Brittany Maresh

writer

Every Halloween I go down the road and visit Anne, a great older lady whose grand daughter was in my class in 6th grade, and has off and on been a friend of mine ever since. She’s always got some silly new thing for me, and we sit and talk about books. She reads the same things I do, and I love hearing her stories. She likes mine too, which is why I visit her, and why I count her as one of my friends. I love baking things for her (though I have to be careful—I know she can’t have a lot of sugar).

She’s always so glad to see me, and tells me how proud she is about how I’m growing up, and hopes I’ll continue to be a good influence for her granddaughter. She laughs, and smiles, and she beads things, and she loves her animals, and she thinks the world is a great place, if you just know how to look at it right.

I found out last Friday that she’d been in the hospital, that she wasn’t doing well, and that she was unconscious and had been for several days. Today, I found out that they have scheduled her death.

She has a will, and we all know it’s what she would have wanted, but it seems so strange to me, to have a time of death for someone who is still alive.

I’m going to miss her enthusiasm and her joy, and her support. She was always so positive, and she’s had so many reasons not to be. It doesn’t seem like just a year ago that we were at her great-grandson’s funeral.

I know I should be positive, like she’d want me to be. She’s not suffering, and she’s leaving us all while we will still remember the good times, with her healthy and happy.

But I can’t help it. I’m sad. I want her to be there to e-mail when I finally get around to reading the new Dean Koontz novel, and for our silly Halloween tradition, and for when I bake too many cookies. She liked oatmeal raisin.

And mostly I want her to be there because she’d always be so glad about whatever stupid little thing I’d accomplished, and I’m not sure I know another person on the plant who could make you feel like three new words on a novel or having pulled out the scissors so you can get started cutting out the pattern for a sewing project is actually making major progress.

Sincerely,

Brittany Maresh