More Musings from my Brain Busy Weekend

My long-missing muse came to visit, triggered by Facebook.

Among my other recent musings, Facebook added this reminder from 6 years ago, on Saturday.

We met in person about a week before, here in Eugene, though we’d been online, then on-phone friends, for at least two years before this visit to the Saturday Market. The market is a mini-crafts fair that - combined with the Farmer’s Market - covers a 4 or 5 block area downtown. Crafts, foods and small stage entertainment are the features though I was being fully entertained by Marlene in 2016.

Some wonder how it’s possible to have a long-distance relationship successfully, but it wasn’t so difficult. Over the 4-1/2 years we had together, we were physically together about two months annually. But we spoke daily by phone at least 355 of 365 days, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. We also texted and private messaged, as well.

I’d been in Florida for over 4 years. I was supposed to be there for a 6 month visit with my Mum and other relatives, but an array of health problems cascaded and I was her live-in caregiver till she was nearly 89, assisted by two sisters. After 4 years in Florida and a year in Wisconsin helping a daughter get back on her feet after a battle with seizures that struck in her mid-twenties, I’d been back in Eugene (which I’ve considered my real home since 1980) for 11 months at our meet-up and I was not up for moving so soon again. Marlene had a new grandson just 3 hours away by car and wasn’t eager to move so far away when there was so much Grand-Mar spoiling to do. And boyoboy did she love that little boy.

She was absolutely brilliant, whip smart, which was visible in her college achievements and all she accomplished afterwards, first as an elementary school teacher, then as a dedicated, loving Mom, then as the co-owner of an artsy women-owned business, where they made high quality replications of hand-painted majolica pottery.

Additionally, she and her husband, David, bought a farm and raised cattle during their 44 year marriage. By all accounts, he also had an impeccable record as a lawyer with a similar knee-jerk kind streak. Odd as it may seem to younger people, I really wish I could have known him too. More than once, Marly (my nickname for her) related how he’d done a free will or deed for a widow or widower, some from a local Mennonite community. As they weren’t given to accepting charity, they’d negotiate a deal like the will in exchange for a bushel of tomatoes. Then he’d be surprised when they’d bring a bushel at harvest for more than one year.

I’ve always liked farming and gardening, having come from a long line of dairy farmers in upstate New York. So some added kinship was felt by their own farming endeavors.

Their home was a large log cabin with square cut timbers and concrete grouting. Complete with an outhouse. Over the years it underwent multiple transformations, expanding to more than twice its original size and outfitted with all the modern conveniences. But several rooms remained true to its roots, providing an array of rusticity intermingled with arts and crafts that emanated from her love of artsy-fartsy stuff.

She was a true patron of the arts and David also liked picking up some antiques. Their home felt warm, inviting and affirming to the spirits of all who entered. Through her I met one North Carolina nature photographer, Matthew Irvin, who became a roommate for awhile and is a great friend still. I’ve become online friends with another photographer whose main career was as a psychologist, and with a retired epidemiologist (whose counsel through the Covid pandemic proved invaluable). Another friend not far from the family farm she described as so similar to me in his humor and smart-assiness, that she thought we could be brothers. He’s done remodeling for her, some exquisite woodworking marvels and he’s also an excellent portrait photographer, working with established and aspiring professional models.

Indoors and out, the decor that populated her home and landscape came from numerous states across the country. There remains a lavender rose bush and another plant I sent her, my little contribution to the whole.

Her artistic impressions came both from her travels - as she loved to journey all over the world - and from television shows about remodels that she regularly watched, interspersed with Murder She Wrote, a few sitcoms and movies and some of the cheesy Hallmark TV stuff, the only ones I’d head to another room to avoid. I mean, like her, I’m a romantic too, but not in that formulaic way.

I’ve wanted to provide a tribute to her for the past 19 months but the right words kept evading me. Should I write only about her, leaving me out of the picture? I felt bad that I could only mumble a few meaningless words at her memorial service a year ago. I was still sunk to the depths in grief yet maintaining a presentable social face to her family and friends as I focused on hospitality, assisting her son and daughter-in-law with the logistics of that event prep and clean-up. I’d written several tributes that weren’t close to right and tore them up. I wanted to do one on her last two March birthdays but writer’s block kept whacking the words back like a toothless NHL defenseman. Sometimes that happens after a profound event and she was definitely a profound event that the world could only marvel at.

