My sister, Margrit Meyer, was found dead in her Detroit apartment
on December 22, 2009. She was 81 years, 3 months and 26 days of age.

She was born on August 26, 1928, in Braunschweig, Germany. Our father
Heinz Meyer, was a physician who had opened a general practice of
medicine only the previous year; our mother, Marga who had worked
as an assistant manager in a local bank prior to her marriage, had
become the manager of her husbands medical practice.

The family tradition reports that Margrit
as soon as she was able to walk,
began to assert her independence of her family 
by insisting,
over the protests of her parents and grandparents,
on sitting down in
the middle of the tracks when no street car was in sight.
Thus Margrit had a proclivity for tempting fate
at the beginning of her life as at its end.
Her affection for
her fellow humans, and her propensity for making friends, also
expressed themselves at an early age.
At the local grocery store she
would habitually embrace and rub noses with all children in sight;
she brought home with her not only the reciprocated affections,
but also, to the consternation of our mother, the lice that
migrated from the hair of her newly acquired friends to her own.
Just recently, 
as in the process of clearing her apartment,
I was sorting her papers,
I found letters written to Margrit in 1935 by two of
her teachers,
letters of profound appreciation for Margrits
personality, evidence how early in her life her affection for others
was echoed and reciprocated.

Margrit's affection for her immediate family was of a different sort,
was tempered by a need to maintain a certain distance, for the sake
of her own independence. Expressed itself dramatically on excursions
into the mountains, when I stayed close to my parents,
but Margrit would usually lag 10 or 15 feet behind.