"Georgia On My Mind"

In October of this year, I sat down to write a short entry about Georgia on my family's blog, and ended up writing this instead. I had an overwhelming response to it. Perfect strangers were moved to tears at her story. Thanks for letting me post this.

Each year as summer draws to a close and the weather turns cool, I start to reminisce a little about my life: back to school, birthdays, and holiday traditions all come to mind quite often. But nearly every September with the changing season, my mind turns to my dear friend, Georgia Marriott.
Sweet, spiritual, talented, wonderful Georgia! The first time I met this sparkly, bubbly spirit was in a 9th grade community orchestra in Salt Lake City. She was going on about why she needed braces (to close the gap between her front teeth, naturally), and how it would only be a few more months until they were off. Then she gave me this radiating smile and I thought – her smile is just perfect the way it is!
Happy, friendly Georgia! There were no groups or “cliques” with Georgia. Everyone was always invited, included, and loved. We naturally became fast friends. She joined the string quartet I played in, and we made many wonderful memories playing music together all over the Salt Lake valley. But more importantly, we loved playing the hymns out of the church hymnbook together. Georgia’s sweet testimony always shined as she played her violin. I remember looking up often at the violin section during orchestra to see Georgia’s enormous grin: so happy to be there making music with her friends.
The time came to decide where to go to college. I had narrowed down my choices, and one of them was the same as Georgia’s – and it was also halfway across the country. We vowed not to speak to each other about college until we had both decided where we were going, so as not to sway the other. And we both decided on that same school – Indiana University.
We were elated! After being officially accepted there, we made arrangements to be roommates in the freshman dorms. We were just excited to be roommates. We didn’t realize then how important the common ground of the gospel would be. So much of what I learned from her that year has shaped who I am today. With eleven children in her family, all with shining testimonies of the gospel, I often wondered how her parents raised all of them to be so strong in the church. When I think of them, I think of the scripture in Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation…” Georgia was not ashamed of the Gospel, and seemed to carry that power with her wherever she went.
As much as she loved playing her violin, I think she loved to sing just as much. She literally had the voice of an angel, and I have never heard anything like it before or since. She’d sing everywhere, too: doing her homework, blow-drying her hair, walking to class…
She also seemed to always be balancing something on her head. Mostly it was her water bottle, but occasionally I’d notice she was balancing a book, or something edible, like an apple. It was always the oddest thing to see her walking toward me at the music school balancing something – anything – on her head. But somehow, it just seemed so natural I didn’t even need to ask her why she did it. It was just – Georgia.
We slept in bunk beds. I slept on the bottom, and some nights I’d fall asleep to crinkling paper. In the morning I’d wake up to notes with varying messages, mostly: “GOOD MORNING HAY! HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL!”
One day she said to me, “I have a goal. I am going to bear my testimony to someone I don’t know every single day!” I found myself mutter “good luck” under my breath, thinking how that would look around the music school. But Georgia not only had courage, she was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. She knew how to handle people, how to talk to them, how to get into their hearts and souls and genuinely love them. She made so many friends doing this, and some even took the missionary discussions because of it. I found myself reaching for that same courage and trying to follow her example.
It was like rooming with a sister you hardly ever fought with. I think the only time we had any kind of frustration was when a pile of her clothes had begun to stack up in the center of the room for a couple of weeks. One evening I was sitting on my bed and I said to her, “Um, Georgia?” Brief pause. Then her classic response: “Yeah, I know I know! I’ll clean it up tomorrow!”
She was a little bit of a mess. She’d fall asleep doing her music theory homework and wake up the next morning to realize she hadn’t finished those chord progressions from the night before. She’d panic for a moment, then finish them in record time, proceed to run to the music school, splashing through the rain in her flip flops and pajamas to hand in the assignment before the lecture began!
I’d walk into our room some days to hear Georgia playing my favorite CD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She would often sing along. She also kept three different journals: a gratitude journal, a scripture journal, and a journal where she recorded her daily activities. Our room was at the end of the hall and often we had to walk through a hallway of foul language and degrading music to open our door and be filled with the Holy Ghost. The habits we kept together – attending church and Institute every week, daily scripture reading, and daily prayers – kept us both close to the Lord during our time together in such worldly conditions.
