Before they met, Lisa and Elizabeth had heard of each other’s work and were encouraged to seek the other out. Lisa refused because she didn't want to study Tai Chi with a white girl practicing a Chinese martial art. Elizabeth didn't seek Lisa out either, as Lisa discovered later, that E didn’t want Japanese shiatsu from a white girl. So you see they were equally matched from the beginning, even in their mutual snobbery.
They were a match in so many ways. They came to each other with this goal already in place: to live authentically and by that I mean they wanted to walk lightly on the earth, live as cleanly as possible, and leave here clear as a bell, having made a footprint that had impact and value for the earth and for those who came after. It became the basis of their partnership. In that partnership they viewed everything in terms of how they could be of service, to each other, to their girls, to Mochi to the school, to Lisa’s clients, to their extended families, to the watershed, to neighborhood.
They both wanted to find the holes all over their lives, and fill them. They wanted to create, they wanted to build and they wanted to leave things better. They were even stewards to this 111-year-old building. Some of you may have entered here only to find E on one of her research jags. It could be that she had researched paint from the turn of the last century one day and would produce paint chips when Lisa arrived home from work from 1903 and the next day Lisa would come home to find her making her own brush she replicated from the same era to use with that paint. The results were always outstanding.
There are many aspects to Elizabeth as you all know, and here are just a few: naturalist, artist, student and teacher, and the proudest part of her life, being mother to these two beautiful, kind, smart girls. She was simply happy to be in their presence, even while she bitched at them, about homework, punctuality, cleaning the house or bigger life issues. At the end of the day, she would say to Lisa: THAT was really fucking hard but it went well didn’t it? She meant that because always, it meant time logged in with Emi and Chloe and while she might have lost 80 battles, she had won one and had laid the ground for the others she planned to win later. Her goal always was this: that they were educated, self sufficient and humane.
Always practical in her application of her interests and always, eventually, inclusive, some might say she made people jump through hoops to prove themselves worthy of inclusion.
As she worked on any of the projects in her life, it was not to the exclusion of others. Each informed the next and they became synergistic…her previous experience had to be represented. If she was vegetable gardening she, of course, had to make certain to include native and companion plants to attract the pollinators to pollinate the vegetables. Everything was a whole system rather than a piece.
Not many of you know this but Elizabeth went to tracking school. Of course we don’t know what tracking school is. It’s survival school, how to live outdoors starting with nothing, how would you find your own food, track animals, build your own shelter, create your own weapons and survive. Fast forward to bodyguard school where Elizabeth did a three-year certification in the art of personal protection. It was the same school that, in the mountains of Virginia, trained CIA and FBI agents. She learned how to T-bone a car, protect a celebrity, and assess a property’s resources so she could defend. She chose not to pursue that because she found it too disruptive to her family and her school. Instead, she became one of the instructors there, teaching both the martial arts and listening aspects of Tai Chi to budding FBI and CIA agents.
She wasn’t easy. She told Lisa when they met that she needed a girl with some meat on her bones, a girl she couldn't break. Part of the fun of her life was that she’d give a little push and dare a push back. Lisa learned to see the little sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes and she’d know that E was about to create trouble. When she received the push back, she’d break out into gleeful laughter.
She made everything a good time, even the path to Enlightenment. Where some take the most direct and serious path up the mountain to Enlightenment, E, forever, the ever practicing Taoist, meandered up the mountain while stopping for a beer, and having a really good time along the way.
At the end of this service, grab an orange and some barley tea as the service and look skyward to toast Elizabeth on the next part of her journey. Lisa, Emi, Chloe, Judy and Dean, and the Hish’s – too numerous to name – thank you for being here today.
Let’s continue after this day to tell the stories of Elizabeth’s life. She will be missed.
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