EULOGIES | Mary Blair Taylor

Georgie Greville’s memorial speech:

Hello and welcome. My name is Georgie and I am an old friend. Thank you all for being here to honor at the altar of our beloved Blair. This gathering is what she wanted- what we experience today has been guided carefully by her.

May we offer our gratitude to St Marks Church for holding us all as we hold Blair in our hearts today. We bow deeply to the Taylor Family for the love and devotion they have poured into this exquisite honoring.

To begin, I would like to lead us all in taking 3 deep breaths in order to move from our minds into the heart space. For it is from the heart that we are able to see all the brilliant facets of the wild diamond that is Mary Blair Taylor. It may help to close your eyes and place one hand over the heart in order to orient inwards. Let's inhale deeply- and exhale, moving your awareness down into your heart. Inhale deeply again, exhale down into your heart. Inhale once more, and exhale settling into the seat of truth, the throne of knowing. As we fully land here together, let us take in the magnificence of this gathering. Take a moment to look around you at all the loving presence in this room. This is a container of nonjudgement and forgiveness- a place of healing and wholeness for both ourselves and each other. May we all embody this sense of freedom and peace.

Athena and Smokey, this is a room full of unconditional love that is here to nourish, protect and support you. During the service, we will be passing around a green book that will contain the names and contacts of all gathered to serve as a lifetime resource.

Within this gathering is also a sacred circle of women, forged in fire, who are here to connect you to the shining essence of your incredible mother. Together, we form an intact root system- know that we are here for you, now and always.

Blair and I became friends at around 12 years old, right at the initiatory threshold of womanhood. As I have told Athena and Smokey, our friendship was a crucial anchor to the turbulent weather of adolescence. We shared so many firsts- first blood, first doc martens, first bra, first shaving of the legs, first kiss, first boyfriend. As the punishing weight of the cultural male gaze descended on us and our bodies, we took refuge on our own private island of radical joy, where we drove around blasting Alice in Chains, Bad Brains and Fugazi from mixtapes, stayed up late watching Twin Peaks, ate whatever we wanted, and dressed as if we were Delia’s models while speaking our secret language of high weirdness and sublime hilarity. Blair had this kindred language with so many of us- irreverent humor overflowing with delicious inside jokes, inappropriate hijinks, gross out humor and made up slang. Later in her life and career, as she became this friend, partner in crime and guide to so many- she would tell the artists she worked with to not give critics any power- to always remember that their real audience is their friends. She knew full well that authenticity is the highest power.

Over the last few years, Blair and I connected deeply on the teachings of Mary Magdalene. In a patriarchal world that is still marginalizing women, queer and racialized folks at every turn, the story of Mary Magdalene roots us back to and confirms all humans' inherent equality and divinity as creators. The gospel of Mary teaches that no one is born into shame, and that we are all here to embrace being fully human and fully divine. Meaning our lives are all as complicated as they are beautiful and that the awareness of both allows us to access our purpose here, our specific blueprint. We are here to combine our unique lived experience with our inherent gifts into an offering that is in service of the collective.

As we know, Blair was blessed with luminous gifts and her offerings were many. Our Bowie-eyed, nonconformist, Taurus creatrix bombshell sailed through this world at 7 knots blasting Prince, the course navigated only by her mighty, renegade heart. With the wind in her hair, she fluidly embodied the archetypes of muse, beloved daughter, loyal friend, devoted sister, sage curator, pirate aphrodite, transmuting snake woman, selfless preserver, zen mystic, high fashion crone, lover, partner and midwife…all while wielding intrepid grace and beyond human strength…Blair was equal parts gritty and divine, the perfect balance of naughty and classy.

In her saint-like devotion to the transformative power of art, she inspired and nurtured artists, guiding them in birthing their highest visions. Unafraid of the shadow realms, she was one that could look at complicated, dark and subversive work, and with the power of imagination, sensitivity and compassion, deftly locate the magic within. In her writing, she could tease out the mystery within the mystery, weaving fantastical and empathic word landscapes that captured the full spectrum of a work. She was able to reveal the cathedral surrounding the altar piece.

