Angie passed away on August 20, 2021. Her sister with whom she lived the last few years had not told anyone following Angie's wishes. Her way to the very end.

Hello all,

I was thinking about Angie's death and how much of an impact she had on our lives. I wrote a little eulogy to remember her by and wanted to share it.

Angie was a force of nature who created a sensational life for herself and the people she surrounded herself with.

Angie's life was full of stories. Some of them her own, some of them other peoples' that she latched onto and used as lessons. When in conversation with Angie she always had an anecdote to bring up or a memory to recall. She would talk about her past vocations as if they were past lives and the people in her stories never seemed to be real to me, Angie's stories felt more like fables than reality but you knew she was telling the truth because she said everything as a fact and there was no room to argue with her.

Growing up Camilla, Serena, and I spent every day with Angie as our babysitter. Every day came with a new story accompanied by a snack she would design into different shapes on our plates. We would eat sandwiches shaped like butterflies or cookies designed as flowers along with a daily lesson. Some of these lessons consisted of a girl who had a spider living in her ear, a woman who didn't clean her face well enough, a boy who rode his bike into a pool, and a drunk man who couldn't distinguish vodka from water.

My favorite stories were the ones that showed us glimpses of her life, how she and her husband built their house together that would later be home to a viscous dong named Elmo and around 20 cats 3 of whom were named tiger 1, tiger 2, and tiger 3. She told us about her time as a bartender in a bowling alley or how she used to be a belly dancer and proceeded to teach us how to belly dance. All of the memories that made up Angie painted her as otherworldly. There was no way that one person could live so many different lives and know so many odd people but Angie was living proof that it was possible to live such a bewildering life.

Angie was a safe haven for animals. She gave a home to every stray cat in the area and was one of the 3 people that our mean old dog Dee Dee liked. She was intent on training Sadie and Lyle and would go to great lengths to tame Sadie from escaping our yard which led to her hanging weird contraptions on the fence including an assortment of brooms, rakes, and one time a vacuum cleaner.

She loved people as much as she loved animals. Angie was especially good at introducing the cast of characters in her life to each other. She introduced Camilla, Serena, and I to the other families she would babysit for, creating new friendships with other kids that lasted years. One of my favorite memories included Angie driving around with 5 little kids in the back seat where we proceeded to get pulled over and had to hide David under some backpacks so the officer didn't see how illegal the situation was.

Not only would she introduce us to fellow kids our age but she would introduce us to her friends. These people included the family of immigrants that lived in her basement who built us a dollhouse that still stands in my Mom's home. After school, we would visit her friend Maria that worked in the local subway and we would chat with her as she made us sandwiches. The friend we would visit the most was Jackie, an old lady that Angie was particularly close with. We spent a lot of time sitting in Jackie's house, as they talked, looking at her different collections of buttons, pictures, and random objects that filled her living room. These visits with Angie's kooky friends always felt like an escape into Angie's reality that felt so different from my own. She seemed to love people that were nutty and different, people who worked hard, people who didn't care about social norms but created their own.

Being a part of Angie's reality meant being a part of a world that creates its own rules rather than following ones that have already been established. She showed a certain tenacity to live life the way she saw fit. This included getting out of the car and directing traffic in our school parking lot during a particularly busy day until the principal had to come out and tell her that was not allowed. Or pouring a glass of water over Camilla's head when she refused to take her daily vitamin.

One of Angie's biggest lessons to us was how to be as honest and true to yourself as possible. Angie didn't care what anyone thought of her, and that was very clear from how she dressed to how she acted. One of the most memorable characteristics of Angie was her car. It was old and falling apart, the brakes were so bad that you could hear the car squeaking before you could see it. Getting picked up from school meant everyone looking to see who was going to walk into the loud squeaky car with the wild old woman in the front seat. Inside there were stuffed animals perched on the front and back windows and the ceiling fabric had ripped off exposing orange insulation foam that would fall onto you throughout your ride. My favorite part of her car was the license plate which was her old Bellydancing name. To add to the striking image of Angie was her distinctive fashion sense. She showed up to Camilla's graduation party in a see-through poncho with only a nude bra underneath paired with a sombrero and gray sweatpants that said 'I <3 Dance' on the side. She always came around in a collection of cat sweaters and mismatched items that only seemed to make sense together when she wore them. She dressed so that she could always keep active and join in the fun of showing us that she could hula hoop longer than we could or pulling us on roller-skates down the street.

Angie's life deserves to be celebrated and remembered. She had so much love for the world, for people, and for animals. To celebrate Angie’s life is to take lessons from the world around you, it is to be kind to animals and children and make your own path instead of following others. Keep her in mind when showing kindness to strangers, when meeting a new kooky friend, and when you put others before yourself. To keep Angies legacy alive is to love the parts of yourself that make you stand out, it is to love the people who teach you to defy the norms rather than be contained in them.

Angie was a force that could never be forgotten, she will live on in the stories we tell and the people we meet. In our hearts but also in our actions and words. She lived to make a more free and exciting world.

May Angie rest in peace.

Sending love to everyone,

Sophia