Aunt Mary

 

   My Aunt Mary died on June 3.  I’ll be giving this eulogy tomorrow at St. Barnabas Church in Chicago. 

                                     Aunt Mary

   Good morning and thank you for being here. Mary would appreciate your presence. I wish I could talk to all of you to get your insights on Mary, but Liz asked me to be brief so this is going to be from a McDonnell/Boston perspective. Mary Wersells started off as Mary McDonnell. She had one sibling, my father Joseph. Joe and his wife Mary had five children: myself, also a Joe, Bill, Steve, Mark and Mary-Jo. They're all here today and I know Mary appreciates that too.

   Mary took off for Chicago when I was pretty young. I remember her being involved with camps and young people. Mary got her masters degree in physical education in Chicago and started teaching high school gym. She met Ed Wersells and settled down.

   We'd get to see Mary, Ed, and then daughter Liz every summer at my grandparents beach cottage south of Boston. Sometimes they came for Christmas.

   
   When I think about Mary, the main thing that jumps out is her generosity. One April morning, a Christmas card from Ed and Mary arrived at our house with a big check in it. The Christmas card in April was Uncle Ed's joke, but the check was not a joke. My father had been dreaming for years about building a 28' wooden sailboat in our yard, but with five young kids, he had neither the time nor the money for such a project.

  The check allowed my father to have the wooden hull built in Maine. He was then able to finish the deck, the cabin, the masts, etc. in our yard. Mary loved sailing so it worked out well for both of them. Mary and her brother Joe were very close and it's too bad they lived so far apart. It's good that Mary, as a teacher had the summers off and could make extended visits.

  I could describe Mary as a force of nature but that's pretty abstract.  Let me give you an example. One time Mary and Joe had sailed out to one of the islands in Boston Harbor. My brother Steve was along that day and my sister Mary-Jo. There were several grandchildren along as well. The great thing about Boston Harbor is that it's filled with little islands that have been turned into parks. You can sail out to an island and have a picnic, which was what Mary and the crew were doing that day. 

   There was an abandoned fort on the island and after lunch everyone climbed to the top of the fort to enjoy the view. There were steep grassy slopes covering the sides of the fort. There was a nice set of steps to get down, but my father decided to slide down the grassy slope. He didn't realize the slope was covered with the stumps of small trees that had been cut down earlier. There was lots of ooching and ahhing as my father slid to the bottom. 

   Mary had lagged behind and when she saw her brother at the bottom of the slope dusting himself off she asked what had happened. She didn't wait for an answer, but pushed through the crowd to show her brother how it was done. There was more ooching and ahhing as she joined Joe. She was wearing shorts and got a few nasty lacerations. Liz called my sister later asking what they had been doing to her mother. Mary-Jo said "It's not our fault."

   Mary was a take-charge person; a good quality in a teacher. Someone needs to know what's going on. My brother Bill told me about a time he was helping Mary hang curtains at the cottage in Union Pier (Michigan). Bill used to help our mother with her interior decorating jobs and had picked up a few tips along the way. Bill wasn't understanding how little Mary needed his advice until he suggested that the window treatment would look wonderful with curtain tiebacks. Bill said everyone in Union Pier heard Mary's order for him to "Get out of the way!" Mary liked a joke but not when there was a job to be done. 

   Mary loved playing sports. Field hockey first and then basketball. She and her friends formed a team and played in the Senior Olympics program for Seniors 50+. If Mary had a fault, it was thinking everyone else had as much vim and vigor as she did. Once I hit 50, she called and said. "Senior Olympics is coming to Minneapolis! You need to sign up." Soon a thick packet arrived with information and a registration form. When Mary asked me about it, I kept telling her I was working on getting my team together. She was nice enough to to let it go at that.

   The only thing that slowed Mary down at all was a stroke several years ago. The most serious consequence of the stoke was that her field of vision was greatly reduced. But I saw no sign that her joy in living was any less. She still read the paper, watched the games on TV and had her daily cocktail while watching Jeopardy. 

   She had been going to the women's college basketball final four forever, and that continued. Her last big trip was to our son Ned's wedding in Massachusetts two years ago. 

But Mary continued to plug along. She turned 95 on May 4 and was still happy to be here. But she didn't regain consciousness after her last surgery. Liz moved her to a hospice unit and visited every day. Mary's niece Fran was there as well. Mary had entered that mysterious place between this world and the next. Liz held her hand. She said the rosary and told Mary there was nothing to be afraid of. Everyone here would be okay. She could go. She could go sailing with her brother, but she'd have to decide if it would be in the Cricket, the little boat they sailed in as kids, or the Nave Sho, the Saint Joseph, the boat she helped build the hull for. A week ago Thursday, after Liz and Fran had left for the day, Mary made her decision.