Courtesy of Ellie Greenberg

All week, since learning about Meg Langfur’s death, my mind has been roaming around the past 47 years, searching for memories of her.

I see her as an adorable preschooler playing outside her two-story home in a Denver suburb. I see her as a five-year-old in her bulky life jacket being sheltered by her mother as our rafts bounce their way through the rapids on the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument. I see her camping and shooing away the flies. I see her dressed up at a children’s birthday party. I see her in a stylish, long, teenage dress at one of our holiday extended-family dinners.

I see her running and walking. I see her reading. I can almost hear her talking.

As she grew older, she became more and more amazing.

She was always bright and articulate. She was purposeful, always ready to learn, explore, and share what she was up to. But she was not always easy to know, and we sometimes struggled to make our relationship work, not unlike the common awkward conversations between people of two different generations.

She was a good student in high school and went off to the University of Michigan with thoughts of becoming a doctor. She was deeply disappointed at not being given a chance at medical school, so she turned her attention to learning more about science and becoming a science teacher. Once she made this career decision, she found her way to a lab at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and did important work in chemistry.

Over the years, she earned a graduate degree, bought a home, loved her dogs, took her students to see Scotland Yard, participated in the March of the Living to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, attended the Obama inauguration, and vacationed in the Bahamas. And she became the steady rock for her family.

When Meg’s 60-year-old father died from cancer in 1989, she took it very hard. He had occupied a very special place in her heart, and she in his. He had advised her not to become a teacher, based on his experience teaching math in the Bronx, but she became a teacher anyway. He had left teaching and opened a construction business, which became hers to manage when he died. She took it on in a remarkably competent way: completing his projects, taking care of all financial arrangements, and, finally, closing his very successful company. Later, she called it a “gift” that he gave to her, to “finish his life’s work.”

Only four years later, in 1993, Meg was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thus began her 15-year journey in search of trustworthy doctors, effective treatment, and good health. She fought long and hard to live.

In 2003, tragedy again struck the Langfur family when Meg’s older sister, Sue, died suddenly. Sue had had a difficult life, fighting weight gain and diabetes. As her career stalled in New York, she returned to Denver, where she found great pleasure working for hospice, an organization that had been very helpful when their father was dying.

Sue’s death came hard, and as we gathered for the graveside service, it became clear that Meg and her brother, Hal, would have to take responsibility for their mother. But Hal lived a continent away, so when Roz, their mother, became ill, the caregiving responsibilities fell primarily on Meg.

Meg and Roz leaned on one another as life dealt them multiple blows. Together they searched for an effective treatment for Meg’s cancer, even as Roz sustained her own heart attacks, hospitalizations, and countless medical appointments. They traveled to Houston often, where they coordinated Meg’s treatments with her Denver doctors, and they even mustered up enough energy to go out to an occasional dinner with my son, Michael, who was a childhood friend of Meg’s. Dining out was a special treat for both of them.

It was Meg who was there to help when Roz sold her stylish, contemporary home and moved to a more modest townhome. It was Meg who was there when Roz gave up the townhome and reduced her many beautiful belongings to just the few that would fit into an independent living apartment. It was Meg who greeted the friends who spent the final hours with Roz in 2006 as she took her last labored breaths. And it was Meg who hosted the shiva (mourning) guests in her home after the graveside service.

With Bert, Roz, and Sue gone, it fell to Hal and Meg to maintain close family ties. They talked often and took every opportunity they could to spend time together. They grew closer, and Meg told Hal what she thought about her illness and about the probability of a severely shortened life. They cried together.

In spite of knowing about her illness and following her countless hospitalizations, it still came as a shock to all of us when we got the news that Meg had died sometime during the night of April 29. It was her dear, loyal friend Rhoda who called the sheriff when Meg did not answer her phone.

Gone was a gifted teacher, a young life, a child of our holiday dinners. Of a whole family, only one now remains.