I figure many of you are having that same experience and thanks to my good friend Marshall, the idea of continuing this blog as a remembrance of her came easy as the best thing to do. A way for all of us who loved Devon to become a community and support each other through this tragedy. A place for us to write down these wonderful, silly, beautiful memories that make us laugh and cry throughout the day. A place for us to share pictures. A place for us to tell stories of how she changed each and every one of our lives forever.
Devon and I both went to high school in Clovis and also went to college in Santa Barbara. Interestingly though we went to different schools so we never met until October of 2002, when we both randomly ended up living in Long Beach a year or so post-college. Our mutual friend Nichole still lived in Santa Barbara but had been trying to introduce us for quite a while since we were both somewhat new in the same town. She had given me Devon’s number and finally I decided I would call her and see if she wanted to meet up. I picked up the phone, dialed her number and on the other end of the phone I hear a “MOM?!”… I was so thrown off that I hung up the phone. I didn’t know why she called me Mom or why I hung up but I couldn’t stop laughing. Apparently my phone number had a private ID at the time and so did her mother’s. Eventually we finally did connect and we never stopped laughing about that story… or in general. When we were together we were usually laughing.
We ended up not only immediately becoming very close friends but also living across from each other in the same apartment complex so we often times felt like roommates. Her husband Noureddin and my boyfriend at the time Saryat also became insta-friends with their love for soccer and probably commiserating on how it was being with these stubborn Aquarius Amercian woman. The four of us spent hours cooking together and playing Gin Rummy. Thankfully I got to know Devon very well. If I were to write down all the things I want to write about her this would be a book. But for now I want to write about some of my favorite things about Devon Markert.
She was probably the best gift-giver I knew. I never grew up being big on material gifts, and still am not, but the way Devon gave gifts made a huge impact on me. Devon would think about you- about what you were going through, what you were interested in, or what you needed and would go out searching for it. I was having my whole family in town for a big Christmas dinner one year and I woke up that morning getting ready to start cleaning and cooking. I opened my front door to find a huge basket full of wine, fancy cheeses, and all sorts of other fun things she had put together to make my family Christmas party so much more exciting. She did that kind of thing all the time whether it was Christmas, my birthday or just a random Wednesday where she found something at the store that she remembered me saying I needed. And she always presented them with such love- all wrapped up with a caring smile and hug, or as a surprise that I found at my door or in my mailbox. Whenever I had a family member or a friend I needed to get a gift for I would ask her for ideas and she would ask me “what are they into right now, what do they spend a lot of their time doing these days…” and her thoughtfulness would lead us to the perfect gift idea. Devon taught me to be a better giver.
Let’s just talk about how amazing of a host Devon was. A couple months after we met we realized that our birthdays were two days apart and so we decided to plan a big joint-birthday party. We loooooooooved to party plan together. I was about the details and cooking and she was all about the ideas and making it creative. She came up with the idea of having a “Blue Party”. Everyone had to wear blue, the décor would be blue, the drinks would even be blue. At the time a client of mine was a bartender and agreed to supply us with free booze for the party. He asked us to come by his bar over lunch on a Tuesday afternoon to try out some blue drinks he made up. After one too many sips of cocktails containing Blue Curacao, Blue Raspberry vodka and Blue Aliza… we forgot what day it was and on walking back down Long Beach Blvd definitely made our way through a couple bars not even noticing that we were the only ones there, dancing up a storm. Around 10pm that evening we found ourselves sitting in Hooters and I remember having a moment where we both looked at each other with confused looks and she said “why have we never had these chicken wings before, these are AMAZING!” Back to the point- Devon was an incredible host. Whether it was a dinner party, a potluck or you were just going to her place for tea- she always had goodies sitting out for you and made you feel so comfy and welcomed in her home.
One thing that makes me smile the most when I think of Devon is her amazing memory. You had to be careful about what you told Devon because believe you me, she would remember it. You sometimes have to tell me five times where you went to college or what exactly you do for work. Devon would remember the birth date of your great aunt so and so and… what makes me laugh right now is that I’m trying to remember examples of times she remembered things that I couldn’t… and she is the person I would normally ask to think of those examples. There was one instance when Carlee, Devon and I made a bet (who knows what about) and whoever lost the bet had to do something… a couple months had gone by and neither Carlee nor I could remember what the loser had to do. We were trying to remember and in tears because Devon was going through her first surgery at the time. After the surgery we told Devon who lost the bet and with very limited speech she said, “Oh yeah, Ruthie you have to buy Carlee and I pedicures now.” Her memory astonished me. Even after both brain surgeries she had a better memory for dates, names and details than most people I know.
