“We never knew anything was developmentally wrong with Karen until she was 3 years old,” Erik said.īut once the details of Karen’s condition emerged, her parents worked hard to give her the support she needed and moved to West Hills in 1963 so that Karen would have access to better medical care.Īs a child, Karen loved listening to records on her father’s phonograph, which may have cultivated her love of piano. 9, 1959, the daughter of Shirley and Eugene Sydow. Karen Ann Sydow was born in Newburgh, N.Y., on Dec. But he was more interested in talking about his little sister. He had no idea that his tribute had been widely shared, and he was touched by the outpouring of support. I wondered if Erik knew that his obituary had become an internet phenomenon, so I reached out to the 64-year-old cabinetmaker.

Twitter data showed that nearly 10 million people had seen it. More than 2,000 people had left comments. Thank you for sharing your sister with us Erik.”īy Monday afternoon, the tweet had accumulated more than 184,000 likes. “If the point of an obituary is to make you feel you knew the person and to share their loss then the fact her brother did so in so few words is astounding,” one person wrote. “He’s an amazing person and I dread the moment we depart from each other,” one mother wrote of her son.Īnd still others shared how they’d been affected by Erik’s writing. Some parents explained the joy - and pain - of caring for a child with cerebral palsy. Others from around the world had never met the Sydows, but could relate to the account of a close relative’s medical issue. Only later did we learn how the pandemic created enduring family secrets and mysteries.Ī woman who said that she had been Karen’s teacher wrote, “Every student is precious because every student is someone’s baby or sibling or loved one.” “My father died in the 1918 flu,” my dad told me. California Column One: The pandemic shaped my family for generations.

Sample obituary for a brother