We had a wonderful year. I was all set to return to school the following fall, but I found myself so very fortunate to be getting married instead – to a wonderful man I got to know through Georgia and her family while at college. And who took two days off of school to fly out to Utah for our wedding? None other than Georgia. She even sang and played her violin and my reception, reuniting our string quartet once again.
A couple of years went by, and my husband and I moved to the east coast. Georgia and I stayed in touch with emails and letters. But I know we both felt that we had unintentionally grown apart a little, so we played phone tag for a couple of months. Then she left for Vienna, Austria, for a summer abroad. It was one Sunday evening in late September, after her summer in Europe, that my husband had an idea on a whim to call Georgia again. She was never at home, but it was worth a try.
The phone rang a few times, and then her roommate Shanna, also a dear friend, picked up. She wasn’t sure where Georgia was or when she’d be back, but we had a very nice conversation with her. Then – click – we heard Georgia pick up on the other end. It was so wonderful to talk to her, finally, after so many months. We had an amazing conversation. She seemed closer to the Lord than ever before. My husband and I commented afterwards how remarkable she sounded. It was like the Holy Ghost was on the phone with her. It was truly an incredible conversation.
Two days later I got a call from that same roommate. It was a much different call than the last one. Georgia – hit by a dump truck while riding her bike on campus – in the hospital – fractured skull – might be okay after a few weeks. The tears came. They didn’t stop all day. I found out her siblings were all on planes, flying to her side as we spoke. Her wonderful parents were mission presidents in Brazil at that time. Her mom was on a plane right then, too. My husband started pacing – worried about our friend, worried about the grief stricken mother on the plane, both of us worried, worried, worried…
Another phone call. Everything should be fine. The doctors think she’ll be out of there in a few days if she can gain consciousness.
Yet another phone call from Shanna. “Haleigh, are you alone?”
“No, my mother-in-law is here.”
“You need to sit down.”
I sat, bracing myself. “Okay.”
“Georgia passed away. Just a little while ago. There was a blood clot in her brain. It just…stopped everything.”
Silence.
“Are you okay?”
“When is the funeral?” I asked, between sobs.
“There will be two – one in Indiana, and one in Salt Lake.”
She gave me the dates. We cried for a while together on the phone. And then I stayed up all night searching for and booking a ticket to her funeral in Utah.
Her parents received permission from the First Presidency to come home and bury their child. At the funeral in Indiana, her siblings put 300 Books of Mormon together with Georgia’s testimony in it, and gave out all 300 with people asking for more. I later learned that several of our “anti-Mormon” friends attended that funeral, and ended up taking the discussions because of Georgia’s death. They had over 900 people attend the funeral.
The family learned I was flying out. I was also 8 months pregnant, and bringing our 12-month-old son with me. They asked me to arrange prelude string quartet music and play in it. I was so honored.
I attended her viewing the night before the funeral. I got there early, but still ended up standing in a two hour line. Georgia was everywhere in that church: slideshows, pictures – so many of us together too. We got “camera happy” that year as roommates. It was so silly at the time, but now – I was so thankful for that.
I later learned that President Gordon B. Hinckley attended the viewing. The following day over one thousand people came to her funeral in Salt Lake City. Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and President Thomas S. Monson both spoke. Her family all sang and played instruments, and nearly all of them spoke too. The spirit was so strong there.
Her family lived the gospel to its fullest during this difficult time. They showed love and comfort to not only Georgia’s friends and professors, but to the devastated truck driver who had hit her. Many people said that they tried to comfort her family, only to find the family comforting them. They realized that this family had something very special if they could be so strong in such a time.
I had found myself so devastated about her death. And even though I still miss her deeply to this day, I found myself healing as I sat in that chapel and felt the Holy Ghost wash over me and put the pieces of my broken heart back together. I began to see the big picture, with Georgia in it. I saw how the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, had placed Georgia on earth at this time to touch the souls of people that no one else could. She came as a missionary, bearing her shining testimony to the world through her music and with her spoken word. And she left this earth an even greater missionary, causing many souls to wonder about life and death, only to find it in her testimony: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ!” How blessed I was to have her in my life! I have thanked the Lord many times for my association with her.
So when the leaves start to turn and I smell “back to school” in the air, I’ll turn to my roommate days with Georgia. I laugh to myself about how much fun we had together, and occasionally I’ll cry a little when I think of her death, but mostly when I feel the crisp, cool, autumn air, I have “Georgia on my mind.”