Devon knew how to be there for her friends. She taught me so much about loyalty and dependability. She would never fail to call to wish you good luck on a presentation you had been preparing for or check up on you if you were sick. There were several times throughout the last six years where I faced major difficulties. If you’re like me sometimes you don’t know exactly what it is you need when you’re sick or going through tough times. You think you want to be alone, or maybe you do want your friends around, you want help or maybe you don’t… Devon was the kind of friend who didn’t dare ask what you needed. She didn’t need to. She knew you well enough to know exactly what you needed. There was one time in particular that sticks out in my mind. It was a few years ago. I was so down and going through a major life change. Devon would not leave my side. She put everything else in her life aside and spent time with me until I was comfortably asleep in my bed that night. She didn’t make me talk about it, didn’t try to make me laugh or distract me- she was just there and it was exactly what I needed. I will never forget that. I want to be the kind of friend Devon was to me.
Any of you who know Devon know that she could go months without cleaning her kitchen or doing laundry. Any of you who know me know that I am the biggest neat-freak ever. It always made me smile to walk into her closet to borrow a purse and I literally couldn’t see the ground. It made me smile to recognize how we are all built so different. But as different as I am, this mess of hers was the most beautiful thing ever to me. She wasn’t concerned with where her stuff was or how clean her sink was, she was concerned about bigger things- the people in her life, world events, working hard… and more than that it was a simple contentedness that she lived with. It wouldn’t phase her that she couldn’t find her favorite pair of shoes, she would just settle for another pair that day. There are numerous times where she would be over at my place in the evening and discover that she had put two different socks on that morning and she’d always chuckle about it. Yesterday Nichole and I went to visit Devon in the hospital to say our goodbyes and when we left neither of us could remember what floor Nichole had parked her car on. During our search up and down the elevator, circling different floors of the parking lot, we were in tears laughing about how Devon used to do these things all the time. Once (and I can’t remember who she was with, surprise surprise) she went out shopping and left her car door open for hours. Okay- not unlocked. Not ajar. OPEN. Wide open. And with tons of her belongings all sitting in her car free for anyone to steal. Not a thing was missing when she returned and her car battery was still fine somehow. Those are the things about Devon that I love and that make my cry laughing. She knew how to just relax in a way that I never have been able to and I loved being around her because of it.
This contentedness leaks into the last and most important characteristic I want to mention about Devon. To say Devon was a positive person seems like a huge understatement. Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing could get her down. I watched her go through numerous life crisis from a death in the family to her apartment burning down… and then of course to find out she had cancer. She experienced pain and struggle like the rest of us but I’m not exaggerating when I say she was just a happy content fun person no matter what life threw her way. A month and a half ago I was in town from Dallas. Devon and I got all dressed up to go to a nice dinner together at one of our favorite nearby Italian restaurants. It’s a few feet away but we had to get a cab because her balance was so bad that she could barely walk. I moved to Dallas 6 months ago and hadn’t seen Devon nearly as much as I wanted to. I’d been missing her and wanting to talk with her in depth about how she was doing with her on-going battle. I sat across from her at dinner and asked her: “how are you doing physically?” She told me all the facts about her balance, her speech, her appetite, etc. Then I asked her “How are you doing emotionally?” She said “I’m doing fine”. “You haven’t been dealing with depression at all?” I asked. She said with a shrug “It’s just not in my nature to get depressed.” And it wasn’t. She was happy as a clam til the end. Aside from the pain she went through initially when she learned she had cancer, it wasn’t her style to dwell on the bad. She didn’t focus on the fact that she had a hard time walking, she focused on the latest song she had added to her ipod. She would listen to it with a huge smile on her face singing as loud as she could. And she’d send me a text or an email in the middle of the day telling me all about it and attaching a Utube link. She didn’t focus on the fact that it was getting harder to speak, but on the fact that a new episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” was playing that night. Devon’s positive nature has always been and always will be an inspiration to me.
Devon’s giving nature, uncanny memory, hosting abilities, loyalty, contentedness, and wonderfully positive outlook on life… these are all things about her that I am thinking of right now. But I know these things only make up a tiny fraction of who she was and who she was to all of you. Please share your own stories and memories of Devon and include photos. Even if you just have a one-sentence memory that you want to share- include it on here. You can add it to the comments or you can send them to carleekajsa@gmail.com and we will post them for you. Let’s honor her together in this way.
-Ruthie
