Miss Mary Moments
Here then are the Miss Mary Moments as posted on Facebook in chronological order. I started posting them in 2012 and ended with her death in 2017. No doubt she was feisty and able to have a quick come-back but every one carries a nuance of love, too.
01-24-2012
Mom told me this morning that she had washed the dishes, dried them and put them away. Trouble is, she said she forgot to rinse them. So if I’m foaming at the mouth you know what happened. “I hope they don’t taste soapy,” she told me.
03-08-2012
I was upstairs and I heard a call. “Can you come help me?” I hesitated. “Quick! Can you come right away?” she said. While opening a carton of soda – with a sharp pair of scissors – she cut into a can. It was spewing pop all over the kitchen carpet. I grabbed the carton and paper towels (which she had already grabbed to slow the flow) and ran to the sink with the carton. Egad! “Mom, quit opening soda cartons with scissors,” I suggested.
03-13-2012
Mom is sitting in her chair, book in her lap and when she looked up at me I began talking to her about something. While I was talking SHE FELL ASLEEP. Later when she woke I told her what had happened. “What were you telling me?” she asked. “I don’t remember,” I said. “Well, then, it’s no wonder I fell a sleep,” she said.
03-27-2012 [at the hospital]
Someone came in and asked Mom a bunch of questions … age, rank, serial number. When they asked her the date, she gave her room number. “They’re going to be taking you to the nut house,” I told her. Without missing a beat she said, “And I’m going to tell them who’s the reason.”
05-03-2012
Mom came out of the bathroom and heard me talking every now and then. I was answering Jeopardy questions out loud. I saw her standing in the kitchen. “Who are you talking to?” she asked. “I’m playing Jeopardy,” I answered. “I thought you were cracked,” she said.
05-13-2103
While Mom doesn’t feel well enough to go out for Mother’s Day, she had a request: pick up something at Bob Evans carry-out for lunch. She loves their cheesy potato soup. She insists on paying for both of us. “But Mom, it’s Mother’s Day,” I told her. “That’s OK. I’m buying. You can buy my meal on Father’s Day,” she said.
06-16-2012
Last evening while I was at Relay for Life I brought home some homemade donuts. When I got home I sat them on the kitchen counter and went to bed. Mom got up at 2 AM to use the bathroom and saw them there. She said she ate one. “You were up eating donuts at 2 AM?” I asked Mom. “I just thought, well I’ll try one.” It’s just good she stopped at one.
07-08-2012
Mom has spent much of the morning washing her hair, putting setting foam on it, cutting it, letting it all set and dry, them combing it out. It’s an involved process I don’t understand (and don’t want to). Now that her hair’s done, she handed me a bottle of her hair spray and said, “Here, put this one for me.” It’s good I looked at the can before I sprayed. She had given me a can of Lysol.
08-12-2102
“You forgot it again,” she tells me. I’m standing there trying to decide what “it” even is. “I tell you time and time again and you never pay any attention to me,” she says. I remember most things you tell me,” I counter. “I don’t think so,” she answers. “But if I think of an example I’ll let you know.”
08-21-2012
I just heard a scream in the bathroom and I jumped and ran as fast as I could. I thought Mom had fallen or hurt herself. She had run out of her best perfume.
12-12-2012
We went to the library and while I looked at books, Mom went into the restroom. I finished and stood outside the door waiting for her. Eventually I heard an odd hammering sound and then a cry for help. “Bill, are you out there? Can you come and help me?” she said. I pushed the door open. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “I’m stuck in the stall,” she said. “I can’t get the door open.” What to do? I just pushed on and stepped into the women’s bathroom. Ah, pink. I went to the stall, alternately pushed and pulled the door and got it open. Mom exited, shaking a little and with bloody knuckles. As we walked to the car, I kept looking over my shoulder. I just hope no one saw me come out of the ladies bathroom. Does this sort of thing happen to anyone but me?
