Rebecca Nichole Marks, 1974-2011

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." Flavia Weedn


(Picture taken August, 2007)


I never knew how hard it would be to put into words how I feel about my closest friend. I do know I wish it were not under these circumstances. I've been thinking about everything I ever learned about her, and I've started to write a few times, but I just haven't known where to begin. There is so much to tell.

I guess the best place to start would be the beginning. She and I met thirteen lucky years ago. We were roommates at first, and ever since then we've been permanent fixtures in each other's lives. Sometimes we'd go weeks without talking; not because we were fighting, but because life would get busy. Over the last few years, she and I have talked almost every day - thanks to online chat programs. She didn't often feel up to going out or having visitors, but we could count on keeping up with each other through frequent chats. I have hundreds of emails from her, along with the hundreds of chat logs from the more recent past. I've read them all over the last couple of weeks; some of them more than once. We've been through so much together. And now she's gone.

She took her life in the most peaceful way she could, during the very early hours of 28 July, 2011. She left letters and instructions for her family and me. I would give anything to have her back, and to have her feeling happy. But she wasn't happy. She couldn't feel happy. She tried so hard, for so long. She felt so lonely, and so tired... for so long. So forgotten and isolated and frightened. She couldn't find a cure for the darkness that overwhelmed her. As the days and weeks and months and years went by without any lasting improvement in her outlook, she gradually lost hope. The loss of all hope was too much for her to bear. I don't think there was anything any of her family or friends could have said or done to convince her that her life was worth sticking around for. We all kept hoping for her, and I always truly believed that she would at last find a way to feel the happiness she hungered for.

The Becky I always knew was a giving, thoughtful, brilliant, driven, beautiful woman with a wry sense of humor. I'd say her trademark was her long, dark hair or her deep, blue eyes. She had a passion for all kinds of music. She enjoyed reading good books. She loved thunder storms, watching snow fall, the smell of rain, sky diving! Astronomy intrigued her - she was always wanting to learn more about it. (I hope she's now allowed to take personal tours of all the planets and stars and everything lovely in the sky, anytime she wants!) She liked ice cream, as long as it was chocolate-based. She was proud to have won a belching contest in one of her high school classes. (That's my Becky!) She had a gift for writing poetry. She was good at making plain things pretty. She had just finished decorating her bedroom the night before she left... It was beautiful. Her heart was devoted to her family, and she treated her two kitties like the children she never got to have (but desperately wanted). She was an expert listener, and she always seemed to know what to say when I needed advice, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. From an email sent to me on 10/04/07, she said:
"Friends should be there to support you, be there for you, help you, listen when you need someone to listen, lift you up, and sometimes even provide gentle correction when necessary." That's the kind of friend she was.

Can I just say that I don't like talking about her in past tense? She can't really be gone. This can't be real. I don't want to believe it.

I remember the first time we decided to go hang out together. It took us forever to decide where to go. (We settled on Delsa's.) That indecision never changed much in all the millions of times we went out on the town together since. It was always, "Where should we go?"... "I don't care, where do you want to go?" We joked about buying a hat, writing all the options on slips of paper, mixing them up in the hat and picking one out. That might have saved us hours of decision-making over the years.

Here are some "Roommate Recollections" I have :

-She and I would stay up late watching episodes of "Space Ghost" and laugh our heads off. A couple of years ago we were remembering that, so she went ahead and ordered three DVD collections of the show to give to me. Three!

-Another time, she decided we needed to make those enchiladas with the salsa and cream cheese mixture. She painstakingly strained the salsa with a slotted spoon, so as to not get any tomato or onion chunks in the dish. =) I'll think of her every time I see a tomato for the rest of my life. She positively detested them!

-One of the times we were sitting on the couch talking or watching TV, what I thought was a sweater belonging to a neighbor was draped on the back of the couch. I asked Becky if Kenny forgot his sweater. She didn't know what I was talking about, because the article I was gesturing toward was really her large, maroon, cable-knit blanket! I don't know why, but we thought that was hilarious. Every now and then over the years, we'd have a chuckle about "Kenny's sweater". She still had it after all these years. I found it in her hall closet when her family and I were over at her house, so I get to keep it now.