Because, for Marlene, people really mattered to her. Sure, she and David moved up considerably in their economic station from all their hard work and vision, but people were still people to her and she cared about them. Seriously cared about them. Her longtime housekeeper/grocery shopper she always referred to as her little sister and loved her as that. The woman who did her hair never wanted Marlene to come to her salon. She viewed the time spent at Marlene’s as a break in the humdrum. While she worked on her hair, they’d often be relating local stories of different characters or things from tv and the internet and they’d laugh and laugh with side-splitting aplomb. And the young woman in her mid-twenties who came to do her twenty nails is someone who was 6 when Marly first met her. Marlene had helped her Dad study to pass his citizenship test after he migrated from Vietnam around the conclusion to that war.

She, too, has a great sense of humor and completed two majors in college since I first met her. Other friends, some former educators, some lifelong friends, also displayed a lot of humor, intelligence and heart. To Marlene, they were all equals, all unique and special. There was never any sense of an employee/employer relationship or any other kind of superiority complex about Marly. In reality, she was deeply annoyed by anyone snooty or putting on airs.

It was so easy to fall deeply in love with her. How could anyone not? I wanted everyone I knew, all my siblings and kids and aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews - and my friends - to meet her and enjoy her as much as I did. I was stark raving crazy about that girl.

So what does one get or create for someone who had reached a point where material goods weren’t beyond her means? Birthdays and Christmas I took as a challenge, along with whatever occasion I felt moved to give her something. I just kept my eyes open for something, all year round. It might come from a store, a thrift shop, antique shop, eBay, an estate sale or wherever. I was really pleased by her surprise and enjoyment of some of them. Most of them. Surprising her with things that could make her smile or laugh was something I really had fun doing.

The night before she went to the hospital, there was a Christmas creche scene on a kitchen side table. Another kind of Christmas scene was on a nearby counter. After she’d gone to bed, I spent some time rearranging or adding hats, scarves, shepherd crooks, random animals, stars, etc. between the two locales. Some of it looked patently ridiculous but I knew the next morning would bring fresh guffaws when she discovered them. It didn’t turn out that way. But I still miss doing things and sharing things that brought her joy or inspired her to greater funny responses from her own creative core.

She, to me, was as much an artist as any of the creative souls she encouraged or purchased from. Her house was like an art museum, but an interactive one that you could touch and play with, not a quiet mausoleum of the stuffier set.

For a long time after her sudden unexpected death, I was overwrought with an abundance of emotions well beyond grief. I had several deep regrets. Her September surgery took place while I was in the middle of harvest season. As her sister in law (who I dubbed her ‘crime partner in sarcasm’) had traveled to be there for that and the physical therapy that followed. All seemed to be going well so when I arrived a few weeks later - just as covid was peaking in Tennessee (where many store employees weren’t masking and even some medical personnel were covid-deniers) - I brought her home from PT and intended to stay as long as would be necessary to help her fully adapt to the changed circumstances she faced after major surgery.

I feel guilty I didn’t get there sooner. I feel guilty that I didn’t save her life, revisiting every moment of the final weeks we had together, trying to figure out what clue I missed that an infection dubbed as sepsis was sneaking up on her.

In our time together, we’d made vague long-term plans to live together. As many seniors have encountered, a formal marriage was out, due to the need to keep finances separate, which I viewed as essential. I didn’t want my Social Security adjusted and didn’t want to intrude on any plans she had for her heirs.

She took great pride in her family, her high-achievement son and daughter-in-law, her late husband, her brothers, her parents, while taking no credit for her part in their lives. She loved them intensely and regaled me with stories of their deeds or minor, funny misdeeds all the time. It wasn’t going to be easy for her to leave the home she’d spent so much time creating and living in. We felt, once her grandson was in school full time, we’d cross that bridge. We’d look for a small city with a college presence, someplace not as rural as her home but with good medical facilities and entertainment options. She could still fly in to see her grandson and son at Christmas, spring break or any summer. That was the tentative plan. And my plan, once she’d recovered a little more from her surgery, was to propose to her. If not a formal marriage, we’d just invent a new name for our soul invested partnership and any ceremonial doings that we’d consider to herald that. Maybe it would involve a guitarist, an oompah band, hula dancers, jugglers and fire-eaters. The only thing certain was there’d be no mimes.

