"It's Gonna Be Great!" (part 1)

"Even if it was totally going to be a disaster, it was going to be great!" Aunt Mary Beth (Mary Beth Doyle's) colleagues offered, as a summary of her attitude towards her activism work.
"She always said, 'It has to be fun.' and 'It's going to be great!'"
They sat around the table at the Ecology Center's office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, shell shocked, but taking a break from planning the best party Ann Arbor had ever seen (and that's saying a lot) to tell my dad and I about her work.
My thoughts are not completely together yet because I just got home from Michigan, but basically, you can't really understand the depths of my grief, my family's grief, and MB's extended family of friends' grief because Aunt Mary Beth was not an ordinary person, or even an extraordinary person. She was one of those human beings who the entire world (literally) grieved to lose. The governor of Michigan declared Wednesday, the day of the memorial, Mary Beth Doyle Day, and a state senator delivered a plaque at the service. People flew in from across the country and around the world. Letters and flowers and messages flowed. Everyone knew her. Everyone who knew her loved her.
On Monday, my dad and I flew to Michigan and were greeted by Dave, the farmer Aunt Mary Beth was in love with who she was surely going to marry. His family welcomed us onto the farm, and Dave gave us a tour of the land and the hill on which he was going to lay her ashes as well as the lake she kayaked on and the shooting range where she shot beer cans. He sported a "Support Greenpeace Action" button, a gift from one of her friends, and proudly showed us the "Tipton Recycles" program (i.e. the recycling bins MB brought out to the farm and brought back to Ann Arbor every time she drove back and forth). Her Ann Arbor friends drove out with a hot dinner, and we all ate and talked and shared stories.
We had spent the afternoon out at her house in Ann Arbor that she had finally finished painting ("It looks like a kid's coloring book." -Dave) and met her housemate, Paul, who missed rent fairly often but had been a good friend for over 20 years. He sat with me, my dad, Dave, and Dave's friend 'John from Canada' while we met with the man from the cremation society. He was like a cartoon. He pulled up in a black car with a black suit and pale skin, nervously opened a briefcase, and went through the numbers with us.
"Let's talk about the container for her remains." -Cremation dude
"Well... it comes in a cardboard box right?" -dad
"Umm.. well yeah, but we have urns you can use instead." -cremation dude
"Cardboard is recycleable though! Aunt Mary Beth would love that." -me
"That's true..." -Dave
"We could decorate it with glitter!" -dad
"What the fuck is wrong with you people?" -cremation dude