Missing Mary

I worked with Mary for about a year at a prestigious law firm in Seattle, but only got to know her in the six years we spent together as friends on Facebook. She died of cancer four months after announcing her imminent death to her large collection of followers and Facebook friends. She was as shocked as we were by the totally unexpected diagnosis. Many of those followers had never met her in person, but it wasn't necessary. Mary was a writer. She was a storyteller and included us in her daily adventure; her online friends were family.

Offline, Mary's closest friends were her dogs and her cats; with people she seemed to be a friendly but determined loner. Online, she was open, always interesting and amusing. For the last four months, I have been part of the online family's grieving process as we tried to tell Mary how much she has meant to us; how much we will miss her stories, her bright spirit.

Mary loved to travel the city with her dog and her camera, and report back. That ended abruptly with the pain of late stage cancer; Mary did not go out anymore. In response, I begin to take photos on my daily walks to share with Mary as she was still able to spend brief periods online with us. My walks became more lively and more poignant; I began to see again instead of listening to the constant chatter of my mind. I will continue to see and take the photos on my walks, but it's not the same. I am missing Mary.

Photos for Mary

Reflection of Leaves in Water

I cannot properly describe Mary. It is more appropriate for Mary to describe herself as she did in this Facebook Note from February of 2009.



25 Random Things by Mary Witter

February 2, 2009 at 5:03pm


1. I caught a fish as a child and when its eyes met mine, I threw it back. I’ve never fished again.

2. I believe that nothing can take the place of wood-pulp books and papers—the feel, the sight, the smell, the sound of turning pages. Same with snail mail letters with doodles in the margins.

3. I have never quite learned when to quit or to wait until the flag drops before plunging in, but I’m working on it.

4. Eager to believe, I listened when they said it’s never too late

5. I went back for four more years of school at nearly 50 years old. Graduated with honors, awards and massive debt.

6. One of my greatest pleasures is to plan, nurture and watch a garden grow from my window, complete with birds, hummingbirds and butterflies. Wish I had one now.

7. I’m going to stop smoking for good tomorrow...third time is the charm. I started again when Sadie died…I was lost and didn’t care.

8. As a very young child, I once sat on the dusty earth under an enormous wasp nest and poked it with a long stick. I thought the wasps were rushing out to say hello…didn’t occur to me that they were angry. I didn’t get stung.

9. I have a sense of curiosity and adventure that sometimes lands me in trouble.

10. I enjoy intellectual pursuits--obviously. :~)

11. I believe that poets, writers, artists and actors serve their countries and humanity better than all the militarizes in the world.

12. My favorite film director/screen writer is Sally Potter.

13. The Sally Potter film I love most is “Yes”. I was so caught up in the storyline and visuals that it wasn’t until the second time through that I realized the dialog is written entirely in iambic pentameter.

14. I am an only child. An orphan who has been up for adoption for some time now. We problem children are notoriously hard to place.

15. I have painted my toes gold every summer since 1976. Before that, I was a hippy-chick flower child and it was not allowed.

16. I am a romantic to the core.

17. I'm closer to online friends than anyone I’ve met since returning home to Seattle seven years ago. We’ve been through a lot of stuff together –births, deaths, jobs, health. Online friends feel like family.

18. I believe that rough edges are immeasurably more interesting than cut and polish. Diamonds in the rough have gotten a bad rap.

19. When I was 9, I secretly signed and mailed in a form from the back of a magazine belonging to my mom’s spooky friend. The form was to add my name to a list of people to be taken up by aliens. I didn’t hear from them, but I’ve kept one eye on the skies ever since.

20. I once worked for a circus and married the Ringmaster.

21. I saw a ghost when I was three, but didn’t tell anyone. He was an old-time Native American man who didn’t notice me. I’d never seen anyone dressed like that before. The image has remained, causing me to keep an open mind about such things, even though I don’t really believe in ghosts.

22. I drove a long haul truck in the 80s (field trip!) and lived like a gypsy in a bubble, flying across the open road. Had a little dog, microwave, great stereo, TV, bookshelf and so many blooming air plants it looked like a floating greenhouse.

23. My mom was an immigrant from Austria with an 8th grade education, my dad had a 6th grade education—both had immeasurable wisdom and compassion. I was the first in of either side to go to college.

24. The one thing that turns me off is obscene wealth. Greed is not a virtue.

25. I am cracked up by life and all its glorious variety and I'm sure the Tricksters roll on the floor laughing at mine. (Or is it the aliens? see # 18)

With the Dead in a Dead Language

Most people are unfavorably surprised to find that in the afterlife, God and his entire celestial bureaucracy speak only Latin, which greatly adds to the general confusion of waking up dead. On Earth, the assumption has always been that God would have mitigated the language problem, or would at least have better technology to deal with it. Even more frustrating, celestial bureaucracy is no more friendly or helpful than Earthly bureaucracy; speak Latin or step out of the line.

Under such unexpected circumstances, the newly dead often slip into denial and bitterness simultaneously. With so many Earth people claiming to speak with God, why did not one of them mention this essential language requirement? Not once, not ever. Most wonder now why they never cultivated friends who spoke Latin, and why even in Earth academic circles, Latin was considered a dead language. The irony of this point is not lost on most newly dead people, but in their denial and bitterness phase, they find irony unbecoming in a God. There is a growing realization that unless they understand Latin, they cannot clearly decipher where exactly they have ended up in the afterlife.

When denial and bitterness have played out, most people advance to phase II; take action. Though widely spread out, there is a huge crowd of people milling about, and the idea arises that one could find others who speak a familiar language and possibly also speak Latin, or know someone who does. With a mixture of enthusiasm and panic, people rush about connecting and questioning complete strangers. Everyone will eventually find others who speak their language, but will not find anyone who speaks Latin. Consequently, misinformation is freely traded exactly as it was on Earth. Predictably, some will be dismissive of other beings who do not speak their own language; others will develop a deep empathy for all fellow beings who are sharing this unsettling experience.

The action phase will also play out, and instead, people talk less and begin to pay closer attention to their surroundings. They notice that Latin grammar books, complete with multilingual glossaries, are lying conspicuously about in the vastness of the afterlife. The action phase gives way to resignation; everyone will have to learn Latin or be left behind. Predictably, some people focus on the unfairness of it all, refuse to learn anything, and thereby become totally isolated.

Those who do choose to learn Latin discover that long time afterlife residents are intermixed with newcomers in the huge milling crowd, and that long time residents, of course, do speak Latin and could have acted as translators. The entire exercise was designed as an ice-breaker for the newly dead; the long time residents do not wish to spoil the game. In this spirit, fluent speakers of Latin enter the afterlife through a separate expedited checkpoint, though it was generally acknowledged by long time residents that in any case, fluent speakers are disinclined to assist the non-Latin speaking rabble. Fluent speakers of Latin are, after all, on a career path into the celestial bureaucracy.

My personal riff on a book by David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.
Cum mortuis in lingua mortua  <with the dead in a dead language>

Kayaktivists

Storming Shell's oil rig. This is a family friendly drill.

A photographer's lucky shot.

Selden and I, preparing for the action.

Our job was to stop Shell's oil rig from leaving Seattle's harbor and going to drill in the pristine Arctic. Being a member of the kayaktivists  on family friendly drill day is one of my favorite days on the planet. In the shadow of this day is that after days of elaborate planning and organizing, the giant ship exited in the middle of the night, and only about thirty kayaktivists were in place. The fault was modern technology. We were told to wait for the text message which most of us didn't notice while we were sleeping. A simple phone tree apparently didn't occur to anyone until after the fact. 

Kayaktivist at dawn staring down the giant rig.