Sharon (Sharry Aline Seccomb Stepner Manzullo) Rose
09/25/1943–04/10/2014
Sharry Rose, 71, passed away peacefully at her home in Carpinteria on April 10th after surrendering to cancer. Friends and family were there to comfort and love her through her transition. She is now reunited with her beloved mother, Virginia Geddes, son, Richard (Bommer) Manzullo and faithful dog Shayla. There were also many good friends waiting to welcome her home.
She is survived by her daughter, Lori Stepner-Battaglia, brother, Steve Geddes and family, three grandchildren, Tyler, Breanna and Chelsea, her soul sister/heart mother Karen Curtis, and her most infamous love, Xanax the cat.
Sharry was born in Upstate New York to a military family that moved frequently. After moving to Pasadena, CA, she married and had her two children, Lori and Richard. The wanderlust in her heart kept her traveling and exploring new vistas. She called many places “home”….Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Marin County, various parts of Europe, and the West Indies.
Sharry was blessed with the gift of creativity, beauty, intelligence, talent and charm. She was complex and deep, always searching for a higher meaning to life. Being a natural born artist and poet with a thirst for adventure and personal growth, she lived life through art and the written word. She had a coy and sometimes outlandish sense of humor and was never afraid to try something new or think outside the box. If the phrase “Well behaved women rarely make history” had not already been quoted, she surely would have crafted it herself.
Sharry was an entrepreneur, eccentric and artist extraordinaire. She received a credential in Transpersonal Psychology and had diverse jobs and businesses, all of which contributed to her incredible life experiences. She was always on a quest for knowledge beyond the institutionalized walls of society. She loved and yearned for nature, a free spirit, an entity, traveling this world and sometimes beyond. She understood the duality of her soul: the caverns of darkness and the gardens of light. To say too little would not be enough and to say too much would not be appropriate. Sharry says it best through a segment of one of her poems:
SIMPLIFICATION (by Sharry Rose 2001)
If it suffers– drug it,
And if does not see God, paint a picture on a bed sheet, walls, anything.
Write a poem in blood, tears, wine.
Most of all–love it.
If you learn nothing on this spinning Rock, learn touches, songs, soft hands, forgiveness–for humans can be a pitiful lot.
Learn to sew wounds as you would sew a gown that dances and speaks. You would become magical.
Loved. Hated. Feared. Corrupted.
Love anyway.
Don’t expect any resolution.
Die smiling if you can, let nothing be unbearable.
But, always carry a knife with an emerald handle or a bullet of silver,
Just in case, just in case.
A celebration of Sharry’s life will be held on May 4th at her daughter’s house in Ventura. Special thanks and forever gratitude to Danny, Dena , Sweet Lucy, Kerri, S.B. Hospice, Jennifer and Brenda of the S.B.ACT Team, and caretakers/companions Sarah, Julie and Liz for making her last few years, months and days loving and comfortable. It took a village of caring for one “Rose.”