I wasn’t planning to go home without her consent to some crazy arrangement to share living quarters forevermore. Even if it meant me moving to her home. I thought the odds were good we’d get another decade together, at least. The universe had other plans.

So, on top of grief and guilt and plans gone awry, there’s also been an overabundance of loneliness. When someone has been in your life daily for 4.5 years, when you’ve shared deep thoughts, occasional life grievances, an abundance of laughter and so much more, it’s hard dealing with the silence. With air that doesn’t contain her laughter. Without touching each other ever again. It’s like being stranded on an isle. Daily life has to be invented all over again.

Some people carry stickers that say WWJD? My heart tells my mind daily What Would Marly Want Me To Do? That’s what made me offer to be a caregiver for a longtime friend. Marly would’ve said ‘of course, go for it.’ In the past two months, I’ve busied myself creating floral and succulent planters. Each one is a gift to her, though I can’t deliver them. I know each would make her smile.

She’d also want me to write. She always encouraged and supported that. And though she spent most of her adult life as a partner to another, she was also my greatest partner because of her encouragements and affirmations.

There’s so much more I could say. She never liked being home alone near her birthday, because it’s also very near the time she lost David. Her travel plans or mine or both, were made to avoid that. I could speak of the generosity I saw her display to so many others. Or how, when we went on a cruise (something she loved) she’d spend half her time talking to the young man from India that had worked his way up to bartender. “How’s your Mom?’ she’d ask. Or some other personal matter. She was the same with the fair-haired young lady from Namibia working in the central office. Orr the Captain from the UK. She was genuinely interested in THEM, not as providers of a service. They’d share family news and inside jokes together.

Two ladies she met in Australia visited her home in eastern Tennessee. A gay couple she’d met on several cruises would send her a bouquet on her birthday every year, long after they’d retired. She was just that invested in people she found enjoyable. She could laugh or cry with them. And she found most people were enjoyable.

She deeply admired and respected Dolly Parton with her Dollywood a couple of hours away. Because of her book-gifting efforts for schoolkids, in addition to her vocal talents and joie de vivre. Students from 20 years or more ago sent condolences and mentions about how they loved Marlene as a teacher.

None of that surprised me. She had a great heart. She had legs prone to infection which she said she inherited from her Dad. Until the final few days of her life, though, I never considered her to be disabled. Sure, she used a walker or a cane. A few times, I pushed her in a wheelchair. She was one of the most ‘abled’ person I’ve met in my life, though. She spent no time grousing about her physical impediments though. Like most seniors, she’d have an ache or pain at times that needed a liniment or a massage, but those were a few temporary moments that didn’t define her at all.

In the hospital ward she was in initially, I had just settled in to sleep for the night when a nurse informed me they were moving her to another ward where I could not stay. I asked if there was anyone who could grant me permission to do so. That nurse then haughtily told me “Look, this woman is very sick and she’s been ill for a VERY LONG time.” This is how she defined her after spending a few minutes with her over 2 or 3 hours.

I went back to the house. I printed out several pictures of the Marly I knew, looking happy, acting silly or just calmly pretty. I took them to the new ward she was in. That nurse let me plaster the walls with them. I told her, “this is who Marlene is. I want her to see them when she wakes up.” When I explained what happened in the previous ward she immediately consented.

And after she died, one of her friends said “at least she won’t have to be in constant pain now.” But she wasn’t in constant pain. Yes, there were some times when an infection caused daily pain. But even at those moments she never let that define her. She never felt like a victim. She was more abled than many physically okay people are. That’s the only way I can define it. I just recall being startled at those two moments since she was so full of life and wit and talent.

I could write about her for 20 hours and there’d still be more to say to provide insight into all she brought to her life and others. The intensity of my heart for her has not abated one iota. I miss her. I will always be a lucky man for all she added to my life. She literally saved my life in the last year we shared. I could not save hers.

She was My Marly. She called me My Twinkle Eyes.

Facebook reminded me with that photo from July 2nd, 2016. Everyone who got to know her is lucky indeed. That’s the blessing to count. Not her loss. Our gain.

MWAH, My Marly! TTYL. Sleep well.

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These vids are from a playlist I made for her.

I truly hope all of you find the heighth and breadth of the kinda love we had.