The Life Sketch of Emily McGarry

First of all, I want to acknowledge the many griefs here today in this room. This is not a normal loss. Usually, they say grief is deep because we have loved and lost much. Mental illness and addiction can muddy those waters. I want to mention very quickly that I am not here to degrade or denigrate any of the struggles my sister had, because there is no shame in any of them. I will never look down on her. But I feel like I cannot tell a life sketch without acknowledging that they were part of her story.

There can be grief for what was and also for what was not; for the ways she may not have shown up, and also for the ways we may not have shown up for her. We may be holding all of those things simultaneously today. I want to acknowledge that and honor that grief.

But I don't want those struggles to become the defining story of Emily. They were part of her story, but they weren't the whole of who she was. And most of all, I want to honor the true spirit of my sister.

There were so many beautiful facets to Emily. She was a card shark and a pool shark. She was fun and often the life of the party. She was also a rebel, irreverent, and a partner in crime. She perhaps had the biggest heart of anyone I know. She was a questioner, a fighter, and a lover. She was a fiercely protective mama bear, and her meanness usually came out in defense of those she loved. She had the voice of an angel and was a brilliant musician and artist, even with very little formal training. She could do everything from drawing and painting to flower arranging. She was a sports fan and a sportswoman. She dearly loved fishing with her dad and camping in the outdoors, especially with her girls. She loved being around people and could make friends everywhere she went.

She was born August 4, 1977, in Provo, Utah. They moved when she was a toddler and were living in Granite, Utah, when Jon was born in 1979. After a few moves, they lived in Magna when I was born in 1981. It was there that Emily started kindergarten at Webster Elementary. In 1982, the Millers moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where she attended Indian Hills Elementary. Two years later, they moved to Chubbuck, Idaho, where she finished elementary school at Tyhee Elementary, the same school her Grandpa Glen Briscoe attended as a child.

She was nine years old when our little sister Elizabeth passed away. It was here on Noah Street that we shared a room. We couldn't have been more different. She was all about fun, and I was all about rules. We fought a lot and had to take turns cleaning our respective sides of the room. I remember tattling on her for having a song with a bad word on it playing on the radio in our room. In retrospect, maybe I deserved to be fought with.

She did forgive me enough to establish a little tradition with me. There's a Janeen Brady song from the 1980s that's just a minute long. If you could indulge me, I'd like to recite it:

"She's about this high, she's taller than I. Sometimes she helps me tie my shoes. She's my sister, and she plays with me, and I hope that she is glad that I'm her sister too.

She's about this high, she's smaller than I. Sometimes I help her tie her shoe. She's my sister, and she plays with me, and I hope that she is glad that I'm her sister too."

Our bedroom was filled with a lot of music and fun, especially after she got a karaoke machine. One year, while we were waiting for Christmas Eve dinner and the Osmonds' "Sleigh Ride" was playing, she made up a silly dance for us to do while we waited. Even to this day, I can't hear that song without thinking about that silly dance.

That was Emily. She could turn an ordinary moment into a memory.

She always seemed to be good at makeup, while I only knew how to dress like a boy. As I got older, she decided I wasn't sooo embarrassing, and we even spent a lot of time playing a card game called Speed.

She attended Hawthorne Junior High and Highland High School. She was involved in choir and the swim team and participated in a play with the drama department. I remember she played one of the Greek goddesses and had excellent comedic timing. She graduated from Highland in 1995.

After high school, she tried out for and was offered a spot in Up with People, but she couldn’t afford the cost. Instead, my mom helped her enroll for summer term at Ricks College. She stayed at Heritage Manor on the first floor. I remember visiting her there and thinking she was so grown-up and rebellious because there was a copy of the R-rated movie Bad Boys in their apartment.

She ended up moving back to Pocatello after a year or so and married David McGarry in 1997. I was one of her bridesmaids. After getting married, they moved to Las Vegas, where she discovered one of the greatest loves of her life: being a mother.

Brooke McGarry was born in January 1998, and at that point, I can't remember a greater gift I had ever been given. Becoming an aunt was absolutely magical. And it was an extra bonus for a little sister who had only ever gone on vacations to her grandparents' houses to get to visit a BIG city like Las Vegas and meet my new niece.

I think she liked escaping the small town and enjoyed the benefits of living in a big city. I remember her first apartment there was near the Rio, and the first time I drove into Vegas, K-Ci & JoJo's "All My Life" was playing on the radio. It's a song I now always associate with Brookesters, I even sang it to her while changing her diaper.

