The spirit of Keir Marticke '06 seemed present in the aisles of a local drugstore in Hudson, Ohio, as four of her closest friends recounted their memories of Keir on Saturday afternoon.
Keir died in her sleep on Oct. 4 while studying abroad, but her friends did not focus on her death as they shopped for the glue, glitter pens and stickers they would use to make collages of Keir for her memorial service the following day.
Instead, they recalled with laughter and fondness their memories of four years with Keir at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson.
Mackenzie Keyser said she and her friends had probably amassed more than 300 photos of Keir for the collages. Keyser had been flipping through old photographs since the moment she found out about Keir's death - for her, making the collages took on a therapeutic role.
"We're just going to decorate the posters and make it really happy," Keyser said.
Keyser said she remembered vividly the girls' "V.I.P. dance parties" in high school, where she, Keir and their friends would drink wine, watch "Sex and the City" and dance in their living rooms - no boys allowed, she added.
Yet Keyser said she was always impressed by Keir's ability to balance her fun-loving side with her serious work ethic. "She was limitless, ambitious, goal-oriented - nothing would get in her way," Keyser said.
Keyser recalled how Keir, a dedicated lacrosse player who played for Brown's varsity team, had injured her knee while playing lacrosse her senior year of high school.
"She had to have reconstructive surgery. But she was captain of the team, so she just kept going to watch the practices, did rehab and went to the gym every day so there'd be no other reason she couldn't play once her knee had healed," Keyser said.
But Keyser said Keir did not reserve this level of dedication for sports alone. Keir's intense passion also shone through in her journals and poetry - she was a prolific writer.
Allison McCarthy remembered constantly finding scraps of paper that Keir had used to jot down phrases and lines she would later use in her poetry.
This mix of confident athleticism and quiet self-reflection could even be seen when Keir drove around town in her Durango, which she named "Ringo the Rango," friend Emily Gillig said.
"She was a little girl driving a big, silver Durango listening to Ani DiFranco," Gillig said with a laugh.
But despite the breadth of Keir's interests, all four friends agreed that the constant in everything Keir did was her intensity.
"In every aspect of her life she wanted to excel. She wasn't OK with average," said Mary Wutz.
Keir's older brother, Drew, echoed that sentiment: "You could always tell how strongly Keir felt about everything she did."
That might be why even though Keir's friends and family described Keir's eyes as "hazel," "piercing green" and "big and brown," one aspect of their description remained consistent: their "intensity."
"If I had to use a word to describe Keir, it would be intensity," Drew Marticke said. Even back in middle school, when Keir would do arts-and-crafts projects or play her brothers in street hockey, Drew said it was always clear how hard she was trying.
This intensity for everything she undertook only increased as Keir got older. In fact, it was because of this intensity that Keir's family encouraged her to continue her neuroscience studies abroad in Australia for a semester.
"I was always telling her she needed to chill out," Drew said. "We wanted her to experience the fun-loving culture down there, and I think she did."
Larissa Ezzio '06 played lacrosse with Keir and was with Keir at her grandmother's house in Cape Cod the day she left for the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
"Keir couldn't wait to go abroad," she said. "She's different from me in the fact that where I would be really hesitant to even go abroad, she just looked at it as this intense experience, this new thing, new environment."
Ezzio said Keir seemed extremely happy in Australia: "I've landed on my feet by way of a forward role... sorta like my first surfing excursion: I got thrashed around a ton, but it was all good fun," Keir wrote to Ezzio in a July 29 e-mail.
Ezzio said Keir's experience with surfing was representative of the way Keir approached every aspect of her life.
"She would go surfing for hours even though she'd never surfed before. That's just an example of how when she wanted to do something, she actually did it," Ezzio said.
"The reality of life is that people who are too passionate about one thing are no fun," Drew said. "My sister was into a lot of things. She was an adventurer in her activities and her travels."
This sense of adventure took Keir to four continents in two months - the last was Asia, when Keir and other American students from the University of New South Wales went to Thailand and Vietnam for their spring break.
Drew said Keir's father had served in Vietnam during the war and while he didn't know if that was why Keir chose to travel there, he thought Keir was influenced by their father's experience. In fact, the journal she was keeping while in Vietnam was written as though addressed to him.
In one of her entries, Keir described sitting in a small café in Saigon while observing the unfamiliar culture that surrounded her.
"This week I can tally an ability to say 'thank you' in 31 languages," she wrote. "What else do you need to know? In Vietnam maybe 'I'm sorry.'"
As Keir sat and watched a young waitress serve her mint leaves and shrimp rolled in rice, she wrote in her journal, "I am not in her country to buy things at a fourth of their Western price. I want to know about her life, her first kiss, her father."
Though it is unclear where Keir contracted her viral infection, she passed away in her sleep in Vietnam from acute heart failure caused by double hemorrhagic pneumonia. Since the illness took over quickly and with no obvious symptoms, the news of Keir's death came as a shock to her friends and family.
Ezzio, like Keir's friends from high school, said she found she could only forget the pain by remembering what a beautiful person Keir had been. The day after she received the news of Keir's death, she went to the Providence Animal Rescue League, where Keir loved to volunteer, she said. On the verge of tears, Ezzio asked if they had any kittens to adopt.
Ezzio spent the next several hours sitting and playing with a litter of five kittens. By the time she left, she had adopted a small, white-faced kitten with gray hair that darkened as it went down her back.
Though the kitten is still too small for Ezzio to take home, Ezzio has already named her - Divi.
"It's short for 'divinitas,' which is Latin for 'one's divine nature,'" Ezzio said.
Ezzio said the word meant a lot to Keir, who believed in remaining true to her divine nature in every aspect of her life. The day before Keir left for Australia, she had the word "divinitas" written below her bellybutton in henna to see how it would look. She intended to have it permanently tattooed there when she returned from abroad.
Even though Keir never got to put the lasting mark of "divinitas" on her skin, her passion for life and pursuit of her "divine nature" made a permanent mark on those who were lucky enough to know her - in the name of a kitten, the glitter of a collage and the fond memories of her friends and family.
