On Missing Mary

.... Mary wearing amazing home-made Valentines as earrings ...

Mary is amazing.

That is about the first thing to say about Mary and the last to say about her as well.

She was here for the 10 days when I couldn’t think of how to really take care of myself.

On Anticipation
Mary could anticipate my every next need.

More pills?

Some food?

Move around a bit? Do some more exercises? Ice that leg. Elevate the leg. Rest a little. I might have been able to think about all of those things myself. Been able to think of them if I hadn’t been fighting a lot of pain with a little Tramdaol – oh, enough, but not enough for normalcy.

On Helping with Organization
I had some left-over boxes from moving in. Actually, I am moved in, but I have boxes that couldn’t come with me downstairs, that are now stored in the garage. I bring 4 or 5 of them into the house occasionally. Why would I just leave those forever out in the garage? Some of those boxes were in the middle of the room, left over from a day a few weeks ago when I thought I could do it all. Mary went through every item with me. With some, I needed to have that item in my hand for one last time, just to touch it. With some, I just needed to say good-bye. With some, I needed to acknowledge that I didn’t want to keep that for myself; I was keeping it for someone else who had really already said good-bye to it. Knowing that is what helped me say goodbye to it.

A major parting of the ways came with my t-shirt collection. Now my collection doesn’t stand up to Duncan’s collection, since his is themed with images of places around Vancouver Island, or logos from Indigenous workshops, or smart political sayings. My collection is a second hand one – all of the t-shirt my kids were finished with and left beind, like the 1990 Canadian Western Basketball Championships, or a logo from a museum Rebecca and Bonnie visited in Brussels. I have loved those old t-shirts. I have made bread in them, mopped floors in them, dug weeds wearing them. So, there is a little part of me that doesn’t want to relinquish them to a rag drawer, though they have absolutely gained the right to a rest there.

Mary told me I could only keep 10 of all of my t-shirts. That brought on some anxiety until I figured out I didn’t have to do what Mary said. She was just there to help me through the tramadol. Perhaps we ended up keeping 20 t-shirts.

On Minimalism
I have twos and threes of some things – like my scooper. I saw it first demonstrated on a cooking show – just a flat metal square with a handle. Good for scooping up chopped vegetables and getting them into a pot, and also good for cutting dough if it is on a counter and being made into buns, for example. I bought one for the lake, one for Bonnie and one for my house here. Then I forgot I had bought one for here and bought two more for here – thinking I might give one to Rebecca when I see her next.

Being ahead now by two, I offered one to Mary. She takes about 2 days to think about whether she would like an item that is offered to her or not. Seeing that, I knew it was safe to tell her to go into my kitchen cupboards and take anything she wanted. She only took some of my doubles and thankfully she took a set of six rings that cut out circles – for donuts, baking powder biscuits, sugar cookies. What a relief to know that I will not be making triple batches of any of those again.

I could never say it all about Mary. The best thing to know is that the first thing and the last thing about Mary is that she is amazing.

Arta