12-22-2012
I was outside taking pictures of the moon and Mom was in the first floor bathroom getting ready for bed. After about ten minutes I came back inside (I left the back door unlocked) and Mom’s first words to me were, “Why did you come back inside for?” I asked her what she meant. “You came in a few minutes ago and went upstairs. You made a strange noise. Trouble was, I had not come back inside. I got the .38, loaded it and went upstairs. No one. We’ve both been a little on edge after that happened. When Mom went to bed she said, “Who was it that Dad said he used to talk to?” It was The Milkman., Pinehaven’s supposed ghost. So now I’m sitting here alone wondering what in the world is going on. One thing is for sure "we are not alone".
01-01-2013
I asked Mom some question (I forget what) and she just looked at me. “I just told you,” she said (whatever it was). “Well, I have a lot on my mind,” I replied by way of excuse. “No, you’re just dense,” she answered.
01-08-2013
Mom came out of the bathroom a while ago and told me her blouse was buttoned crookedly. “Don’t you ever look at whether I’ve got everything on right?” she asked me. “Well,” said I, unable to come up with a quick answer. “If my butt was hanging out would you tell me?” she continued. “If I noticed it I would,” I told her. That wasn’t the right answer.
01-31-2013
Mom is always doing at least two things at once. She had been washing her hair and giving it a mayonnaise treatment (thus the plastic Kroger’s bag on her head). I came downstairs to this startling sight … she is also working on her 2012 tax papers so that I can fill out the forms, For a moment I thought she had bought a blonde wig! But, no, it’s just another Miss Mary Moment.
03-17-2013
Mom was in the bathroom putting her hair up in curlers. I was sitting on the sofa reading a book on Louisa May Alcott and her mother. Mom comes walking up to me. “You didn’t tell me I had my pants on backwards! I just found out when I tried to put my handkerchief in a pocket and it wasn’t there!” Hmm. I look up from my book, trying to figure out how I am responsible for this. “I wondered what the wrinkles were in the front of my pants. It was the butt in front!” Hmm. I look back down at my book. Somehow I think I have been unfairly blamed for this wardrobe malfunction.
05-10-2013
I’m sitting on the sofa reading a book, listening to the rain drum against the window, sipping a cup of coffee which is not keeping me awake. “Is this coffee decaf?” I ask Mom. “You’ll have to look and see which can is in front. That’s the one I’m making next.” Hmm. I think that’s the same as saying “The can in the back is the one you’re drinking.” She has one can labeled “Decaf”, the other is unlabeled. I walk out to the kitchen and have a look., The decaf can is in back. “I must be drinking the decaf,” I tell her. “Well,” she answered, “It’s one or the other.”
05-17-2013
Meijer’s just had an ad with the word BOGO on the screen. “What in the world is that?” Mom asked. Buy One Get One, I told her. “If they’re trying to save letters, why don’t they just call themselves M?” she said.
07-30-2013
I handed Mom my tablet some time ago and she began reading her Facebook page. I was reading a book and I muted the TV so all was quiet. After a while I noticed she wasn’t moving her fingers down the page. In fact both she and the tablet were asleep. I went back to reading. The room was quiet. All at once the tablet said “Welcome to CoPilot Live” in a loud male voice and she nearly jumped out of her chair. She had either launched the mapping program with her finger – or her chin. “I was sound asleep,” she said. “What is this thing saying?” She handed it back to me and left the room to brush her teeth. We’re both now fully awake.
08-18-2013
We walked at the Farmersville pond this morning amid calm winds and pleasant temperatures (66°). I showed Mom this shot of her walking on the track, trying to massage her stuff legs. “Oh, I look so old,” she said. “Couldn't you make me look younger?” I said, “No I can’t work photographic miracles. She never gives up. “Could you work half a miracle then?”
09-03-2013
I’m driving Miss Mary to the park where we’ll take our morning walk when she says, “Don’t let me scare you, I’m just exercising my eyes.” These eye exercises, prescribed by her neurologist, keep the eye muscles limber from the problems associated with myasthenia gravis. Anyone looking into our car would see her in the back seat , eyes wide open, cycling them around like a mad woman, looking as far up, down, right left s she can manage. “They’d just think I was taking you to the insane asylum” I tell her.
