A brief history of the life of Val Garrison

Portland, OR. 5/25/13 —

The ineffable and extraordinary Valerie Louise Garrison died peacefully on Sunday, May 19, 2013, in Portland, Oregon, in the company of many of those who love her. Val filled her 44 years with creativity, curiosity, love and delight. She relished life, and in her hands a cancer diagnosis became a creative medium for conjuring an astonishing rich garden of community.

Val was born on March 30, 1969, in Missoula, MT, to Betty and Miles Garrison. Her earliest childhood was spent in Cle Elum, WA, where for several years young Val played in the forested hills and pursued her ambition to become Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. In 1977 the family moved back to beautiful Eureka, MT, where they built a home on the cattle ranch owned by Val’s grandmother, Louise Garrison. Val loved every inch of that ranch her whole life, and as a kid she ran free-range over the hills and among the cottonwoods. She fished with her grandmother, helped her dad set out sprinkler pipe, went huckleberrying in the mountains with her mom. She ran cattle and rode horses and snorkeled for fishing lures in freezing mountain lakes and just generally had a mischievous good time.

A natural athlete with a playful spirit, Val was a joyful body in motion. She danced making coffee. She danced on her bike. In school she excelled at sports from volleyball to baseball (some of her school track records still stand), and as an adult she loved hiking, dancing, and riding her trusty bicycle steed, Hum, over every hill in town. Hills felt like home to Val; growing up in Montana, she was used to a big horizon, and wherever she was, she always wanted to get up high so she could see out.

Val’s landscapes grew even larger when the family moved to Alaska her senior year in high school. She graduated in Wasilla and then spent most of the next 10 years living in Anchorage, where she attended the University of Anchorage at Alaska, worked for Parks & Rec as a landscaper, and began a career in television as a camerawoman. She was at the heart of a vibrant women’s community in Anchorage and served on the board of what is now RAW, Radical Arts for Women, where she helped to organize the big annual arts festival. She also deployed her wit and creativity as co-editor and writer for a local women’s newsletter. (One of her memorable inventions was an advice column by the Queen of Metaphors and Colloquialism, where she answered every question entirely in colloquialisms and metaphors.) She loved the wild beauty of Alaska and spent lots of time with friends snowshoeing, skiing, hiking and enjoying the out-of-doors.

In 1996 Val moved to Olympia, WA to finish her BFA in multimedia at The Evergreen State College. In Olympia she met her life companion, youth librarian Deborah Gitlitz. Their adventures over the years included many visits at the ranch with Val’s beloved family; trips to Mexico, Italy, and France; and plenty of camping and frolicking up and down the West Coast. After traveling around the country in a van for a year (an adventure dubbed “Camp Runamok”), in 2000 they settled in Portland, OR, where Val worked as a video documentarian, telling stories.

Val shone with a native charisma, wit and compassion that drew people to her. She was endlessly fascinated with her fellow human creatures and loved nothing better than to hear people’s stories. She herself was a natural storyteller, creating moving documentaries, poignant personal essays and countless strong friendships. In her words: “How can I not be in love with a life that lets you walk up to strangers and use words to create a story, and have them see humanity and reach back. I get to ask them what it means to be alive.”

In the years following her 2008 diagnosis, Val continued to explore what it means to be alive. A year of chemo banked the embers of cancer, so Val went off to explore New Zealand and Argentina. She gathered her people into a Salon of the Scathed to navigate the experience in community. She talked searchingly with friends and wrote revealing, hilarious, heartbreaking essays about her experience. She meditated. She played her stand-up bass, Buttercup, and took the dog to the beach. She reminded us to forgive and embrace our intentional, imperfect family. She challenged us all to help her find the beauty along the way, and we did.

Val was an artist: a storyteller, dancer, musician and songwriter, videographer, performance artist, and especially a writer of enormous talent. Having experienced deep grief in her life, she told us that grief is transformative; that grief can bring you to art. “Grief is a grandmother,” she would say; “Let her hold you, and you will be transformed.” Val believed strongly that art — expression, connection, transformation; art of any kind — saves lives. So in Val’s honor we will be creating the “Art Saves Lives” Val Garrison Scholarship at the Lincoln County High School in her hometown of Eureka, MT, to help build the path for another artistic girl to pursue higher education.

Val is survived by her companion, Deborah Gitlitz, of Portland, OR; her father, Miles Garrison, of Eureka, MT; her brothers Brad Garrison of Portland, OR, and Jerry Oertli of Billings, MT; her sisters Sandy Oertli of Eureka, MT, and Jane Fairfield of Gillette, WY; eight nephews and nieces and 14 great-nephews and great-nieces; her beloved terrier, Tuley; and her large and gloriously imperfect family of loving friends all over the world.

A memorial celebration of Val’s life will be held on Saturday, June 1 at 11:00 a.m. at The Little Church at 5138 NE 23rd Ave in Portland, OR. Contributions to Val’s scholarship fund may be sent to Deborah Gitlitz or to Miles Garrison. (Addresses and this tribute may also be found here.)