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I (Sara Lindsay) am at Camp Seafarer for a month in July/August 2011 and I get a phone call from Pete. Pete is telling me that he and Paul are going to look at some house on Lake Watauga. This is dangerous because lake Watauga is near Boone, NC. A destination that draws Pete in like “free beer night” at the local pub. Knowing this means trouble, I immediately call Jamie to get the “real” story. I come to find out Jamie was actually the one that found this house and the boys had to go see it. Long story short, we purchased the lake house with Jamie & Paul, Hap & Nan, and Jamie’s parents Dan & Maureen. Jamie and I had not even seen the house, but the fact that Jamie and Paul wanted the house gave me the confidence that we were making a smart purchase. When I finally saw our Lake cabin, I knew wonderful memories were destined to be made.

While preparing for the Kindem-O’Brien week long vacation, at our cabin, in July 2012 I found myself at Costco looking at books. I’m not typically someone that reads books; really I can’t remember the last book I read. I mean, I can tear through some magazines, but books just intimidate me. Anyways, one day I found myself at Costco and was thinking about what I needed on our Lake trip and saw an aisle with books. Seeing the books made me instantly think of Jamie because she always had a new book in her hand, and it somehow inspired me to look for one that I could take to the lake. Continue Reading →

One of the most defining moments for me (Dan) about Jamie (and Paul) was to watch them go through the nightly ritual of putting Larkin and John to bed. Every evening was special for not only the kids, but also for J and Paul (if not exhausting). Merrily marching up the stairs to the bath, then into the bedroom to put on pajamas, back to the bathroom to brush teeth, followed by the highly interactive and busy sit down on the floor (or in a chair) for book reading. It was so special to watch on the video monitor from downstairs when Maureen and I were there. The end point to the evening was to walk with them in their arms and sing the same personalized nighttime lullaby that was sung to Jamie when she was their age. And just as the lights went out, Jamie would say to them “Good night my Prince and Princess of Colorado”. Colorado Avenue is the name of the street that they live on.

Coming up with names like this was a forte of Jamie. She didn’t think them through; they just emerged from her internal loving psyche. And they always conveyed a sense of joy, love and fun. Over the years, there were many. Paul is affectionately known as “Paulie Pocket.” John in his early days was “the monster” and later, “John-Boy”. Larkin started as “LuLu” and somehow morphed into the “Kapoozer”. Reagan (in utero) was “Peanut” (although Pocket may have come up with that name?). Reagan is currently known as “Rae-Rea or Reags”, but none of us believe that these are up to Jamie’s high standard of namery. J’s name for Kathryn over their many years as best friends & sisters is “Kiki or Ki” and she is still known as Aunt Ki to John and Larkin today. Douglas is and always will be “Mufasa”. Maureen is “Mamon” to her children (including Paul). Me, well I am affectionately known as “Croque Monsieur” due to its great French sounding pronunciation (This actually means grilled ham & cheese sandwich in French). I, in turn, gave her a French name as well, “Ma Petite Charcouterie” (means my little butcher shop in French, but it has such a flow to it). And then there’s the beautiful name she gave our somewhat aging car, the “Hunk-A-Junk”, always pushing us to get rid of it. Continue Reading →

Picture Above (Elyse, Maureen, and Jamie)

Good day, my sweetheart. As I (Maureen) plan a trip to Paris next month for Kathryn and me, I am seeing you in all the old familiar places, as the song goes. So many of the streets in St Germain, on the Ile St Louis, around the Musée D’Orsay, and of course your beloved Place des Vosges, are popping into view on my maps. It’s a good thing really, because the memories sharpen my senses, and enhance my anticipation. I can’t wait for Kathryn to see and walk these steps for herself, and fall in love with Paris, c’est possible, the way her big sister did. Our stay in Paris is short this time around, because we are on our merry way to Italy, and our own first-time European adventure. But I feel certain she will want to travel to France again, and this is just the beginning.