Blair also embodied the divine feminine in her parenting of Athena and Smokey, witnessing and supporting each to become the artist of their own lives. She did the vital inner work required to find out what blocked her in order to meet her kids and their specific needs in a place of friendship, joy and respect that allowed their sovereign expression to bloom.

From Blair’s own words in an essay on non-coercive parenting:

“Everywhere we go in life, threat of retribution or failure is meant to keep us in line and on track. To let go of that feels like free-fall, but only at first. I don’t want to be a cool, permissive mom. I want to be a soft, openhearted mom with knowledge to offer and, even more so, a grounded ear to listen. I want to accept them as they are: deserving of boundless love. It’s not that I will sponsor their bad decisions, but rather that in flowing with them and offering my steady support, they can come to see their mistakes for what they offer - not to me, but to them.

There is another adage that I do find helpful: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I want a world where we desire to ask a million questions of those we love, drawing them out together as they grow. I want a world where we police each other less, where we pledge goodness out of nothing but our own volition. I want a world for my kids where they develop their intuition and pull benevolence from their own hearts. I want a world where Athena and Smokey define the boundaries that they truly need, not just the fear-based ones that I might require. It starts with the small, immediate stuff, and it fans outward all around us from there, like the infinite Taoist web of which everything in the universe is an integral part.”

May we all uphold these wishes in this full witnessing. And may we all speak our truth in honor of Blair.

I will now conclude with an excerpt from Thunder, Perfect Mind in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene:

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple.

I am the utterance of my name.

Now please, if you would repeat after me:

HAIL MARY BLAIR!

What is remembered lives.

A poem Charlotte and Blair loved together (source of Blair’s love of the word shampoo?)

Left: a painting by one of my students, Right: Blair’s “response painting”- part of the Make.Shift gallery collaborative kid’s show, (2022?)- Nora

She was a talented painter and I wish she had painted more. Her watercolors were especially beautiful.

Nora & Rachel’s memorial speech:

Nora: When Blair moved to Bellingham in 2017, it took only our first meeting for me to fall in love with her the way everyone who met her did. Rachel and I were already friends. We had kids around the same time and made it through long nights together by sharing books and texting each other articles at 3 a.m. to read ourselves back to sleep. We named our text thread Insomniacs Book Club.

Rachel: Set on wooing Blair with my and Nora’s love language, we invited her to join our very exclusive two person book club. The subsequent years-long conversation was the heart of our friendship. We read books and discussed. We walked and talked and digressed. We shared histories. We languished in summers, shivered and knit and made fires in winters. We watched our four kids frolic and fight on muddy beaches. We were never not in conversation. Our text thread went off incessantly. After many edits and evolving inside jokes, our “insomniac’s book club” thread became “fleurdelis emoji Momsluts forward slash Catmoms Berkclerb exclamation point fleurdelis emoji.” We were Berkclerb.

Nora: One spring, Blair invited a group of her friends —many of whom didn’t know each other—for a weekend on the Oregon coast. Beforehand, she wrote and sent us all short bios of each other. She was so hyped on her friends and wanted us to see each other the way she saw us: as extraordinary. She was a naturally gifted writer, with a voice that was both intimate and refined. Revisiting those bios now, I’m struck by how clearly she saw each of us. Each one feels like a blessing. When I read mine, I imagine her placing her hands on my head, closing her eyes, and offering it up as a protective spell.

Rachel: The hardest thing about writing this is that nothing feels minor enough to leave out. I will never recover from how badly I miss the years when we were in the same place at the same time, and what a rare experience it felt to me, even in the moment, to have that kind of friendship. I loved the three of us so much that I was often overcome by this weird sense of pre-nostalgia. Those were our best times, and I knew it, in real time. Sometimes I would feel so lucky it hurt.

As Blair’s cancer returned and she lost her ability to speak with ease, and as her day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour, bodily freedom diminished, her mind seemed to expand in every direction at once. She leaned into an empowered and collaborative relationship with her children, while practicing a Buddhist-like shedding of everything that she loved most and considered her own; she devoured everything she could read about death while planning a wedding and sending us photos of her dreamy, gothic wedding dress; where most people would have given up, Blair went ahead and fell in love and began building a life in Maine, with Mike, Athena and Smokey, twin cats, a rescue dog, all the chaos that made her so so happy.

