I recently found out that my former best friend passed away. I contacted her brother and he was kind enough to write and give me the details as well as other bits of information about the family. I am posting this in case anybody in cyberspace happens to google her name. I would like them to find this blog post and read about Mary Bea.
There aren't enough adjectives to describe the wonderful qualities of my former best friend. Smart, very pretty, talented, fun, nice and loyal. She and I were like glue soon after I moved 2 houses away from her in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1954. There were no other children our age, so we shared our early days together on the weekend and after school. We often took the bus to Boston, joined a very active Girl Scout troop (in my blog post about My Life as a Girl Scout, I wrote her name hoping she'd see it one day), and did what we could together because our stay-at-home mothers didn't work nor drive. She went to a private catholic school for several years, but we went to the same high school. There, she took college courses, went to college, became a teacher (at the same school my mother taught), left teaching, took more college courses, had a few different jobs, her last was about 30 years of working in several departments at Northeastern University, one as the Director of Personnel and her last position as Executive Assistant to the Provost.
During our almost 60 years, we often kept in contact the best we could but hadn't spoken to each other in maybe 10 years. Years after college, she bought a house with her boyfriend in Arlington and invited me for a weekend visit. I then moved to Virginia and lived there for 20 years, but saw her a few times on my return...always meeting up in Lexington. During one lunch, she spent a good deal of time talking about her very good friend, Candy, who had just passed away. I am doing the same for her, although more publicly. Mary came to my mother's funeral in 1990. And, I called her after I heard her mother passed. Soon, our Christmas cards stopped being sent, her postcards from afar, birthday as well. Later, I always knew how busy she was at Northeastern, and didn't want to bother her....I wish I had.
On November 22, 2015, I gathered a stack of Boston Globe newspapers to dispose of. I hadn't read any, but on a whim, something told me to flip through the obits (I never do that, as a matter of fact, especially this time as I could hardly see, never mind read anything because I had cataract surgery three weeks prior. Right there, on the very last bottom of one of the 4 or more full pages of obituaries was Mary's name, age, and date of death. I read it clearly. A short gasp and tears formed when I read it over and over. I called the University quite a few times, but nobody knew anything about her death. So, months later, I decided to write to her brother.
April 1967 in front of her apartment in Watertown, later she moved to Woburn. Mary on the right, me on the left.
February 3, 2023, I am sharing the letter her brother wrote to me. I'm hopeful he won't mind.
"Hi Barbara. How nice to hear from you, despite the circumstances. Perhaps you know that Mary Bea was living for many years in Woburn, and had retired about a year earlier from Northeastern University where she was an administrator. Last spring and summer she started developing symptoms of headaches, vision issues and occasional falls, which turns out were the result of a brain tumor called a meningioma. Though not malignant it was in a difficult location, and last August she went in for surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Despite world-class specialists in this condition there were complications, and she never awakened from the 15 hour procedure, remaining in what was essentially a coma. As time went on our optimism gradually faded, and we finally decided to move her to hospice in early November. She was very clear in her living will under what circumstances she wished to continue her life if disabled, and it was clear that the chance of meeting that standard had been reduced to nil. She died at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers, which is an excellent and caring facility. Mary Bea had no children or significant other in the last few years, and she was very generous to her nieces and nephews in her will, such that it will have significant positive impact on their lives.
We had originally planned on a Celebration of Life this spring, but various complications with that plan arose and we decided to just have a family gathering and distribution of ashes in the sea at Cathy’s vacation home in Bar Harbor.
So that is the story. Cathy and her husband John live in Topsfield, MA, and my brother Peter (and his wife, daughters and grandkids) and I live in California. I am married, have one adult son who is an engineer (like his father) in upstate New York and one son who is finishing his freshman year at George Washington University in DC. We will probably be retiring once we stop paying for college tuition!
If you have a spare moment I would enjoy hearing your story.
with best regards,
Paul
p.s. make sure all your estate planning documents are up to date - it really makes a difference."
Two quick stories. When we were in the 4th or 5th grades, I remember being on the grass in her yard talking about love, marriage and white picket fences. Then we decided to kiss each other on the lips to see what that felt like.
The other story was much later, perhaps in the 10th or 11th grade. On a whim, we decided to walk 8 miles to Harvard University to see her dad. He was an instructor or professor (I don't know), but anyway we did, and didn't tell our parents what we were going to do. Her dad was shocked, and shortly after we arrived, he drove us home. My parents punished me. Both are wonderful memories.