Maureen Elizabeth Moore

PREFACE

Maureen created this site to share her story with everyone and to bring us all together to share stories and support each other. Unfortunately, she was not able to finish it before she left us so you will hear my voice again at the end. 

Part 1: An open letter Maureen wrote to us all

Part 2: Maureens written summary of her life and memories

Part 3: My attempt to bring her story to completion.

Part 4: Moving forward

PART 1:

Greetings loved one(s),If you are receiving this letter from me, than it is because you were a very special part of my life!I wanted to be sure that you know how much you meant to me, how much richer my life was forknowing and sharing time with you.

As the saying goes, “None of us gets out of here alive.” Each passing is the completion of thisearthly time and the beginning of an adventure on the higher plane. I have no doubts that I willbe reunited with loved ones who went before me OR that I will meet all of you again & thatknowing has been a huge gift to me.

I used to wish that a person could always live in the same town or even neighborhood with allthe people they loved most, but I have come to believe that that is what heaven will be for me…all of you “living” next door. Of course, all of you lived in my heart, and that’s about as close asit gets.

I am hoping, however, that bringing any or all of you a little closer to each other may bring somecomfort to you in the short term & a blessing or two in future… I know that I drew so muchstrength & support from your love & laughter over the years and I hope that you can share someof that with Ed, Chelsea & Danielle.

With that in mind, I have created a web page on MyKeeper.com. It contains a biography of mytime & how I came to meet many of you. There are photos, too. You can add stories, photos,videos or just read & comment on what others may add. I have added the email addresses thatI have for you, but if you find you are not registered as a user, get in touch with Chelsea(gagnongirl@gmail.com) or Danielle (danielleplusone@gmail.com) & ask them to add you.Additionally, the girls have set aside some of my ashes in small ziplocs so that anyone whowishes can request some to have your own private service with. Stories of what you did, whereyou scattered me & why would be great things to share.

My special thanks go out to Jenn Williams in Gustavus for giving me the idea of introducing myloved ones to each other & to a more full picture of who I was.

Know that my passing was a “good” one, not painful or fraught with anxiety… and that I wassurrounded with love ones. I took your prayer flags, cards & letters with me!

Loving you from the beyond,Maureen/ MO

PART 2:

I guess these start with a birthdate, although I had the unique experience of having Mom share the reason that "Moonbeam" was one of the nicknames Dad gave me.  I'm sure she meant well!  So, my journey started on a cold night during the holidays of 1956-57 and I was born on September 3, 1957 in Bennington, VT, the 8th child and 4th daughter in the, still growing, Moore clan.

We all had a plethora of nicknames... was that a thing for all families?  Mine included: the aforementioned, Moonbeam; Cooper; Mo-nee (not wanting it to have been Moanie!); one half of Heckle & Jeckle; Mellow Yellow; Bony Mony... I'm sure my siblings reading this are adding to the list!  Mom usually tried to call us by OUR given names, but after several attempts, would end up saying, "Oh, you know who your are!"  

We were lucky that Dad owned a Brownie movie camera that provided many hours of entertainment when we were young...  reminding us of the many happy moments which served to cast large shadows over the not-so-happy ones.

Consequently, I can still see some of my earliest years, even if I don't fully remember them... Easter egg hunts when I was just a toddler in a fancy little dress, Bennington Battle Day parades watching my older brothers march by with the Little League teams...I may have to take them out once more to make sure my girls can identify all the little "imps" (a favorite Mom descriptor).  A million thanks to my sister, Meg, for having all those reels copied on to DVDs for us.

So many memories revolved around sporting events, watching my 3 oldest brothers play every sport that we thought existed back then!  They continued to dominate our world as their antics would cause crisis after crisis and we girls would, not nearly as loudly, laugh, argue, play, clean and repeat... just helping Mom make it through another day of chaos.  So many hours of hanging clothes on the line, picking mint for iced tea, sorting through the 35 gallons of socks for mates (& eventually anything that could pass for one!).

