Friend

    Yesterday was a hard day.  My friend Mary was buried yesterday.  She was one of my best friends and I'll miss her terribly.
    Mary was interested in just about everything but especially was a strong advocate for Michigan and Grand Rapids.  I used to tell her she should make public service announcements and she sort of did when she worked part time for a few years at the Chamber of Commerce where people who were new in town or visiting would stop in  to ask where to go and what to do. She met some very interesting people that way and would come home and tell me about them.
    She quilted for awhile, making a baby quilt for each of her grands (these are her hands) and quilted with a group of women from church for awhile.  But it was funny - when she was done with something, she was done with it and let it go and didn't look back.  " I'm done with that," she'd say.
     I also used to tell her, quite often,  that I wanted friends like she had: lots of them, interesting and interested, and varied enough to always have someone to call when she wanted to either go for investigating walks in county parks, a concert, a play, antiquing, berry picking, it didn't matter.  She had someone in her telephone book that she could call for any event.  Antiquing friend didn't like to walk and walking friend couldn't sit through a concert, so there was always someone.   And if she liked you you were in her telephone book forever.
     Mary had friends that lasted her whole life.  Franny was, she would say,  "my friend from womb to tomb" because their mothers were friends and Mary and Franny met in a sandbox when they were three years old and as life would have it, Franny and her husband ended up in the same assisted living home with Mary.  The boy next door while she was growing up ended up at that same assisted living home in the room right next to Mary's.  She gathered her friends and kept them and brought them along with her.  I heard about many of them for decades but only just met many of them at her funeral.  And, it turned out, they heard all of the stories about me, too.

     Mary moved in across the street from us when my kids were young. Just about immediately after she and her husband moved in he passed away but she carried his torch for the remainder of her days, talking about him and including his quips in her conversations like he was in the next room.  I came to know her three sons and daughters-in-law and her grandchildren and will be eternally grateful that in these past few months they kept me in their email loop as her condition worsened and I reported to them after each of my weekly visits.  We had adventures right till the end.
     Her sons often claimed she loved their dogs more than she loved them.  After her husband passed away the boys gave her a puppy for Christmas.  She called the next day to tell me and said, "A puppy! They gave me a puppy!  I WANTED a slip! Where's my slip??!!" But Mamie turned out to be the best gift ever.  They were a walking fixture in the neighborhood, at parks, everywhere.  Mary and Mamie. They were a real team. 
     She had a fabulous sense of humor that shone through her laughter, her disposition and her off the cuff quips that came fast and free.  We laughed a lot. A lot.
     The last time she was really good was around my birthday.  We went out for lunch for our respective birthdays and we went out for mine this year.  She was slipping and she knew it, "I'm losing my beans" morphed from her former mantra, "I'm fine!  As long as I don't lose my beans" or "At least I still have my beans!"  But after January her beans started dropping out of the bag and then things went faster.
 

    Mary was 20 years older than me.  While she wasn't my mother, she could have been and the good things I learned from her I will carry with me.
     Ironically, my friend  Fred's funeral is today in California.  Between the two of them they've been in my life for 85 years.  Two friends who knew how to listen and be a friend.  I hope I learned their lessons. The hole they leave is a big one. They will be greatly missed.