Vicki Shell-Bush

A measureless woman – of inexhaustible strength. patience without limits, and love without end.

Vicki attended to the needs of more people in her life by 10 AM on any given day than most people do in a whole week. The phrases “not right now…” or “I’m too busy…” just plainly did not exist to her. Her lifetime of caring started as the big sister (and part-time babysitter) to her siblings: Cheryl, Brian, Terri, Daryl, and Kevin. The oceans of patience and kindness that she developed in these years caring for them only deepened and stayed with her all of her life.

In addition to her magnetically warm presence, Vicki was intelligent, piercingly perceptive, brilliantly resourceful and took to new talents with ease. Her four sons -- Kenneth, Aaron, Daniel, and Dylan and her grandson Drew take after her in all of these respects. In every way it seems Vicki was perfectly equal parts of her devoted and loving mother, and her industrious and resolute father.

Vicki married Samuel “Gary” Bush in 2015 after a long and loving courtship and was unceasingly devoted to him, and her new stepfamily for the rest of her days. When tragic and sudden illness befell Gary in 2016, her care and devotion to him saw him through to a stable home life and significant recovery.

Even with all of her tireless commitment to her loved ones, Vicki still understood the importance of relaxing and definitely lived by ‘work hard, play hard’. In her youth, Vicki enjoyed swimming, sledding and kickball with her brothers and sisters. For the last few years, her morning routine started with her coffee, her computer and her card games; and her evenings would be often spent marathoning TV shows with Gary and her dog Giovanni. In fact, there were scarcely any times where Vicki went without the companionship of a beloved pet in her life, including her favorite pudgy beagle - Belle. She spent any summer afternoon she could sunbathing on the patio -- a practice she no doubt picked up from her younger days on countless vacations to Florida.

Vicki was raised in the time when the most advanced things in most people’s lives were the newly-invented touch-tone telephone, a polaroid and maybe a typewriter – but she kept pace with the world at every phase of her life. She took to countless hobbies at an expert level – crafts, refurbishing furniture, decorating, photography, gardening; and she was practically a professional at yard sales, thrift and consignment shopping.

Vicki was a light to everyone she met; and was a stunningly beautiful woman who never seemed to age a day. Her roles as a mother, grandmother, wife, sister, as a caretaker for the children in her community and as friend all came with the same level of real, substantive devotion – one hundred percent. The type of boundless, but humble love she gave to everyone in her life rarely ever draws headlines, or the biggest paycheck -- but it is what truly keeps the world working.