An Ordinary, Magical Life

The Toronto Star shows how a modest life can have a huge impact.

A team of 14 Toronto Star reporters assisted columnist Catherine Porter by interviewing more than 130 friends and relatives of the late and previously unheralded Shelagh GordonShelagh Gordon to show how a modest life can have a huge impact.

Gordon, whose last job was selling real estate ads, whose avocation was brightening the lives of everyone she knew and who died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm at age 55, "was soap-and-water beautiful, vital, unassuming and funny without trying to be," wrote Porter, who said it was like she met Gordon at her funeral.

But my sharpest impression of Shelagh that day, as mourners in black pressed around me, was of her breathtaking kindness. Shelagh was freshly-in-love thoughtful.

If she noticed your boots had holes, she'd press her new ones into your arms. When you casually admired her coffeemaker, you'd wake up to one of your own. A bag of chocolates hanging from your doorknob would greet you each Valentine's Day, along with some clippings from the newspaper she thought you'd find interesting.

Porter had been attracted to Gordon by the obituary her family had placed in the Star.

"Our world is a smaller place today without our Shelagh, who left us suddenly on Monday, February 13, 2012," the obit said. "Our rock, our good deed doer, our tradition keeper, our moral compass."

You'll have to read the entire column for details about Gordon's love of animals, her klutziness, her quirkiness and her role as an aunt...

Not a regular, see-you-at-Christmas and Thanksgiving aunt. Rather a come-to-my-house-in-your-pyjamas-on-Saturday-morning-and-drink-fireman's-tea-with-me aunt. (Fireman's tea translated to much milk, little caffeine.)

Some of Shelagh's friends feel terrible they didn't get a chance to say goodbye and tell her how much she meant to them. There is a lesson there.

For, as I see it, Shelagh herself didn't need to say how much they meant to her. Her daily life was a kiss of love.

This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer. She was the director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers before she passed away in 2015.