And as for us three, so much had changed, but the dynamic of Berkclerb somehow hadn’t changed at all. We were always there for each other.

Nora: In April 2022, the three of us sat on her parents’ deck in coastal Maine, looking out at the water. Blair was exhausted, dragging around an IV pole, administering antibiotics around the clock. Death often felt like the silent fourth member of our chat, sometimes peaceful, sometimes looming, but we rarely spoke so directly about it. That day, she spoke with unusual clarity about death. Without having planned to, I started recording our conversation as a voice memo on my phone. I often struggled to understand her speech in the last few years—Rachel was a little better at it. Now I’ve listened to this recording over and over, grateful to have it. Some grief rituals happen unexpectedly, and for me, it has been replaying her words until I understand each one. Blair shared how she had faced her own mortality so many times that she had come to accept it. She spoke about her fierce desire to stay alive for her children, whom she loved so completely. As for herself, though, she felt gratitude—for a life full of adventure, learning, art, beauty, heartbreak, love, motherhood. Through tears, she told us she felt her life had been full enough. And in classic Momsluts Berkclerb form, we balanced the heavy with the light. Of the 24 minutes I recorded, a good chunk was dedicated to a detailed description of the dress she wore to Elton John’s birthday party. This visit was the last time the three of us were together in one place.

Rachel: I have this morose but deeply comforting daydream I keep drifting into: I am sitting on a porch with my beloveds, like we were back on this day in April of 2022, but in a future where our hair is greyer and crow’s feet deeper. In it, I imagine future us, still talking shit, still picking apart layers of love and sex and art, still passing around books.

One of the last books Blair sent me was called “Concerning the Future of Souls.” I never started reading while she was alive, and I hesitated before picking it up the other day. I thought it would be a serious collection of essays on death, but it was not what I expected. I fell right into conversation with Blair. I told her my favorite parts, and I wondered if she’d have gotten all the references that were over my head.

Now I recall what it was like to listen to her thoughts on books, her hilarious hot takes on art and fashion, and I think about times she would say that in another life she wanted to be a monk with only a bed, a chair and a desk, where she could just write... which is how I like to picture her now.

This tiny chapter from that book is such a vibe, and I wish we had discussed it:

Nora: Though we had literally years to prepare, the end was jarringly sudden. In the weeks following, I wished I had thought to ever ask her “What should we do without you?” Writing this, struggling to find the words, I turned to Blair over and over in my mind. “Can you look at this? Can you do some edits? Can you just write it for me?” Blair’s own words about losing Kiki now feel like they describe our loss of her, too. Like a map she left us, for how to carry a grief this big.

“Ironically, escape hatches are easier to locate without the glare of sunlight. I guess you find the hatch doors only with your fingertips. I mourn my young life with her as much as I mourn losing her. I miss being her buddy. I miss her being my familiar. I still don’t feel reset and likely never will. She teaches me now that loss and pain are not bumps in the road, they are the whole road. The vehicle is love.”

Charlotte’s memorial speech:

Wing: “Yes we can discuss which one or both of us gets to be totally unable to remain composed in front of a crowd.”

Charlotte: “I’m voting for both.”

Blair

Blair was my younger sister. Just under five years younger than me, to be precise. She was born at Mount Sinai hospital here in New York City, around the corner from where we lived at the time, on 98th Street and Fifth Avenue. I remember feeling a sort of hushed sense of awe when my dad went to visit my mom in the hospital after she was born—children were not allowed to visit, so Wing and I stayed home. We knew that this new baby was going to be a big deal. It was the calm before the beautiful storm. And then Blair came into our lives.

If I’m being honest I have to admit that I was a middling older sister during Blair’s early years. Wing and I were closer to one another in age, and we busily alternated between playing “rock band” with our stuffed animals and beating the crap out of each other. We probably didn’t pause all that often to include her. I do remember being sort of amazed by the way that, between the ages of 4 and 8, she subsisted solely on a diet of Lucky Charms, Spaghetti-Os, and orange juice. And she had an early flare for taking clothes to the next level just with the way she wore them. I remember a pink plaid shorts-and-tank-top outfit that was transcendent on her 9-year-old self.

