Mary

Yesterday I was told that Mary had died.

The funeral was this weekend and I missed it all. Usually I get an email from someone about these things, but nothing.

I met Mary some years ago. She was probably in her late 60’s. She was smart, talkative and had just taken up snow skiing. At one point in her life, she and her husband ( who was quite a bit younger than she) had sold their house and bought a nice motor-home.

They traveled a bit in it, but mostly they lived in it.


When I was in charge of church camp-outs Mary and Doug would show up, driving their house. She would sit by the campfire and laugh. More than anything she was good company and a reminder to all of us of what we might wish to be like when we were that age.

We did that church camp-out several times and more than once Mary and Doug were there.

I remember playing a table game with Mary and some other women once on a church trip to bible camp. I figured out how to game the game quite quickly, at least the way we were playing the game, so I could win more than my share (I did not cheat, but I did figure the game out.)

Mary could not for the life of herself figure out what I was doing, and now I have forgotten. She was just a bit ditzy about it all, but in a wonderfully naive way.

One evening I went into their motor-home and talked about Miriam and Alzheimer’s. She was a wonderful listener.

But age catches up to all of us. She fell a few years ago and has not been quite so snappy since. I saw her a couple of weeks back in church. I walked up beside her and held her hand as we walked, her patent wonderful Doug on the other side.

I really did know she would go, she was too tired to last, but it still is not easy to let go.

Some one suggested that I seemed a lot sadder and more depressed lately. Maybe so.

Maybe so.