10-03-2013
“What’s a spoon doing in my bed?” Mom asked. Hmm, I had to think for a minute. I washed curtains this morning and she ironed them. As I prepared them to put back onto the rods and hang them again, I got a spoon to help me tuck a fabric tab into a hidden position. I explained this to her. “I wondered what you were dishing out now,” she said.
11-06-2013
Yesterday Mom was making butterscotch pudding. Instead of picking up the whisk which she had lying there, she picked up a bottle brush. Not a good way to make pudding, as she soon found out.
11-15-2013
We keep a Scrabble game set up on a table in our dining room and one f us will make a move now and then. We might make several moves in one day, none the next. Mom has a fierce competitive spirit and she said when she woke up during the night, she made a move when she walked by the table (even scored the move). Then, this morning, she found what she played wasn’t a word at all. She removed the letter tiles and erased her score.
12-04-2013
When I left on a my morning walk, Mom was doing the breakfast dishes. When I got back in she said, “I thought I was going to have to have you help me find my dish towel.” She said it was just suddenly gone and had no idea where it went. She said she even walked into the living room to see if she might have laid it down there. Where do you think she finally found it? In the refrigerator!
12-15-2013
Does anyone else have their Christmas tree DOWN? Few days ago about half of our strand of lights went out. Nothing I did would light them. So, after a suggestion from a friend that I replace the strand for Mom, I gave it a good try. Ever try to remove a string of lights without first taking the decorations off the tree? No, I thought not (and there’s a good reason for that). Anyway, I then found the only way to put the replacement strand on was to remove the ornaments … all the ornaments. Which I did. So I’m finally happily putting on the new strand when Mom says, “Why don’t we just leave it go? It’d be easier to put all this away now.” Well, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting. But being the humbug that I am, I went long with it, even cheerily helped her. So, we had a Christmas tree up for about three weeks. But no more. There’s not one single decoration anywhere in the house … just as I like it.
12-22-2013
I changed the furnace filter today (I change it whenever the seasons change) and I found that I had sliced a knuckle on a piece of metal on the furnace. I came upstairs, blood slowly dripping and asked Mom if she knew where the antibiotic ointment was. Nope, but she said she’d look for it. I heard her rummaging in the bathroom. Finally she said she couldn’t find the Neosporin. “But I found the Preparation H,” she said. “Mom,” I answered, “it’s my FINGER.”
01-01-2014
On TV they’re promoting the next “March of the Penguins”. Mom said she wasn’t interested in seeing it. “Why do I want to watch a movie about bugs for?” she asked me. “Mom, they’re birds,” I said. Her final response: “Whatever”.
01-05-2014
“I'm going to bed at 7:30 PM,” Mom said (60 Minutes isn’t on). “There won’t be any reason to stay up.” I told her she should stay up and talk to me. “Well,” she said, “then you’d better start saying something interesting.”
01-07-2014
“It’s six,” I say to Mom as I walk away from the window thermometer.
“You’re sick?” she asks.
“No, it’s six,” I say.
“What’s thick?”
“It’s six DEGREES,” I say with a loud voice.
She laughs. “You know you’re hard to live with,” she says
01-24-2014
“I’m sitting on the sofa reading while Mom’s sitting in her chair taking her blood pressure. Beep – beep – beep as the reading is taken and she begins to write in her log. She looks up at me. “1 – 24” she says. “It’s just eleven months till Christmas Eve.”
02-11-2014
Mom was working at the kitchen counter late yesterday afternoon. I looked at the vegetables lying there in front of her. “That thing looks obscene!” I told her. She picked it up and laughed. “Call it anything you want but it’s going to be soup tomorrow.” It took me a second to figure out what it was. I can say this much: we grew it in our own garden. [it's an onion]
03-20-2014
“You’re oversleeping,” Mom called up the steps. I got up, pulled on my robe and went downstairs to breakfast. Later, when I had finished my shower, I saw that it was still dark out. I looked at the clock, She had woke me an hour early!
