Mary Elizabeth was born on August 21st, 1986. She was number three out of what eventually turned out to be five kids: I was the oldest, then Andy, Mary Beth, John, and finally Abby.
Personalities can show themselves early, and Mary Beth's did. It wasn't long before it was obvious that she had a thing for people, particularly messing with their minds. One of dad's favorite stories (but one that Mary Beth hated) is from when she was about one year old. We were out doing something or another, and she was in her stroller. A passing lady looked down and commented how cute she was. Bending down, the lady tried talking to her with that voice so many people use when talking to a baby. Mary Beth, who couldn't even talk yet herself, simply stared back at her with a look somewhere between contempt and active loathing. The lady couldn't have recoiled any faster if Mary Beth had had yellow eyes, red skin, horns, and a forked tail. She went (nearly ran) on her way, and Mary Beth laughed, delighted. She just loved getting in peoples' heads that way.
She was someone that could walk into a room full of people and after five minutes tell you what every single person thought of every single other person. As much as she loved to tease and torment (and she was a certified master at it), she also could also use her skill at understanding people to walk them through things and raise their own understanding of themselves and her feelings. I've never met anyone else with such an innate ability to read people all the way through, and she was rarely wrong.
Mary Beth's other defining trait would probably be her voice. I don't remember what made her take up singing as more than something to do at Mass and in the shower, but at some point in early high school she joined the choir and there was no looking back. Her voice developed astonishingly quickly, and by the end of her senior year of high school she was one of the best singers in her school. Andy talks about one time he was in the basement of my parents house watching TV while she was in her bathroom singing (which was on the second floor and nearly at opposite ends of the house in all three dimensions) and she was being so loud he tried to yell at her to quiet down because he couldn't hear the TV. The problem was she couldn't hear Andy yelling at her because they were all the way across the house from each other. Her voice was just that loud to get through that distance.
Although she didn't really intend to pursue music as a career, she chose to major in Music at Texas A&M (a school admittedly not known for its music program, and I say that as someone who minored in music there myself) because she loved it so much, even though she chose to pursue graduate school in other areas. The Department of Performance Studies couldn't believe their luck to have such a talented vocalist. For the first two years she was at A&M, her vocal instructor kept referring to what they hoped to accomplish "Before you transfer to a real music school." It wasn't until her junior year came that they realized that Mary Beth was there to stay. Her senior recital, delivered just over a month before her death, was an absolute knock-out. She sang for nearly an hour in at least four different languages, and only the very last song was in English. I was unable to attend due to being in China with my medical school, but reports from everyone who was there say that she was absolutely incredible.
She was also heavily involved at St. Mary's, which is the student Catholic Church in College Station, as well as the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life. As I mentioned previously, the spiritual growth she showed over the last 6-12 months of her life were absolutely humbling and a bar I can only hope to match given the rest of my life. The outpouring of support and stories from those who knew her and her involvement in both the Church and the Pro-Life movement speak to how many lives she touched during her four years at A&M.
There's so much else to say of course. Her habits and mannerisms, particularly in how she almost had a different persona to interact with different people (especially inside out family). Her flaws and imperfections (when she was hungry, safest to keep you arms and legs away from her mouth). There's no way that even the simplest person could be adequately described in a thousand words, much less someone like Mary Beth (who was far from simple). But for all of you for whom this will be your first and possibly only exposure to her, I hope this might give you at least a glimpse of the loss you'll experience at never getting to know her. Because at the end of the day, the loss is ours, not hers. She's happier now than we can every be here on Earth. It's those of us left behind to deal with the loss who are the ones suffering.
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