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- More about Mary: In the '80s, she was married to some famous guy, a musician, and they lived in London and New York. She was in New York City when John Lennon was shot. Her husband was abusive, and she left. After that came the truck driving, the reservation - where she worked at some trading post and lived at the end of a very long dirt road, closest neighbor a very very old man - and the homelessness. The more things I remember, the more it sounds like it couldn't possibly have been true, but she didn't brag about these things or do anything to make it seem like she wasn't being perfectly honest - I think she's just lived a fantastical sort of life. She loves animals, and one day a few years ago this skinny bedraggled cat showed up at her apartment. She put out food, the cat wolfed it down. The cat kept showing up and Mary kept feeding it, hoping to fatten it up a bit. After weeks of this, after spending a bit of money she couldn't really spare on vitamins and special food and seeing some improvement in the cat's health - it had seemed to put on some weight, its coat was looking better - Mary found out that the cat was not a starving stray at all but was rather the very elderly cat of a neighbor, who was fed and cared for at home and who looked so terribly haggard only because of its advanced age. Mary was embarrassed at having been taken in by the wily cat, but what a thing to be tricked by. When I met her her dog was Sadie, a big white floppy ragdoll of a mop-dog, and she and Sadie were the best of friends, tiny Mary and huge Sadie. They went everywhere together. A few years after I left Seattle Sadie died, and then Mary got two cats. Who knows why she got two cats, she was always a dog person. I'm not sure how long she held out, maybe a year, maybe two years, but then she got herself a labradoodle puppy, and for the last nearly five years she and that dog have been the best of friends. I suppose the saddest thing for me to think about - I'm trying to be reasonable and see this as one part of the story of her life and of course it has to be - but the saddest thing is to think that she'd probably like to spend a little more time with her dog. She loves humans too, has a soft spot for people going through hardships. Don't tell her not to give money to homeless people. But it's not even just money. She'll stop and talk to them, find out their stories, find out where they came from and what they need and try to get it to them. No surprise she's ended up working at the food bank. She started out there as a volunteer. She'd been laid off from the law firm, as if her situation weren't already dire enough. I have no idea how she managed during that time. She was looking for any kind of work and filled her time volunteering, which turned into a paid job, and she's been there for... six years? She loves art, more than anyone I know. Any kind of art. And she's always finding art in everything. Photographs, graffiti, music, books, sculpture, plants, rocks, people, faces - everything is art and she is a fan of everything. And she is an artist herself, although she'd never allow anyone to say that. She's been very timid about creating her own art, although she's finally started taking pictures. I think - Mary, it's not that she is or isn't an artist, it's that her life itself is a work of art, she's crafted a work of art so huge we can't even comprehend it. Something logical to do would be to donate to the food bank in her honor but I don't want to do that because it seems too... narrow. Mary is art. I want to donate to... the symphony, or a writing program, or... I don't even know. A donation, her name listed in the program of some very fancy artsy thing - she'd be thrilled by that. So that's Mary. I mean, that's not Mary, that's a little about Mary. The most ___ person I'll ever know.
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