The last time I spoke with Anne was by phone on November 3rd, 2016 – those golden days between the Cubs long-awaited World Series win after a 108-year drought and Hillary Clinton’s historic loss in the Presidential race on November 8th. I never would have dreamed it would be our final conversation. When I think of the friendship Anne and I shared – multiple high-school jobs, a couple of apartments, travels through Europe, our first Christmas apart from our families, attending one another’s college graduations, driving back from Colorado, laughter, tears, loves, and heartbreak – I know I am blessed to have shared so much with her. In that special conversation, which lasted for two hours, we shared memories of our lives, love, friendship, and unforgettable times together. We asked each other’s forgiveness for past mistakes, forgave, laughed, and talked about how much we loved each other. Even after two hours, we felt it still wasn’t enough. There was never enough time with Anne. I could never experience enough of her, before she got sick or after. Time was too short with Anne, always.
My dad told me, “What you shared with Anne in life, many don't have in a lifetime of friendships.” But losing Anne remains, as her sister Jill said, “such a tough loss.” When trying to describe her emotional state her sister Ellen simply stated, “shattered beyond words”. I can only imagine the exponential greater loss that her sisters feel, as well as her mom Mary Lou and her dad Bob, and the many nieces and nephews who describe her as “one of the greatest influences in their lives.”
My first memories of Anne come in flashes. From our early years, I think of the dark, curly-haired girl, a year younger than me, who was hanging out with my friend Connie before the two of them headed off to the Glen Ayre Country Club to play tennis. I remember the moment I saw her standing – separate, quiet. I thought in that moment, “I want that girl to be my friend.” Something about Anne was always special. She glowed with a special flicker of sensitivity, spirituality, fragility, and so much soul.
Through Connie we became friends, a mini girl gang. I remember the three of us skating on the frozen surface of Lake Ellyn. Instead of typical heavy winter coats, we layered up with hockey jerseys, and swapped out the figure skates that most of the girls wore for speed skates. We would roam the pond during the hours after school, stealing the boys’ hats, playing Crack-the-Whip, and sharing hot chocolates in the boathouse. Once, Connie and Anne and I decided to form a chain, and skate down a frozen hill onto the ice with the smallest in front, which meant Anne first, then me, then Connie. On the way down, we all fell and landed in a heap. Anne got up sore, but not crying, ever the good sport, but she couldn’t move her arm. “Try to wiggle it,” I instructed, but the tears that sprang to her eyes told me something was wrong. Sure enough, she had broken her collarbone. The fact that I might have hurt her or even caused Anne greater pain by not helping her immediately haunted me. I baked her brownies and brought them to the Berry’s Tudor-style house. With her arm in a sling, Anne and the family’s huge English sheepdog, Sam, greeted me at the door. I told her I was so sorry. I have never forgotten that day. The last time we spoke I said, “Anne, I never meant to hurt you that day on the ice.” She laughed and responded “Oh, that was fine.” But the truth was that the thought of her ever being in pain was unbearable for me.
Yet pain was something that ruled her life for her last ten years. Anne didn’t complain often about her illness – in her words, she tried to be “zen” about it – but sometimes her medical condition, which included four different autoimmune diseases – really pissed her off. It robbed her of many of the joys in her life – travel, music, companionship, her sense of touch, taste, and smell, and many of the other comforts for which she had always been so grateful. If there was a snuggly blanket and a fire, that was where you’d find Anne curled up. She took comfort in reading, and we enjoyed discussing books that she and I had read. Toward the end, she was barely able to enjoy that basic comfort as result of her illness. She often wished that she had a “normal” disease, so that friends would understand why she was so often in bed and unable to be in touch. It was difficult to explain what ailed her, which provoked speculation, second guesses, and a lack of comprehension and empathy from many people, including doctors. She once mentioned a movie that reminded her of what she suffered from; it was called Forgotten Plague. Doctors eventually diagnosed a series of autoimmune conditions most people have never heard of: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME; Anti NMDA, Sjogren’s syndrome, and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Any one of these four diseases can ravage a person’s body. Her condition was further complicated by her sensitivity to various chemicals, foods, and medications.