Kathryn has spoken of her longing for you to be with us, and I have to trust that you will be. After all, why would you miss an opportunity to, shall we say, direct us? I promise you I will be rushing about, seeing and tasting as much as we can. I have obsessed over selecting our hotel du charme (is there any better tourist description?) for location and atmosphere, and we are in walking distance of everything we need to see, a few blocks from the Seine, from Notre Dame, The Louvre. I remember so well, when we were walking all over Paris with Elyse that cold December nine years ago, how you were urging me to keep up the pace, saying it was good for me (poor aging Mamon). How wonderful to sit down in that restaurant, warm, tired and cozy (yes, Jamie, your two-nights-in-a-row La Maison du Jardin on Rue Vaugirard, where you fell in love with codfish, of all things, as only the French can cook it.) Continue Reading →

I (Kathryn) have no doubt that throughout the course of my life I will share many memories that I have of my sister Jamie. However, what to share first, and how to express everything she meant to me is so unbelievably difficult. I suppose it’s similar to how I felt at the funeral. There is so much that I could have said and so much that I wanted to say, but the only words I could muster were, “you were my best friend. I love you so much.” I have since tried so hard to write down just what she meant to me and what I meant to her, and describe our relationship, but I just can’t do it. I can’t put it into words. I thought I could tie a few memories together that would illustrate something about who Jamie was or the unique closeness that we shared, but that seems to be too much as well.

So a wise friend suggested that I just share random snapshot memories I have of Jamie. I cannot try to explain them or why they were so uniquely her or us, but I can share some of what I remember, in no particular order of chronology or how much each memory means to me. They’re just some of the many memories that pass through my mind every day and night.

• The night before Jamie married Paul, she stayed in my room. After all the evening’s festivities were over and we were almost certain everyone was in bed, Jamie and I (Jamie in a random dress she pulled from her suitcase, and me in a huge NY Giants t-shirt and boxers) snuck out of our room and into the wedding reception hall. It was empty except for the preliminary set-up that had been completed that day. She stood in the middle of the beautiful room and looked around, and Jamie, in all her excitement, out of nowhere started dancing, and twirling, and just laughing hysterically. It didn’t take long until she dragged me into her silliness. We stayed there in the hall for I’m not sure how long, dancing, and laughing, and shushing each other, and laughing some more. I’ll never forget that night. Continue Reading →

Picture Above (Vanessa, Jamie, and Doug)

I (Doug) feel like Jamie and I knew each other in ways that no one else did. I was lucky enough to be her little brother and had the privilege of learning from her as we grew up together. I believe I got my competitiveness directly from being the ball boy at her soccer games and watching her fierce tenacity on the field. I learned from her so well that later in life it even made playing board games together an interesting experience. She was fiercely protective and proud of me at the same time. She was my biggest champion and supporter. She was always there for me. I never had to worry about her being too busy to talk to me.

One time while I was in college, I was in a bad space mentally, and had been blowing off classes for a good portion of the semester. I had been doing my best to conceal everything from my family, but one day Jamie called me and just asked me how things were going. Although I was still not ready to start talking about anything, she immediately picked up that something was not right with me. She told me that if I wasn’t going to tell her what was wrong then she was coming down. At the time she was in New York and I was in Virginia. She got in her car and was at my front door 6 hours later. She spent the weekend and she helped me work a lot of things out. I will never forget that weekend. It meant so much to me, to have my big sister come spend time with me when I was feeling so low.

Jamie was not perfect. Nobody is. We had our share of fights and disagreements, but I know how incredibly lucky I was to have her growing up. Jamie, thank you for teaching me so much and being such an amazing big sister. I love you and always will.

– Douglas O’Brien

Jamie and I (Paul) woke around 8 am on a cold Sunday morning in her apartment in Brooklyn, NY. We had our standard morning cup of coffee and were talking and relaxing when she suddenly popped up with excitement when she remembered it was the NYC marathon that day. She had emailed me earlier in the week telling me the marathon was this coming Sunday (Nov. 4, 2007) and had said it was, “One of my favorite days in NYC!!!” The marathon was taking place just a couple of blocks down from her apartment (I think on 2nd Ave – she lived on 5th). She quickly looked up the exact timing of the start of the race and calculated when the first wave of participants would be running by our area. I believe the race started at 9 am and we were roughly seven miles from the start of the race, so we decided to get to 2nd avenue around 9:30 am to see the leaders.