I usually kept my head down (not so in later years!), I had no desire to raise my voice loud enough to be heard over the roar of a common day.  It wasn't until much later that my sense of autonomy and justice overwhelmed my shyness and I spoke truth to power.  It was so cathartic that I'll never forget it... I had worked on an assignment in English class my sophmore year for many hours with the final product being a painting that represented the book I had read.  I created it in Art class, thank you Mr. Riggs for teaching me to blend and fade colors, but the English teacher (who's memory I will not reinforce by naming him) was unimpressed.  Fine... but, keep your real feelings to yourself.  Instead, he embarassed me in front of the whole class by asking, "And what the hell is that?".   I promptly replied, "F** you" and walked out the door.  I guess I missed the part where you could have heard a pin drop!  

So it was, that I was launched.  I knew then, that I had all I needed to make my way through the world.  Guess I should thank him... the response he drew from my heart & gut was, at least, partly responsible for the new confidence I had in myself.

It was a few years before the death of my friend, Pat Shea, gave me a big shove.  I was in school in Amherst, MA at the time, but home for the weekend, when the phone rang.  Someone said there had been an accident and he didn't survive... my world came crashing down.  I barely made it through finals as I was too busy crying and asking God, "Why?" 

That time, that brought SO much pain, brought me many spiritual experiences and awarenesses that I would not have had otherwise.  I was sure that a soul didn't cease to exist... I was sure that the power of the Divine lived inside of me... I was sure that the material world did not hold the answers...and that gave me hope.

With that hope, I set out to find a place a little closer to heaven.

ACROSS THE USA

First stop was Eugene, OR where I had several new found friends.  Hmm, interesting, but not my place.  Back across the country I drove in my little, orange Subaru, hiking in National Parks, absorbing the beauty of Creation and gaining confidence in connecting with people who didn't look, or live, like me.

By the time I made it back to VT my car had a bent rear torsion bar and I was plum broke.  I recall my brother, James, as he looked at my car, saying, "You're all grown up now." 

Lucky me for having a large array of support in siblings...my brother, Thomas lent me a financial hand; and my brother, Matt, gave me a job; and then James did.  Jay was building houses by then and I learned a ton, one of the most important things being, I was pretty damn strong.

Somewhere in there I connected with Brenda Davis, who I had gone to HS with.  We had never moved in the same circles then, but forged a friendship that has survived the test of time.  She wasn't afraid to talk philosophy, to see more than the outside of the book, to push the boundaries... we were a good fit.

With my bank account replenished, oh how little it took back then!  Brenda & I, both, set out on our next adventures.  Our "plan" was to get transport across the country by delivering a car for some well-off person with two homes.  We started in NYC, staying with my sister, Mary, until we got the call that a car was available... after a week or more without the call coming, we changed the plan.

I got on a bus to Seattle & Brenda got on a bus to Denver.  My destination was the Alaska ferry which left from Pier 48 in Seattle and Brenda would meet up with her sister for a bicycle trip south out of Denver.  Hasta luego, mi amiga!

NORTH TO ALASKA

I left Seattle on a clear Friday evening with a gorgeous sunset in the western sky and a full moon rising over Mt. Hood... how could I not feel like I was in the right place?  I pitched my tent on the solarium and joined the motley crew of young folks from all over the country who were heading "North to Alaska!"  Sunday morning, July 1st,  I disembarked in downtown Juneau (the ferry used to dock there, where now there are cruise ships).  In a few days I had a weekend job, and on the 4th I met an amazing, funny, smart woman, Lois Stiegemeier, who is still my friend 42 years later.  Again, hard to doubt that things would work out in this incredibly beautiful, wild place.

 

HOONAH

And next, came Hoonah... a small, Tlingit village about a 20 minute flight from Juneau.  I was hitchhiking to Job Service trying to land a M-F job, when one particular day, the gal who helped me  said they badly needed a waitress in Hoonah for a few weeks. After asking where the heck Hoonah was,  I called my new boss & got one weekend off, hitched back to the campground, packed my backpack and rushed to catch a small plane (probably a Cessna 206 for you airheads) and found myself, literally, transported to a new world just a few short hours later.

