friday night pizza party on a regular basis when I needed support.  I don’t know why our time together was only 13 years, and not the 60 plus we planned on, but what I choose to focus on now is the thankfulness I have for the wonderful years we shared.  Many of you here know the special person that Betsy was.  I can’t begin to capture all the memories.  Betsy was the kind of person who would do anything for anyone else but would rarely ask for anything herself.  She was there for me, she listened to whatever I needed to say.  She was brilliant, especially with her one-liners, and was always patient with me when it took too long for me to “get it.”  She encouraged me to expand my vocabulary by praising me when I used a 50 cent word; she was an avid reader.  

Betsy’s family came first.  She spoke so fondly of her family telling me many memories from her childhood with Karen and Karel.  She recalled times on Keuka Lake and life in Europe.  She was so proud of her father and thankful for her mother and their unconditional love.  Betsy truly lit up when she would talk about her girls.  They were clearly the center of her world.  She was so proud of Sarah’s drawing ability and the witty young woman that she has become.  Katie’s insights and sense of humor were the subject of many conversations. Of course Betsy was pleased with both girls’ academic achievements, but she loved to play Trading Spaces with the girls and have fun even if it meant having to go to the fabric store!  Betsy was a wonderful, warm stepmother to Sam and Becky too, quickly incorporating them into her family.  She bragged about their accomplishments and shared their concerns, she loved them.

My life has changed for the better for knowing Betsy.  I will always remember her bright smile and how good she made me feel.  She had a way of making you feel as though she was your biggest fan.  She had me believing I was a marathon runner, yet in reality she was the one who could run a marathon with no training.  She taught me to be a good friend, to be there when you’re needed, to run when you don’t want to, and simply to appreciate flowers.  I will miss the runs, the walks, the talks, the computer guidance, the lunches, the emails and everything I shared with Betsy.  I find comfort in the following scripture so I share Jesus’ words for you now from Matthew 11:28-30  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”           


Remarks by Karen Olmstead Busek:

My sister Betsy was an extraordinary person.  She was smart, fun, and fun-loving.  If you didn’t know Betsy or know her well, I must tell you that she was the kind of person with whom you could literally shriek with laughter.  She reveled in the ridiculous.  Even the most mundane activity could be fun with Betsy.

For example, once we were standing in line at a 7/11 and she plucked a very large candy bar off the display stand.  She carefully read the back of the bar and announced that ‘the whole thing wasn’t as many calories as you’d think.’  She very seriously held the candy bar as we moved ahead in line and others behind her picked them up, consulted the nutritional information, and waited in line with their candy bars.  I stood, face forward, tears of laughter streaming down my face, waiting to see how this would all play out.  Of course, by the time we got to the cash register, I could hardly breathe.  Betsy discreetly left her ½ lb. candy bar on a magazine rack and off we went, howling to our car, barely able to navigate the parking lot.

I know Betsy is here with us today, or at least she was at the Mackenzie house this morning.  I know this because as we carried the flowers from the house to bring to the church, Sam commented that I had pollen all over my face.  I went to the bathroom and saw that, sure enough, I was covered in bright yellow pollen.  I tried to wash it off, but only made myself look jaundiced.  I know Betsy was there laughing, this was exactly the kind of absurd situation she found hysterical.

So, Betsy was smart, fun, and fun-loving, but more than anything else, she was generous – incredibly generous, both in terms of material things and the love and support that she gave to others.  I have talked to so many of you over these last few days who have said that Betsy was always there for you as she was for me.  For me, the greatest irony of Betsy’s death is that I can’t call her to sort through my feelings about this, as I always do when I have a problem.

Because of her generous heart and loving nature, it is very hard to understand how she could have left us.   Perhaps the best way to get beyond that confusion is not to focus on July 29th as some inevitable ending to her story, but to instead, focus on what we know about Betsy and how she lived her life.