04-22-2014
We are watching Jeopardy and Mom was quiet for the first segment. “Why aren’t you yelling out the answers?” I asked, thinking maybe she was asleep. But she looked up and said, “Because I don’t know any of the answers.” Well, OK.
06-19-2014
“How about coming with me to the Y tomorrow and using the walking track?” I asked Mom. “I have a free pass.” she asked me whether I ever saw anyone there with a cane? Nope. That didn’t go over well. So I told her she could come and sit in the therapy pool while I walked. “I’m not going to get wet!” she said. “If I want to get wet I’ll drink a beer!”.
07-17-2014
Mom just told me the only time I’m right when I’m arguing with her is when I admit I’m wrong.
07-29-2014
Mom told me that when she took her bath today she turned on the space heater for a while. “You turned on the heater in July?!,” I responded. “My bones were cold,” she answered. “I don’t care what month it is.”
10-09-2014
Mom just got in the back seat of the car and found my gym bag, still there from Tuesday. Oops. My clothes were soaking wet with sweat when I put them there. Later, when I took them out and hung them up, Mom asked how they smelled. “They smell fine,” I told her. “Just like me.” “Then they smell rotten,” she replied.
10-14-2014
I’ve been complaining for some time now that we don’t have a pumpkin to display on our brick steps. I like them just for decoration. Every time I pass the pumpkins at Kroger’s ($3.99) I complain about the price. Mom apparently got sick of hearing me bellyache about not having a pumpkin. She made me one out of a Metamucil cap!
11-04-2014
I had to wake Mom up to go to bed.
01-15-2015
Mom was teetering around the living room and I said “Watch your step!”. She looked up at me and said, “Do you think I’m going to fall if I don’t have to?”
02-10-2015
I told Mom she was being cranky. Her response: “You don’t know cranky!”. Now I’m just worried.
03-24-2015
Mom and I are going out to lunch with a friend and taking her to get groceries. Mom was talking about what she will wear and which cosmetics she wants to put on. I listened and said, “You’ll be striking!”. She looked at me and said, “I’ll tell you who I’m going to strike!”
03-31-2015
Here’s how my day began.
Mom: “Can you help me? I’ve lost my pants.”
Me: “You’ve lost your PANTS?”
Mom: “Well, the ones I sleep in. The purple ones. They’re gone.”
Me: “When did you last see them?”
Mom: “I took them off this morning and remember folding them. I can’t find them anywhere.”
So, like Mom, I looked high and low. Even checked the trash. We checked the refrigerator. No pants. I finally went to the Y, figuring they’d turn up again someday.
When I got home she had found them. She laid them on a box in the bathroom and they fell behind it.
05-07-2015
“Hand me your phone. I want to take a picture of you from the back seat,” Mom said. I’m Driving Miss Mary to the library and wearing my chauffeur’s hat. The woman deserves some class.
05-26-2015
Mom was sitting in her chair reading and I asked whether she wanted to go to the library soon or whether I could get a few things done first. “I could get this book finished if you’d shut up,” she said.
06-09-2015
I’ve taken Mom to the Farmersville park so she can walk on the track and limber her legs up a bit. After a while I can see she’s faltering and I offer her my hand. “No,” she says. “You slow me down too much.”
06-14-2015
We’re just back from Kroger’s and I’m trying to unload groceries from the trunk. Mom’s trying to open the garage door but can’t manage, even though I’m loaded down with bags.
“Mom, what good are you?” I say.
“Let me count that ways,” she answers.
“You won’t have to count far,” I reply.
06-21-2015
Miss Mary came to the back door to tell me the Blue Angels were going over the house, “heading home”.
It was me with the leaf blower cleaning off the back porch.
“Mom, it’s the Thunderbirds anyway,” I said.
08-09-2015
I was drinking a 20 ounce Pepsi for lunch and was telling Mom how we used to drink those little 6 ounce bottles. “Now I’m drinking three and a third more and it doesn’t seem like too much,” I told Mom. “That’s because your belly is more than three and a third times bigger,” she said.