-One evening, we were home watching a Miss America pageant on TV when one of our other roommates burst in, announced she was moving her stuff out that night, and took the couch right out from underneath us, leaving us with nowhere to sit. We were furious! We simply refused to sit on the floor for the rest of the pageant! We walked in a huff to my parents' house, which wasn't far, to tell them what had happened. Becky and I didn't understand why they weren't as horrified as we were. Then I called my sister to see if we could get their futon couch out of storage ASAP for our sofa-less apartment. She also didn't seem to get why I was calling her, so frantic about the loss of a couch. Over the years, Becky and I would sometimes remember that night and laugh at how enraged we were about a dumb couch.

Eventually, our roommates disbanded. I moved back to my parents' house, and Becky moved in with some other girls in the same complex we'd been living in. I've thought so many times over the last 13 years how incredibly glad and blessed I am to have met and become best of friends with Becky. If I had never moved into that apartment I would have missed out on getting to know her. It scares me to think of the what-ifs like that. How different would our lives have been if we had never known each other?

I wish I could remember everything we'd talk about and laugh about when we'd go out on our dinner/movie/shopping "dates". With the files of my brain so full, it's just impossible to recall every little conversation. All I know is I loved being with her.

After I got married, she and I would still find times to go on our outings. Since my husband was in school for many years, she'd take it upon herself to grab the check at the restaurant the instant it was put on the table so I couldn't pay, since I was "poor". We were always fighting over the check, wanting to treat each other. Sometimes she would win, sometimes I would win.

Becky seemed to have a "usual" at each place we went to eat. She knew what she liked, and didn't dare branch out and risk getting stuck with something yucky. Her fave was the Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo from Olive Garden. That's where we went on July 19, the last time I ever got to hang out with her...

Whenever I'd need help cleaning an apartment when my family would move, Becky was right there to chip in. She'd bring food for everyone involved. Not just a couple little things, either. She'd get an array of things, like sandwich stuff, drinks, cookies, and chips. One of the times she was helping me clean an apartment, I had to go take care of my 1-year-old girl. Becky said she would just finish scrubbing the tub and then leave. When I got there the next day, I found that she had cleaned the entire apartment!

Becky was so generous. She liked to spoil people. When she knew money was tight for my family, I had to be careful not to mention anything I'd like to buy when she and I were at Target or wherever, because she'd want to buy it for me.

One evening in 2004, she and I were driving through downtown, wondering what to do. She mentioned that Keith Urban was having a concert at the BofA Center that night, and she asked if I wanted to go. I didn't know very many of his songs yet, plus I didn't have the money. She said she would pay. I'm sure I tried to protest, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. So we went! What a fun time! That was probably the most spontaneous thing we did together.

One year for Christmas, we got this bright idea to make something crafty to give as gifts to friends and family. We saw in a magazine, or somewhere, a cute "gumball machine" that was made of an upside-down terra cotta pot, a glass globe, etc. We thought it looked foolproof enough. We got all the supplies and set to work painting them. We got these little snowflake stencils and attempted to use them to prettify the bases of the gumball machines, and tiny wooden snowmen (that we had to paint ourselves) to glue on the tops. Ummmm.... let's just say they didn't turn out very cute! We had a good laugh over our handiwork. We didn't bother finishing them since there was no way we would be giving them away to anyone, except maybe our worst enemies...

When the first Spider-Man movie came out, I developed a huge crush on Tobey Maguire. Becky teased me about it, and one day I got a letter in the mail from "him" with no return address. Inside was a printed out, "autographed" photo of him, with a little note saying (something like) he'd be coming to my neighborhood and that he hoped he'd get to say hi. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. Had I signed up with some fan club that I'd forgotten about? I was puzzled for a second, and then it occurred to me.... BECKY!!! Ha! What a jokester.


When my dad passed away in May, 2006, Becky sent me an email. Here's part of it:

"I can't imagine how you must be feeling. I can't imagine losing a parent. I dread that day like no other. I know you love him. And I'm sure he knew that too. Whenever you've talked about him, I could always tell you didn't get to see him that much, but that you loved him. But just tell him, if you want. If you look up "Paradise" in Mormon Doctrine (which is where he'd be right now), it says they are close by us and know our thoughts and feelings. So just tell him, and I’m sure he'll hear you. (Or if he's busy, I'm sure someone would give him the message!)"

Like I said, she was so good at knowing what to say to offer comfort in any situation. Such a wise, caring friend. Little did we know that five years later I'd be using her words of assurance to get me through her passing...

