Marina P. Spivak
January 10, 1950 - July 13, 2014
Forever Missed
Marina Spivak, 64, spent her last conscious moments in her favorite place – her garden, before she passed away from complications of bone marrow leukemia on July 13, 2014, at Evergreen Hospital at Kirkland. Marina is survived by her loving husband Peter, her daughter Svetlana, and her son-in-law Jeff.
Marina, the daughter of Pavel and Svetlana (Soshko) Taras was born in Kiev, USSR and was an only child, becoming an orphan at the age of five. Her maternal grandmother moved her to Lvov, USSR, to live with her. In 1972 Marina married Peter Spivak, who became her life-long friend and partner. A year later their only daughter, Svetlana, was born. The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union forced Marina, Peter and Svetlana to look for another home. They found that home in the Seattle area in 1993.
Flowers and plants had always been Marina’s passion. Even in Lvov, every empty place at her house was filled with cactuses, orchids and roses. After arriving to the U.S. Marina attended Lake Washington Technical College and got a degree in floral design. After a few years as an apprentice in a private flower shop, she started working in the Safeway floral department at North Bend. Two years later she became a manager of the department. Her last job was as the floral department manager at the Rose Hill Safeway in Kirkland.
Her passion for flowers did not stop at work – at home she had a wonderful garden in which she spent many hours. Her garden was her pride and joy; it was her place for solitude and reflection.
The other pride and joy of her life were her two grandchildren – Aleksandra, 9 and Nikolas, 5. Grandma Marina could not get enough of them and reveled in spoiling them rotten. They miss her terribly, and so do the rest of the family and friends.
Marina will be cremated July 18 at Cady Cremation Services, 8418 S. 222nd St., Kent, Washington 98031 at 9 a.m.
Memorial
The Melancholy Days Are Come
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread;
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.
And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
~William Cullen Bryant