09-11-2015
We were at the library and got the Time magazine with Trump on the cover. “How can a man with that much money not have the best stylist to get his hair in order?” I asked Mom. “Maybe he’s cheap like you,” she answered.
09-20-2015
I was washing Mom’s hair and asked her several times to move to the side a bit, or go lower so the water would hit her head better. She gets a bit cranky when I’m giving “suggestions”. “I could fire you,” she told me today. Considering this one of the many perks she gets from a dutiful son, I asked her how much money she figured she’d be saving.
10-20-2015
Me: What’s with he mangled tube of toothpaste on the table?
Miss Mary: “I’m done with it. Would you get me another from upstairs?”
Me: “Why didn’t you squeeze from the bottom?”
Miss Mary: “I did. It’s empty”
Me: Leaves the scene, scratching my head.
10-24-2015
Mom came into the living room, picked up a book and was soon sound asleep. As I took this picture she looked up (the phone beeps). “You were sound asleep at 8 AM,” I told her. “No, I wasn’t,” she insisted. “I was just looking down.” Yeah, and snoring.
12-06-2015
Mom was having a snack and, as is her usual habit, poured some beer into a coffee mug. She sat it on the arm of her chair, probably not more than four inches wide. I always tell her, “That’s not safe. You’re going to dump it on the floor.” I just came in from the garage and she was in the living room with a bucket cleaning up the beer she has spilled. “It was on the arm of the chair, wasn’t it? I asked her. She said she’s only had this accident twice in recent years. “Why don’t you quit doing it?” I asked her. “Why don’t you quit eating at the table and dropping crumbs?” she replied. There’s some logic there … somewhere.
12-11-2015
Mom just used our 12-cup Mr. Coffee to make a rousing pot of … water. She forgot to put in the ground coffee. Clearest coffee I ever saw.
12-24-2015
This one won’t be funny. A couple of weeks ago Mom said she “fell” in the bathroom. “I juts sat down,” she said. But she also hit her head. Initially there was no problem. But four days later her hip and upper legs began to hurt. Many years ago she fractured her pelvis when she fell on ice. She may have damaged that area again. For the past four nights I’ve slept on the living room floor to be nearby, helping her to the bathroom as needed (lots!). We’re both tired and worn out. She prefers seeing whether she improves on her own before seeking medical attention. The holidays are not a great time anyway. Merry Christmas, indeed.
12-26-2015
Here’s an update on Mom. Last night her hip and leg pain was intense enough that we went to the ER early this morning. Thankfully she was released after 5 hours of testing, x-rays, a CT scan, blood tests, EKG. All is well. They said she had a “bone contusion” from her recent fall and the prescribed some high-power pain killer. After six days without sleep, there is hope that things will begin to mend.
01-03-2016
This is our call system when Mom needs me; a cow bell. I think her pain is slightly less but she’s still a long way from well. I washed her hair this morning, thus the curlers. That improves her disposition if not her health.
01-27-2016
I apparently don’t know the proper way to drape a towel across the sink to dry it. Mom just pulled it off, placed it differently and told me, “This is how it goes”.
“What is there in nature that says THIS is the proper way?” I asked her.
“It is how I say it goes. And that’s how it goes until I’m dead,” she said.
Well, I guess it’s clear now.
02-08-2016
I was just informed that there is another universal law that I was not aware of, namely how the electrical cord or an iron must be wrapped. I was then shown exactly how it must be done. Mom explained that it was one of the Ten Commandments of Miss Mary.
02-18-2016
We were at Kroger’s this afternoon and I looked over at Mom and saw something beneath her left eye. “You’ve got a pimple or a wart or some growth coming on there,” I told her. It looked nasty! She went into the restroom to check it out. When she came out it was gone. “I wiped it off,” Mom said. “How is that possible,” I asked. “what was it?”
“It was lunch,” she said.
02-20-2016
Mom’s often dizzy but even so I found her leaning over a paper bag sharpening two kitchen knives. Bob and I left for breakfast while she was doing this work. “How will I explain this to the coroner if we find her with a paring knife stuck in her forehead?” I asked Bob. Luckily all was well when we returned home.