Over dinner at Red Robin a couple of years ago, Becky and I decided we both needed something fun and exciting to look forward to. We came up with the idea to go to Europe together the next year. We were giddy just thinking about the possibility! We talked about it a little bit over the course of a few weeks, then realized it probably wouldn't work out, given the whole expense thing. Plus I didn't think Ryan would endorse me running off on a European vacation with my best friend. But I SO wish we could have...

One time she and I were at the grocery store, and she needed to pick up some brown sugar for a recipe. She only needed a small bag of it, but the smallest package was a generic brand. Becky didn't trust any product that wasn't name-brand. I had to convince her that the generic brown sugar would be just fine. She was skeptical, but didn't want to hurt my feelings, so she bought it. I forgot to ask her later if it was okay.

She was a stinker about being photographed, so I only have a couple of candid shots of her taken at baby showers of mine. I'm so mad at myself for not making her mad, at least once, in the name of getting a few pictures of us together. Whenever I reminded her that we didn't have any pictures together (except two from Halloween 1999), she would change the subject. :/

Becky claimed to hate playing games, but she came to two separate game nights just because she knew I really wanted her to be there. That's what I call sacrifice!

Even when she wasn't at all happy, she tried her best to pretend like she was - even though it completely wore her out to have to "put on a show". That says a lot about her. I know she felt like she was in hell most days, especially over the last several years, but that didn't stop her from saying funny things, or posting videos on Facebook of He-Man singing "What's Going On?".
She really did try to find some semblance of joy. One of the last online chats I had with her, her computer was having problems loading something, so she said, "Maybe I should sing Kip's song to it." A half a second later, she sent me the link for Kip's technology song. She was ever so speedy at finding and sending links to me!

I want to share a couple of segments from the chats she and I had. The first one, from last September, is her telling me about a dream she had.

"i hope i have more normal dreams tonight. i was dreaming last night that i was in this play and i was so excited about it. it was like this big deal. and part of it i had to do this dance. and i'd been rehearsing it and was getting good. but then i was looking at the script and it said that the "chorus" of the dance was done three times and on the third one, I had to do it topless. I was freaking out. I asked my mom what I should do about it, and she said I should just do it, that it was really no big deal."

Ha! She really didn't like dreaming. If they were good dreams, she hated waking up from them to find that they weren't real. If they were bad or weird dreams, well, they just made her feel "off".

This next one was July 21, 2011. (We'd been talking about yummy desserts the day before.)

12:42 AM
me: oof. heartburn

7 minutes

12:50 AM bmarks92@gmail.com: what'd you eat?

12:51 AM me: a quesadilla. earlier

bmarks92@gmail.com: dang

me: yep!

12:52 AM bmarks92@gmail.com: I uh....uh...went to...uh....Krispy Kreme today. Maybe.

12:55 AM me: so THAT's what your "appointment" was!

bmarks92@gmail.com: that was one of them. :/

12:56 AM me: mmmmmmm.....


The way she typed the part about going to Krispy Kreme is classic. Totally "her".

A bunch of years ago, she and I went to Art in the Park. We wandered around admiring the various beautiful crafts and things, and somehow the topic of heaven came up. We were so curious to know what it was like there... what kinds of things people do... if there are musical instruments there.... It just seemed weird to picture any material things in heaven. But then, we wondered why on earth wouldn't they have instruments in heaven? It would be so interesting to know the answers to these thoughts. (Dang finite minds!) I wish Becky could come tell me what it's like.

Becky told us not to mourn when she was gone. How can we not??? And as her dear mother said: "I'll never stop mourning." We love her more than she ever could have begun to believe. I miss her all the time, and I always will. I can't even count how many times I've caught myself thinking of things to tell her next time I catch her online. Or I'll think of things we can do together in the future, or ways I can help her feel even an ounce of the validation she deserved to feel. I have to constantly remind myself that she's not here anymore... It's so hard to let go of her. Even though we are certain she is finally rid of the inner turmoil that no earthly element could have cured. I do hope she knows now how deeply she is loved and missed, and how many buckets of tears have been shed in her absence. And more than that, I hope she now understands how much worth she truly possesses. And possessed... all along.

I love you always, Becky! It's going to seem like forever until I "catch you on the flip side". And you'd better believe we'll have some serious catching up to do.