I do know that she loved Katie and Sarah more than anything; that she was never happier than when she and John courted and married; that she adored Becky and Sam; that she was the best sister Karel and I could have; that her friends were as devoted to her as she was to them; and that she truly and deeply loved our parents.

Even though you are hurting today, I ask that you remember Betsy as I know her – as someone who loved to make you happy and one who would never hurt another.


Remarks by John Mackenzie:

Thank you all for coming.  Most of you have never been here before, but this has been my faith community for 15 years.  Betsy and I were married here almost 14 years ago.  It is disorienting to see people from so many times and places in my past, and from the different spheres of my life in Newark, all gathered here in the same place today.  

The 14 years when I was married to Betsy were the happiest years of my life.  I met her in 1985, and we were friends and department colleagues for a long time before I fully appreciated what made her so special and fell in love with her.  The things I most admired in her were her big brave passionate heart, and her fierce independent streak.  She could be entirely self-sufficient, which was a strength and a weakness too.  

She was a computer nerd with an amazing throwing arm.  A meditative woman who really liked her fast car.  She’s the one who got me running again after I turned 40, encouraged me through my first big race, the Marine Corps Marathon, then ran Marine Corps a couple of years later as her own first marathon, and of course she beat my time.  She set up one of the earliest experimental web servers in the world for the College of Agriculture, predating the creation of www.udel.edu by a couple of years.  She created a virtual botanic garden online that won a lot of awards.  

About seven years ago Betsy gradually fell into a depression.  I thought I understood depression, but I was slow to appreciate how much it affected her.  I had gone through a three-year period of depression myself some years earlier following the death of my first son, which happened exactly 23 years ago today, on August 4th, 1981.  I am a Christian today, and we are holding a Christian ceremony of remembrance today, because one night 20 years ago, in the depth of my despair, God spoke to me, saying “I lost my son too,” and that consolation is what healed me.  

But there are all kinds of depression, and my story wasn’t really relevant to Betsy’s situation.  Depression is terribly isolating.  I have read a lot about it, trying to understand it better and find a way to help Betsy deal with it.  Most of the self-help stuff was pretty useless.  William Styron does the best job of anybody in describing the feeling that is essentially indescribable, but his personal story held no promise for Betsy.  Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy techniques had helped me some, but they weren’t effective for her.  She started on a sequence of SSRI’s during the “Prozac Nation” buzz, and I was relieved to see the same old Betsy, a little happier for a while.  

But over time things got harder for her, and she fought hard.  Our two daughters were her main anchors in life.  She was suicidal for the last four years, and if Sarah and Katie hadn’t been here she would have been long gone by now.  She gave too much of herself to a suicidal friend a few years ago, looking for answers and relief for herself.  We kept trying to talk through it, and we had some good counseling.  She fought her depression with intensity, and she struggled to maintain friendships, aware that her intensity put off some friends.  

We are rational creatures, and it is difficult to accept things that cannot be understood.  Andrew Solomon tries to define depression like this:

“Depression is the flaw in love.  To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair….It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself.  Love, though it is no protection against depression, is what cushions the mind and protects it from itself….In good spirits, some love themselves and some love others and some love work and some love God.  Any of these can furnish that vital sense of purpose that is the opposite of depression.  Love forsakes us from time to time, and we forsake love.  In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaningless of life itself, appears to be self-evident.  The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance.”

So depression is the mechanism of the despair we feel at the loss of love, accidentally triggered when we are surrounded by love.  This condition cannot be fully understood, neither by those of us who watch loved ones suffer from it, nor by those who suffer.  In the last two years I learned to relax a little, and stopped demanding that she switch medications, cut out the alcohol, exercise more, eat better, see other therapists.  It let me accept her the way she was instead of trying to make her better.  Sometimes that is all we can do for each other.  

The outpouring of love my family and I have received in the last few days is more than my heart can stand, and my thanks are so inadequate.  We are drowning in a river of love.  Every beat of our hearts is a call from God to love.  We breathe in God and walk in the light of his love, if we will only recognize it.