Anne was under attack from her own body. Her condition robbed her of her ability to eat, watch TV, use the computer except in small spurts, cry, sometimes swallow, and even listen to music without feeling dizzy. But the worst was being unable to spend time with other people. I was fortunate to visit her twice for short periods during the last 10 years, but those visits were an effort for her. I offered to visit whenever I could, but she almost always politely declined. I now realize now that I had been waiting and hoping for her symptoms to subside, and for medical science to catch up with her, so that we could fulfill our dream of being the old ladies hanging out on a porch swing that we had promised we would be.
I rarely heard Anne complain about, or even mention, her catalog of aliments; most of the time, she would only discuss them when pressed. If I asked whether she had seen something on TV, she would say, “I can’t really watch TV.” But she never elaborated upon all that she couldn’t do, eat, experience – the myriad pleasures large and small that the rest of us take for granted. Anne had lived a healthy life; when her symptoms began to manifest themselves during her early twenties, she was one of the first people I knew to extol the virtues of alternative approaches to health that are common now. She never weighed others down with the health problems that gradually began to rule her life.
Anne never sweated the small stuff. She had an aversion to pettiness and trivia; she couldn’t bear to waste time or energy on them. Once, when I was driving her car with Anne in the passenger seat, we were blindsided by a car as we attempted to take a left turn. Anne’s car was totaled; the front end of her brown Toyota was completely gone. But she wasn’t mad; I remember being amazed at how shrugged the accident off. “It could have been worse,” is what I remember her saying. She saw the big picture in life.
Anne was a dreamer, and an adventurer. I don’t remember her ever saying no to doing something fun until later, when it wasn’t physically possible. Instead, she would add on a detail that always enhanced the experience. It was her idea to get a tree during the first Christmas either of us spent without our families in Europe. We were staying in Barcelona with a college friend of mine in a tiny, adorable apartment just off the Rambla overlooking la Boqueria Market. Every morning we would go to the market and search for the ultimate croissant and the best coffee. Each day we walked until our legs hurt, looking to fill our eyes and hearts with as much experience as possible, dragging ourselves through every Gaudi and Miro gallery we could find, visiting every church and finishing our days with good beer and laughter in the cafes.
When we decided to spend Christmas there, and get decorate a tree as Anne suggested, we spent several afternoons wandering the narrow cobblestone streets of the city in search of bouquets of the baby’s breath that stood in for twinkling lights, berries that we strung by hand, and red velvet ribbons that we tied into bows to decorate what we called our Charlie Brown tree. It was beautiful and perfect, small and sweet. On Christmas Day, we boarded a train bound for Paris via Lyon. During the trip, we celebrated with a candle, Spanish beers, and a few small gifts, relishing this special time together, knowing that more wonderful times lay ahead.
Anne and I also worked several jobs together. In high school, we worked for Eli’s Cheesecake during the Taste of Chicago. We enjoyed that job because we both loved to be in the city at a festival surrounded by people. Both of us shared a love of talking to strangers. We would sell cheesecakes, snack on our inventory, and give free samples to our friends who came to visit. Later, after using our festival tickets to sneak a few beers, we would hang out by the fountain and people watch. Anne had the gift of gab: she could converse for hours on any topic, always finding some interesting thread to explore. She would talk until she found the kernel of truth at the center of whatever topic was being discussed. At some point, she would say, “What really matters here…” and then produce some profound, generous statement that always respected a differing opinion that someone else might have, punctuated with an endearing sniff, as if to say “ do with it what you will”. Anne was gentle with people that way.
Later, during summer breaks from college, Anne’s older sister Jill got us dream jobs working in the Stadium Club at Wrigley Field. Jill let us sleep on the floor of her Rogers Park apartment with her dogs Chimay and Navonna. I sometimes fancied myself as a fourth Berry sister. We worked at Wrigley for many seasons. After the Cubs games started, when the restaurant would often release half the staff, Anne and I would sneak into the games, courtesy of the off-duty cops we had befriended, Dave and Eddie, who worked security. We would sit in our favorite seats behind first base in the half-empty stadium and watch Mark Grace and Andre Dawson work their magic.
We made many longtime friends during those years at Wrigley. Annie became a favorite of one of the bartenders – a retired Chicago cop named Danny Schnur. He loved all of the gals who worked at the Stadium Club, but he had a special place in his heart for Anne. She always treasured their relationship; it was one of the memories she mentioned during our last conversation.