As we approached 2nd avenue with our warm coats on Jamie was almost skipping down the street with excitement. It was easy to tell how much this meant to her, which I enjoyed seeing and I was looking forward to seeing what it was all about. Anyways, we found a nice spot on the side of the road and before we knew it the leaders were running (really more of a sprint) by us. Jamie started jumping up and down and was clapping and cheering on all the runners. I joined in and was cheering along with her. There are typically between 40 and 50 thousand participants in the NYC marathon, so there are people running/walking by most of the day. Jamie continued to clap and cheer people on for the next couple of hours. She would say “nice job 4650 or way to go or you can do it!” She would try to find the people that appeared to be struggling the most and would focus her attention on them and sometimes would almost run along next to them for 10 feet or so to encourage them to keep going. It was remarkable to see. Continue Reading →

Picture Above (Maureen, Vanessa, Kathryn, and Jamie)

I (Vanessa) met Jamie in the few months that she was living with her brother Doug in 2007. I immediately knew she was not only someone I could talk to, but someone I could be let my guard down with. One night Doug and I decided to show her a music video of a fun song that we thought she would like. We played “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne to her. We immediately all started dancing like crazy- doing charlestons and getting completely lost in the song. We played it over and over again…and danced over and over again. Anytime we wanted to be silly, we would put that music video on again, turn it up real loud, and dance like there was no tomorrow. Kathryn came to visit some time later, and we played it for her. She also danced with us. It became something we just would do– blast this silly song and dance. We did it again with Doug’s mom. And we did it again at Jamie’s wedding.

It is not that we were particularly fond of the words or it had special meaning to us, it was just something that we knew when it was being played loudly, we could lose control and dance without a care in the world.

I never felt like I had to be intimidated by Doug’s older sister. She took me in and accepted me from the beginning. I never thought I couldn’t be myself in front of her. Because at the end of the day, I knew that when I wanted to be silly and goofy, Jamie would be the first to stand up and be goofy with me. I of course think of her every time I hear that song. And I will forever miss acting foolish with my big sister who could dance like nobody’s watching in front of anyone. Sometimes you just gotta dance.

– Vanessa O’Brien

We (Hap & Nan Kindem) met Jamie where Paul also met Jamie for the first time in Queretaro, Mexico, at Brian and Cinthia’s wedding. At the wedding reception Hap danced with Jamie while Paul was dancing with Nan. Before Paul rescued her from her future father-in-law’s wild gyrations, Jamie had already improvised and was dancing back in time with a baby boomer.

On a family skiing trip to West Virginia, Jamie and Paul rode with us through increasingly dense snow for five and one half hours with our 100 pound labradoodle, Mulligan, resting his head, and frequently half his body, on Jamie’s lap in the back seat. Crowded by a large dog in a confined space, Jamie improvised and never complained, helping to keep everybody, including the dog, happy.

When Jamie moved to Durham, NC, to be with Paul she improvised. She adapted to Southern Culture at the same time that she encouraged her family to follow her from further North and South. She gave up her sales job in New York and eventually found work at an exceptional company, SAS in Cary, NC. If the various positions she held throughout her successful, if all too short, career were not always perfect, she improvised and made them better. She made everyone around her better, her family as well as her co-workers. She was a problem solver at work and at home. She could make bosom buddies of strangers and strange bedfellows. Her instrument was her personality, which always played beautiful music and could resolve almost any problem and perfectly fit almost any occasion or situation. We miss seeing that phenomenal instrument and hearing that exquisite tune greatly. We are all trying to make up for the absence of Jamie in our lives, but we are also following Jamie’s lead. We are improvising as best we can.

– Hap & Nancy Kindem

Our (Stacey & Tom Kindem) story about Jamie starts at the very beginning. It isn’t a story that elicits excitement. However, it is one of those moments you keep going back to over and over again. It was during Jamie’s first and last vacation to Amy Belle Lake and our last vacation there as an entire family over the Fourth of July weekend in 2007. Prior to meeting Jamie, we knew very little about her. All we knew is that Paul & Jamie had met two months previous at a wedding in Mexico and had already spent a week in London together. We knew it was serious if she was coming to spend a week with all of us in tight quarters. And by tight quarters, I truly mean, tight quarters. Most people would have been intimidated by meeting the entire family. But Jamie wasn’t. Or at least she didn’t let it show. She showed up with two huge desserts from NYC. How she managed to get through the TSA scanners I’ll never know. Paul had prepared her well. The one sure way to get into the Kindems’ good graces was through food.

What I remember most about that week is how quickly she fit into the family. It was as though the role had been waiting just for Jamie. The shift was seamless. We went from a family waiting for Paul to find the perfect girl. To a family complete. The week was full of many events. Starting with daily trips into the lake, visiting the Miller Brewery Tour, and an art museum in the heart of Milwaukee. Each day ended by us gathering around the dinner table eating fabulous meals followed by drinks around the Kindem boy’s traditional camp fire. Continue Reading →