But when I think about our sister relationship—where it truly began—my mind always returns to one particular trip we took, to England. I was 20, she was 15. Blair and I and our parents were staying in a village called Wylie, in Wiltshire. It was early July in one of the hottest, driest summers England has ever had. We all took walks in the mornings and then retreated to our thatch-roofed cottage to watch Wimbledon on all 4 BBC channels and escape the midday heat. Blair and I shared a bedroom, and we would talk, and talk, and talk. And I remember that I was aware, even in the moment, that somethingextraordinary was happening. I was waking up to the realization that my sister was funny, insightful, kind, just an exceptional person. It was like going to college and staying up all night talking about absolutely everything with women you know are going to be your lifelong friends. It was like falling in love. Everything she said surprised and delighted me.

Here is an example: Once, we were discussing favorite words. And Blair, without hesitation, said her favorite word was “shampoo.” I felt an initial shock. “Shampoo”? Seriously? Like Head & Shoulders? Yes, she insisted. Then she explained: It seems like a quotidian word. But as you repeat it, you realize it is exotic, strange, lovely. Shampoo. Then of course once she had said it I realized she was right—it is a gorgeous word. And the shock of that discovery was both funny and sublime. That was Blair. She knew exactly where the aesthetic edge was. She could create delight, make things cool and exciting.

It sometimes seemed as if Blair was made of air and light and everyone knew it. Once, we were driving together near Lake Tahoe. We had made a morning excursion to see the lake with its beautiful blue water, and we were heading back to the nearby town of Truckee where we were staying. Blair was driving, and we got pulled over for going 50 in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. Then, the cop asked Blair for her license, and … she didn’t have it. And had no idea where it was. Driving without a license. Double the speed limit. But she seemed so sincerely surprised and apologetic, and she also made it seem as if the cop was sort of in on the joke. He let us go.

It was as if Blair had a force field made of charm. I felt lucky to share it with her. Fate just dropped her into our family. She was my sister — or “meinschwester” as we used to call each other.

A number of years ago, a friend who knows us both well asked me what it was like to have a sister who was so different from me. And I was just … really confused by the question. At first I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. I don’t remember what I said in the moment, but I really thought about that question later. I suppose Blair and I were different. Even very different, in some ways. (It’s possible I’m more conventional, for example.) But our connection to one another was so primary, our understanding of one another was so immediate, our conversations were so nourishing. I really never focused on those differences.

Over our years of being sisters, Blair and I shared everything. Art, literature, romantic ups and downs, motherhood—ultimately, we even shared cancer. I wish with all of my heart that neither one of us had ever joined that particular club. But since she had to, I’m glad I did too. It was one more way in which we understood each other; we both spoke that dark language. Blair and I agreed that we were ambivalent about upbeat cancer euphemisms like “fighter” and “survivor.” What’s wrong with being a “patient?” we would ask. Patience is the name of the game when it comes to those grueling treatments.

The last few years were so hard for Blair. But they unfolded yet more dimensions of her character. It turns out she was not made of air and light after all. She was made of something much, much tougher. And the focus of all of her love, and strength, and grit, was her two children, Smokey and Athena. I have been finding myself thinking of various cliches to try to express how much Blair would have endured to be with her girls. “She would have crawled on her knees across the desert.” “She would have swum across the ocean.” I mean, she would have. But those metaphors conjure visions of someone by herself conquering an imaginary, remote landscape. Blair’s great feat was being present with others—specifically, with her girls. She had to overcome a thousand major and minor impediments every damn day to be there and share love and cheer with Athena and Smokey. I witnessed it but can only barely begin to fathom what it took.

We all have the privilege of being left with a lot of Blair’s writings. She was an incredible writer. Your program has a booklet with a beautiful essay that she wrote about love and loss. I wanted to end by sharing something my mom found this past week when going through old papers. Blair wrote this when she was six years old—before her big sister had begun to comprehend how wise she was:

Space Shuttle Challenger

On January 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger took off and exploded. I for one was very sad because I had hope and people, all people as well as me, had hope within them on that day, that time, that feeling inside. Love is what I felt and sorrow.

Blair Taylor

Grade II