Anne loved music, and we always had a blast exploring various dimensions of the Chicago music scene – from reggae and zydeco to the blues. She was always among the first people to get the crowd dancing. In addition to seeing acts Screaming Jay Hawkins and BB King, we also spent some time following the Grateful Dead. One of the most memorable experiences as Deadheads involved camping in the pouring rain at Alpine Valley with a large group of friends, and dancing gloriously in the mud. After the concert, the two of us traveled with my sister Betsy, her boyfriend (now husband) Mark, and some other friends to Elkhart Lake, WI, where Anne’s family had a house. We a great time hanging out – playing cards, swimming, and enjoying Anne’s infectious laugh.
When we lived in Rogers Park, Anne and I would often walk the half-block to the beach to let the dogs run and swim in the moonlight along Lake Michigan. Coincidentally, the cops, Eddie and Dave, who worked at Wrigley also worked that beat, so when they came by they just waved hello. We were a little bit like hippies; we read tons of books on spirituality and we were obsessed with learning to read tarot. Anne and I would read one another’s cards and take notes on what the future might bring. I always felt Anne believed more deeply in the power of the tarot, but I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I tried to match her enthusiasm. Another siren call to Lady Luck involved putting lottery tickets behind the framed pictures of Catholic saints we had hung on the walls. There was a brief moment when we debated whether stuffing lottery tickets behind a gilded portrait of the Virgin Mary might be a sacrilege, but we shrugged it off. We both believed strongly that life was a positive affair; you got back what you gave.
Unfortunately Anne didn’t get back the positivity she gave. She started to experience bouts of sickness that zapped her energy and left her lethargic. In her efforts to be healthier, Anne was way ahead of her time; she drank warm lemon water to help her system alkaline, and fortified herself with super green algae and other drinks. She took an active role in trying to solve the puzzle of her symptoms, and refused to be distracted her from joy, conversation, and participation in life and with friends.
Years later, we lived together again along with Betsy in Uptown Chicago. We were both figuring out the world and our place in it -post-college, but we managed to laugh a ton despite all that we each were going through. We would go to jazz shows at the Green Mill; one night, we were kicked out for doing the polka with Nash, the lead singer of Urge Overkill. Dancing polka at a jazz performance; that was what Anne was all about. She excelled in taking the complexities of life down to the barest elements and enjoying it with grace, kindness, wit, and wisdom.
Looking back through my journals, I found dozens of entries that began, “Just spoke to Anne…”; I must have written “Call Anne about this” a dozen times. Anne was a touchstone for me. We were there for one another for so many years – in person and through calls, letters, and email. Over time, we both experienced the emotions of dealing with health struggles. The timeline of Anne’s illness paralleled that of my younger sister’s, while Lori’s was an illness of the mind, Anne’s was of the body, as her mind remained intact. I hope that, during the last ten years, she knew that although I was busy with my sister’s struggles, and my brother’s, all while raising young children, I loved her fiercely, and wish I could have been there for her more often. We just plain got along. We fit. Whether together or apart, we knew how much we loved one another, having crossed so many rivers, bridges, and valleys of life together.
During one of our trips to Elkhart Lake, Anne and I hiked through a field to the top of a hill. In many respects it was just an ordinary day, but every day with Anne was made extraordinary by her love of life. That day, I took a picture of Anne in the field of wheat. In the photography she is looking toward the horizon with her hands outstretched, feeling the wind blow the wheat stalks into her palms. That was how she lived. Her hands held out to feel the delicate bits life had to offer. We found a deer antler in the grass that day, and read the lore about the animal energy it held. Anne had certainly had that energy, which was manifested in her great sensitivity, strong intuition, and ability to deal with difficult situations with grace. To this day, that antler we had found together has always rested near my desk as a reminder of my beloved friend.
In searching through my journals for entries about Anne, I came across one passage where Anne and I discussed how we never seemed to finish a conversation. There was always more to say and hear, and so we vowed to always keep sharing. These days I find myself talking to Anne, perhaps more than ever. Her voice will always be missed. Her absence is deafening, and always will be.
