Erin Gainey

Memorial services will be held at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday, July 23, 2008 in First and Calvary Presbyterian Church 820 E. Cherry, Springfield, Missouri. A reception will follow in the gathering area following the memorial service.

We didn't really know Erin Gainey. We're not sure anyone can claim to know what she lived with in her mind, what she had created as coping skill, or how she managed to know so much about some subjects and and absolutely nothing useful about others.

Erin was diagnosed with learning disabilities at a young age. We've wondered had she arrived on the planet in the last 10 years if she would have been labeled as Asperger or Autistic. No matter, it was a label, and it served as a startng place for those of us who needed to deal with her in the family at school, work, and social settings. We knew she was odd. We knew she could tolerate only so much noise, chaos, invasion of privacy and certainly body contact. Touching was okay as long as she wasn't smothered by a hug.

We learned from Erin what it was to be patient to wait on her, to look out for her, and give her the space she required. We learned how opinionated she could be about women, gay rights, about politics, sex, and music. She had strong negative feelings toward fundamentalism, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, and even her own family from time-to-time. Her way of venting generally involved writing letters of such vehemently charged and singularly directed accusations that the family came to call them "nasty letters." They were NOT funny! They were as sincere as Erin was capable of expressing. It took some training and practice to read her rhythmic up and down printed letters, but we were dutifully admonished for all our faults and shortcomings in unabashed sincerity. Erin was able to express the finest turns of emotion in her "nasty letters."

Erin loved cats. She loved them! She was also allergic to them. Her sweet talk to a cat was "You're just a meanie" and "What you need is a juicy rat." She would try so hard not to touch the cats in her relatives homes, but nothing stopped her from talking to them, following them around the house, and blowing her nose from the allergy.

Food was one simple pleasure Erin enjoyed. She knew all the eating out places in Springfield and enjoyed getting to eat out. She ate with gusto and as long as the soda was being refilled, she chugged it down. Never caring for alcohol, Erin would, on occasion, have a 1/2 glass of wine.

We learned from Erin that there is no need to be sociable if you didn't feel like it. She would leave the noise of large family gatherings and occupy herself in photo albums, libraries, or just nosing through our homes to see what we had. It makes us smile when we think of how all our boxed photos were in total disarray after Erin perused the pictures, set aside the ones of herself and looked at them.

It also makes us smile to remember how Erin enjoyed being in pictures so much that she took pictures of herself at weddings and other gatherings. No matter what our mental capacities are, or how our mind works, we like to be recognized, to be documented as part of the human race.

Gossip, politics, movies, Star Trek, the Middle Ages, music, English history; Erin killed us all in trivia pursuit games. She knew these subjects and many others with absolute conviction. She knew the English kings by heart, their wives and children. She enjoyed romance novels set in the Middle Ages. So much information was stored in her mind! Stuart, her brother, used to say it was like everyone else had warehouses of facts, with rooms full of related information; but Erin had a pond with all kinds of facts floating on the surface, right there to pull out of the water. If she ever read something, she memorized it on the surface of her pond.

Organization was always a difficult problem for Erin, so she literally wrote: "Note to Self:" and what to do. It was how she managed her job, her finances, and other "normal" activities. But when it came to lipstick, blush, perfume, pens, soap, and pencils, there was no limit to her obsessions. Erin's pencil and pen collection kept my art room supplied for four years! The soaps and shampoos were regularly relegated to gym classes and art rooms. No matter how many notes she might have in her view, she purchased toothbrushes and toothpastes with reckless abandon, as well. That, too, makes us smile. It was just SO Erin-ish to have stockpiles of these things when the annual Mother/Sister-in-law "spring cleaning" took place.

Erin loved music...classical music, rock and roll music, and all sorts of New Age sounds. Her dancing and singing were her free expressions, her joyful noise, her delight. She danced at weddings. She sang in the car, a passenger, lost in her own world, aware of so much, and equally oblivious of so much.

We learned from Erin... all of us. Limitations can be terribly frustrating. They can cause depression; they can cause you to not fit in, to say the awkward things, ask the wrong question, reveal secrets, and hide away from society. To KNOW of one's limitations, and to know they will always mark our lives, is a difficult path to be set upon. Erin knew it. She knew her body and her mind didn't function in such a way to give her the optimum human experience. Still, she fought to remain independent. She fought to live alone, learn the city bus routes, attend church, check books out of the library, travel on a plane alone to Arizona, get a driver's license, shop for groceries, go to garage sales, be married, divorced, and single. She attended college, worked jobs no one else wanted to do, and dreamed big dreams. Erin had limitations, but she also had a life.

Somewhere, someone has a new kidney, a new liver and pancreas. Erin's limitations are gone. Somewhere there is someone with new lamps, bookcases, chairs and kitchen supplies, as well as toiletries of all sorts. Erin's "collections" bless them. Somewhere, there are church folks with their own observations and reflections of their experience with Erin. There are people who remember her walking or riding the bus. She is not gone. She is still very much with us in our own minds as we recall how we dealt with her limitations. We are convicted and comforted at the same time...because all of us have limitations, and we, like Erin, have done the best we could do with the understanding we had, and therein lies our peace, our promise, and our persistance to carry on to the end. God knows Erin did.