Teri’s open house

Open House

We celebrated Teri’s life in pictures, paintings, food, memories and emotions yesterday.  This was for our regional friends and colleagues.  I asked the kids not to come since their lives are involved at the moment.

To honor Teri in a montage, I pulled together with Rachel’s help 52 8X10s.  Some were photos.  Our wedding pictures had to be restored at a photo store.  Some were simply color copying at Digital Copy.  Some I printed out on our home printer. 
 

I organized these into eras – In the beginning (childhood), Pre-B (Henry and Becky sent pictures I’d never seen), Wedding, Pre-kids, Post-kids, Froedtert 4NT (cancer ward), Chemotherapy, 1^st remission, 2^nd remission, 61^st birthday party, Froedtert 4BMT (transplant ward), Stem cell transplant, Awake Wake, White coat ceremony, Final days, Dad’s ink painting exhibit.

(I'll send some close-ups later - some are quite funny.)

83 friends and colleagues from all parts of Teri’s and my life came to celebrate, look at all the photos spread chronologically counterclockwise around our condo.  In my compulsiveness, I put labels under the pictures so that those less familiar with Teri could identify the people.  Tony took pictures.

Peds GI mafia

Peds education mafioso

Neighbors - Diane, Laura, Paul

Grace, Donna & Mila (Teri's Montessori tutee in Chicago)

APAMSA (med students) regarded Teri as their Milwaukee mama

I learned even more about Teri and her impact on individuals ...

We had a ton of food, all of Teri’s favorites, from sushi, veggies, shrimp, sweet and sour meat balls, pot stickers, egg rolls, and fruit salad.  Sandy and Elena did a yeowoman’s job of organizing the food.  Steve chopped fruit.  As Teri would say, ‘once again, you ordered too much food!’

As I was cleaning up last night, I missed the joint clean-up effort that we would undertake together after parties, the critique of the food and what we would do differently, share our conversations with others …

Last week, Laura and Karl invited us to dinner upstairs and ordered from Jing’s, a Chinese restaurant three blocks away.  Jing told her that she knew just what to prepare for the Li’s.  And she was right, she did a great job.

How long do I leave the pictures up ...

From St. John Chrysostom

They whom we love

and lose

are no longer

where they were before.

They are now

wherever we are.

Sent by Cindy and John

I miss her, terribly.