Hoonah brought other incredible friendships, a chance to learn about a whole new culture of people, and one really big guy, with a really big personality into my life.  Big Dan Gagnon smoothed my way into a community that was understandably slow to embrace the latest white chick to show up.  His buddy, Howie, took me fishing and helped me pull in my first King salmon.  I got to meet Mary Wyckoff, an Eagle of the Shark clan, who grew up in Hoonah, and her dad, the "Old man", who taught me how to bait a herring on a leader, and told me stories about Kooshdekaah and other legends while we waited at the dock for his son-in-law and my boyfriend, overdue again.  Mary was another friend for life... she left for the land of her ancestors in 2020.

Ernestine Hanlon-Abel is a Raven, Dog Salmon & I am honored when she calls me "sister."  She is an accomplished weaver, using spruce roots to create gorgeous baskets that channel the past into the present.  

KETCHIKAN

From Hoonah it was on to Ketchikan where Dan had won a homesite lot in the Alaska land lottery.  We loaded our lives into a VW van and loaded the 3 "free" goats we had just acquired into dog kennels aboard the ferry and headed south.

Just to set the scene, Ketchikan is about the rainiest place in Alaska at about 200" a year!  It made for some big "puddles" that I'd throw logs into to get me across on the 3-wheeler and I never saw those logs again...every day another log went in & every day it disappeared, until I got around to building the "road" over the top. 

A person had to build a cabin and live in it for 2 years before gaining title to the parcel so... we bought a 3-wheeler, a generator, a chain saw and some power tools and I put my carpentry skills to good use.  The barn came first, so the two pregnant goats would be safe & warm, then the garage at the bottom of the trail/ corduroy road and then the cabin.  I remember only finding out that Dan was afraid of heights when I was putting on the roof!  Challenges & adventures were everywhere I turned.

BACK TO JUNEAU

A more comfortable life called to me about 3 years later when I got pregnant with my first daughter.  Priorities change when kids come along!  We moved to Juneau & I gave birth to Chelsea Elizabeth in May of 1988. Danielle Alexandra followed in December of 1990 just before we moved to Gustavus, AK where we lived until 2001. 

I am eternally grateful to Dan Gagnon for doing his part to bring those girls into my life.  They have been an extraordinary gift in so many ways, but pure love being the most cherished.

GUSTAVUS

Gustavus was, and is, a paradise... I had a dream once while living there in which I asked Pat Shea what heaven was like and he responded, "It's a lot like where you live."  So... I'm gonna be lovin' it up there!

Not only is Gustavus a masterpiece of Mother Nature with the Fairweather Range providing the western backdrop, Glacier Bay was our back yard and our bread basket, providing white King salmon, crab, halibut & berries.  As we shared another feast with family &/friends, I would often say, "I wonder what the President is having for dinner tonight?"  We knew it wasn't nearly as good.

Gustavus also proved to be packed full of beautiful souls...so many of them, in fact, that if I attempted to list them all, I'd run out of room and risk leaving someone out!  The one woman I have to mention is Sally King.  She was my chosen sister, my confidante, my berry-picking, kelp salsa-making partner and the "other" mother to my girls.  I couldn't have made it through those early parenting years without her.  She came complete with an incredible partner, Randy, and 2 children the same ages as mine, and then gave us a bonus little brother, too!  

Living in such a small community taught me SO much about being tolerant & accepting.  One had to think about running into the same people 3 times a week at the post office or every day at the school.  You didn't have to like someone to respect them or to stop to help if their car broke down.

Dan & I divorced in year 4 of living in Gustavus and I was given another gift from heaven in the form of Ed Bond.  Married life is never a cake walk, but 26 years later he's still a committed, trusting, honest, generous, kind, hard-working man.

While in Gustavus our family grew by one independent kitty, Curtains, and one amazingly smart Icelandic horse, Skyfari.  Curtains caught the first shuttle and Skyfari made the trek about 2 years later via landing craft, ferry and trailer. 

HOMER

In 2001 we made the difficult decision to leave Gustavus for Homer, across the Gulf of Alaska on Kachemak Bay, a 4 hour drive south of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula.  The school in Gustavus had shrunk to 34 kids in all of K-12 from 95 kids when we moved there.  Chelsea had spent the previous school year in Bennington, VT going to the Sacred Heart School, where I attended 1st-6th grade!  My sisters Mary & Meg job shared as surrogate moms and their amazing spouses, David Corey & Robin Outwater were terrific role models of what a dad should be.