06-19-2016
We were admiring our row of sunflowers and I was trying to explain phototropism to Mom. “You could learn a lot from me if you’d just listen,” I told her. “Oh, shut up,” she answered.
07-27-2016
This morning I was reading a book and Mom was working crossword puzzles. But every time I looked up she was tilted to one side and sound asleep.
Finally I said, “Don’t move.”
“No, you don’t have a bug on you.”
I wanted to take a photo of her hands exactly as she kept them crossed.
I took this shot and then she promptly fell back to sleep.
08-22-2016
I laundered some curtains this morning and Mom ironed them and put them back onto the rods. I picked them up and began carrying them to the window.
“Now, does this side go in?” I asked her (as though it matters)
She looked at the fabric. “No, this side goes out,” she said.
I thought sure she was wrong.
“This side faces outside?” I asked.
“No, it faces into the room!”
I told her that didn’t make any sense. Out should face outside. In should face inside.
“I’ve thought about it and I think you’re wrong.”
“Well, you’d better think again,” she said.
End of discussion.
11-23-2016
I asked Mom to remind me to read my rain gauge in the morning (rain is so rare around here). Her answer: “Then remind me to remind you.”
11-29-2016
Well, this is a new one. Mom just came into the living room after spending some time in the kitchen rattling around. “I got my head stuck in the refrigerator,” she told me. What? Turns out she put her hair in curlers (I washed it) and then managed to bend down and get a curler stuck on something in the refrigerator, You people have no idea what it’s like living with that woman.
02-07-2017
I’ve just finished washing Mom’s hair. She tells me, “You sure didn’t wring it out very well.” I explained that she was getting what she paid for. Her response: “And you’ll be getting the lunch you paid for.”
Hmm, I know this shot looks like I've just bought a dog but that really is Miss Mary under there. Wringing out all the water I missed.
02-14-2017
Mom served me this salad for lunch. Yeah, she stood the pickle on end. “I'll just call it the salad that’s happy to see you.”
Backstory: Yesterday I complained that I had bought whole pickles because I wanted WHOLE pickles. She keeps cutting them up. So today she cut off two two slices for herself and gave me the rest, Miss Mary is never able to just follow instructions. She has to deliver everything she does with a little jab. Can you believe this “sweet” lady is 91?
03-29-2017
My day started thus: I’m sound asleep at 5:30 AM and Mom is standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you getting up?” she calls. I answer, “Why?’ I explain to her that it’s 5:30 AM and I don’t get up for another hour. Five minutes later: “Are you going to get up?” she says. I tell her again: “It’s 5:30 AM. Why would I get up?” I hear her say something about how she’s dressed and she’ll go sit down for a while. I get up ay my usual time. “Did you forget how to tell time?” I ask her. No, she says she just can’t see the hands. We have lots of clocks, many digital. I don’t know what that was all about but she says she’s been up since 3:30 AM. It’s like living at Grand Central Station.
04-24-2017
“Can I help you?” I ask. Mom is making lunch and I hear hammering. Fixing lunch and hammering don’t go together. I walk out to see what what’s going on. “I was just knocking cheese off a spoon,” she says. Well, OK.
08-17-2017
Miss Mary asked me to look at the “pencil mark” at the base of her toiler. I think that was a veiled complaint, as though I wasn’t cleaning it very well. But, no! Her pot is cracked! I wonder if this is just nature saying she has a fat ass?!
10-29-2017
We lost Miss Mary this afternoon. I’ll have more to say later but I’m going to need some recovery time. She’s been very sick and today just pushed the limit. I’m going to miss that sweet soul for the rest of my life. Obituary.
05-12-2019
Odd sometimes how things turn out, I was looking for a book to read so I came upstairs and was going through Mom’s bookcase. I pulled one out that I had bought Mom in 2008 for Mother’s Day (it’s inscribed from me). She had added this note to the inside title page.
Twice odd: first, that I should see this on Mother’s Day and secondly the date that she wrote this note to me. She died on the 29th, 18 months later.
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