While she was in Vegas, I remember Emily got a job counting chips for one of the casinos. Over the next few years, she moved back and forth between Idaho and Vegas. She was my matron of honor when I got married in May of 2001, when she was very pregnant with Hailey, who was born a few months later in Vegas. Hailey had the big eyes of a Disney character, and it turns out your heart can be big enough to love two nieces to pieces, more than you could ever imagine. She eventually moved back to Idaho for good, and in 2002, our little—and I do mean little—baby Kortnie was born in Pocatello.

She worked a few different jobs in Poky, once as a flagger for road construction and another time with Mike at a call center.

In 2009, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer after a lot of doctors had ignored her complaints about her symptoms. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy treatments. When she started losing her gorgeous hair, I offered to shave my head with her, and it was one of my very favorite experiences that I shared with her.

Although we were incredibly grateful that she went into remission, cancer left her with lasting physical challenges. She had constant nerve pain in the cold, and her ileostomy bag made it hard to sleep more than a few hours at a time because she would have to wake up and empty it. I cannot imagine trying to stay put together under those conditions. She was heartbroken when she found out her ileostomy surgery couldn't be reversed.

I remember Ellie going in to help Emily change her ileostomy bags and coming out saying how she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, as Emily called Ellie her "mini nurse."

Her next ten years were a little bumpy, and I don't have all the details, nor do we need all of them. But this is where addiction and mental health issues come into her story.

She did serve a prison sentence during this time over in Boise. On one of the occasions I visited her there, I had a personal revelation about why God gave us families. As I watched inmates come into the visiting room, I saw, time and time again, women rushing into the waiting arms of visiting family members. These women were rough and tumble, with lots of tattoos and missing teeth. One even looked like she had just shaved her facial hair. I felt like I was witnessing something sacred. Families aren't so that we can look perfect on the outside, or so that we all learn to think and believe the right things. Families are a gift so that, hopefully, everyone has someone who would rush to them and collapse into their arms in a big hug. That is the main way God gives us to feel his love. And I was humbled that it took the inmates and their families to teach me that.

The years following her release were difficult. She struggled to stay sober and stable and was homeless for a period of time, and I honestly don't think she was ever able to stay on a good combination of medications for more than a few months.

In the fall of 2021, she moved in with me for six months. We went through lots of instant coffee and what was perhaps one of the most illegal packages ever shipped to my home: a big bag of very cheap, skunky weed that we asked her to smoke in the garage. (It helped her manage her chronic pain.)

In 2022, she moved into a disabled group home in Pocatello, where she lived until her move to Rexburg on October 29, 2026.

I rushed over to visit her that night after dinner. I got to pour my heart out to her about some of my hard things, and we laughed and cried together. I told her I would be back, that I wanted to read the Emma Lion series out loud to her, and that I was going to bring my cards so we could play Speed and I could kick her ass. That made her laugh, too, because she could hardly even push her nurse call button.

During her last week at Temple View Care Center, my daughter Ellie was able to care for her as part of her CNA shifts, including one day when she was with her for four hours straight. After a shift during which Ellie helped her shower and braided her hair, Ellie said that she wanted to show her that even if she had poor health, She could be well cared for and live with dignity.

That last week, my parents visited her every day. My dad watched her beloved Broncos game with her on Sunday. They had just visited on Tuesday, when my dad massaged her feet, and Ellie came in to check on her.

I will always be grateful that Ellie was there on November 3, 2026, when Emily passed away. She wasn't alone or with a stranger. She was being cared for by someone she loved when she took her last breath on this earth.

Some people here never knew my sister when she was so full of energy and life. She was vivacious. She was hilarious.

I know that to honor my sister's memory, I will be doing two things. First, I will try to live my life filled with more fun and laughter. And second, I want to have a big heart like she had.

One of the pieces of art she made in the last few years was titled Hard ta Love. It's a piece of art that's really hard for me to look at. But I think it says something about Emily. When she could, she used that big heart to love people others might have found hard to love.

I wanted to close with my semi-testimony.

After having gone through a faith crisis, I reconstructed something of an uncertain Christianity. In the words of the theologian Rachel Held Evans, "I am a Christian because the story of Jesus is still the story I'm willing to risk being wrong about."

And after what I've been through, I can't say that I KNOW anything about the afterlife anymore. But I can tell you what I hope. And what I believe.

I believe that God loves my sister very much, more than we could ever imagine. I believe that He knows her heart, her challenges, and her strength more than we ever could. I believe that He has weighed her and not found her wanting, but has rushed to her and collapsed into her arms so she could feel the love she always doubted because of her trials in this life.

May we live our lives so that others feel God's love through us in that same way.

ITNOJC, amen.