In between a summer of running our kayak rental business, I packed our home into wooden containers that sat in the yard...they were loaded onto a barge along with our "tan van" and we flew in to Juneau to catch the ferry for my first, of many, 1,000 mile treks to Homer.  Along for the ride was our friend Mary Hervin, a long-time adventurer who was always up for another one!

Homer brought us many opportunities and even more amazing friends... the first of which was Bonnie Betley.  She was a nurse who volunteered at the charter school Danielle attended & I admired her sense of humor, wit and unwavering love of family & place.

Skyfari brought us into the community of horse owners & lovers...and I will always be thankful for him bringing Chris Day into my corral.  We would chat about life every day while shoveling horse shit and she generously shared her wealth of knowledge in all things horse, from feed to training.  

I was in Homer in 2003 when I found the first tumor... up to Anchorage for a biopsy & subsequent immediate lumpectomy.  It was small & she got "good margins". 

(It is here that Maureens telling ends and I attempt to do justice to the rest of her story)

PART 3

Unfortunately, the doctor must have missed something as three years later there was a fall and a fractured hip. This resulted in a hospital stay in Anchorage where the doctors discovered the breast cancer had metastasized to her bones. They gave her a 6 month prognosis. Clearly, they had no idea who they were dealing with!

Maureen always hated allowing cancer to be part of her identity- she wanted nothing to do with support groups or pink ribbons. She found and created her own support of strong, amazing people who helped her find many different treatment options over the years. She tolerated no bullshit and "fired" her doctors at the average rate of one per year. 'No' has simply never been an acceptable answer for my mother. 

For the school year of 2008/2009 Maureen and Danielle moved back to the east coast to be closer to family there and then returned to Homer in 2009. Maureen created community around her, wherever she was but she particularly poured her heart and soul into Sprout Family Services in Homer, dedicating over 10 years to serving on their board in all capacities, in person and from afar. 

She and Ed moved back to Juneau in 2015 and purchased a beautiful mid-century split level home on the beach on Douglas Island. They decided to keep as much of it as possible original- but that doesn't mean there was a lack of projects! I've never met anyone as busy as my mother. Friends call her 'the energizer bunny' and its certainly true. She poured hundreds of hours of time into that house and recruited many others to help scour second hand stores for "the perfect find" to match whatever she was working on. She was very proud of her pink kitchen :D

Overtime she found that all the stairs in that big beautiful house were too much for her and she and Ed, very unwillingly, downgraded to a bottom floor condo in Juneau. This brought her much closer in proximity to her grandkids and thus allowed her even more opportunities for projects- this time at Danielle's home! Mom was always running kids here and there, watching them in between activities, and generally helping to raise 'em up right! As well as organizing, sorting outgrown clothing and toys, and collecting new replacements.

In spring of 2022, Mom started to lose feeling and strength in her legs due to a tumor in her spine. This resulted in a medivac to Virginia Mason in Seattle, a month long hospital stay, and an entire summer of recovery and last ditch therapy attempts. Our kind and generous friends in the area housed us and took care of us and by September mom felt strong enough to come home to Juneau. 

She fought so hard to stay with us as long as she could and was so furious with the contraints of her body. Her fierce life force carried her through until the very end. She passed peacefully on the evening of February 2nd, 2023. 

PART 4

Mom did not particularly want any services or memorials- I think she intended us all to come together here. As she stated in her letter to us at the beginning, she hopes we can keep sharing the love and connections she felt so strongly in her life. If you would like, please reach out to us for a small amount of her ashes to spread somewhere meaningful and/or beautiful and then come back and tell us about it here. And please share a story/memory with us so we can all help to keep the love alive. 

She put together a playlist of some of her favorite music which we have complied on YouTube and Pandora. Please reach out for the Pandora playlist. For YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl3xYRuY22gja-bEd4We0dJd2w61CPU76

If you find you would like to donate in her memory, she requests you send any donations to Sprout Family Services at 3691 Ben Walters Lane, Suite 4, Homer AK 99603 or online at their website: www.sproutalaska.org/donate/

She will have a space in the columbarium at the Shrine of St. Therese here in Juneau if you would like to visit her there. But just as fitting a visit would be a deep breath of fresh air and a beautiful view of nature. 

"Heres to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them."