Don’t cry, honey…

In naming me Maureen, my parents covered a couple of bases. There was my grandmother, Mary Trainor Rogers. (Maureen is the Irish diminutive of Mary.) Mary was my mother’s middle name. And my aunt (my mother’s sister) was a Mary.

In truth, it was my aunt Mary Wolf Dineen for whom I was named. Mary was my godmother, and I guess I’ll have to say that she fell down on the job of making sure that I remained a Catholic rather than convert to atheism. But that was the only job she ever fell down on in her life.

Smart, tough, resilient, strong, stubborn…Mary died on Tuesday at the age of 93.

Until a couple of years ago, Mary was living on her own – volunteering, going out to lunch with her girl friends, voraciously reading, doing her crossword puzzles, watching her Cubbies. Then she had a few health setbacks, including macular degeneration, and she moved into assisted living. Last fall, the health setbacks were worse and Mary ended up spending the last couple of months of her life in a skilled nursing facility. These months were hard on Mary (and her kids). She had a few falls. She was mostly wheelchair bound. She was anxious and depressed. The good news was that she never lost her marbles. That was the bad news, too, as she remained fully with it. (A few weeks ago, my cousin Ellen worked a crossword puzzle with her mother, giving Mary the clues and having Mary provide the answers for Ellen to fill in. Now, Ellen is a reader, a writer, and a former teacher. Ellen knows a lot of words. But one that she wasn’t familiar with, her mother sure knew. “How do you know that?” Ellen asked her. Mary’s answer: “I just do.”)

When Ellen and I spoke the other night, we reminisced a bit about the summer vacations we spent at The Lake, my grandmother’s summer house about 50 miles outside Chicago, in what was then farm country but is now suburban.

Every other year, we trekked from Worcester to Chicago for two weeks, and a week of our vacation was spent at The Lake, along with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Ted, and their five kids – Ellen, Tim, Mary Pat, Mike and Laura, who were roughly the same ages (plus or minus) as the five Rogers kids. Ellen and I shared a birth year, as did Mike and my brother Rick. (In fact, Richard’s name was going to be Michael, but Mike Dineen showed up in June, and Rick Rogers didn’t make his debut until November, so he ended up with Michael as his middle name.) Also on board were my Aunt Kay and Uncle Bob, the tail-enders of the Wolf family, who were more like slightly older cousins than an aunt and uncle. My Uncle Jack and Aunt Donna, and their daughter Mary Lou, also made an appearance or two when we were out at The Lake. And, of course, there was my grandmother, presiding over all, working her garden so that there would always be wax beans for us to gag on at supper.

Anyway, time at The Lake was magical. The lake itself was shallow and mucky, more of a pond than a lake. But we swam in it nonetheless, or lolled around on big old inner tubes. We made hollyhock ladies and opened the stained-glass windows of the little lighthouse my grandfather had installed in the back yard. We played rummy and crazy eights. We explored the cornfield across the road and the duck farm down the way. We walked to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up whatever item was needed, or to Elmer’s, a creepy bar that sold milk and bread.

While the Rogers and Dineen kids were having fun, my mother and Mary were slaving away, taking care of their families, only without the conveniences they had in their real homes. There was no hot water. The washer was an ancient wringer one. There was always at least one kid in diapers. The refrigerator was an icebox.

No vacation for those two.

Why didn’t the two of them take the opportunity to go out to lunch? Go shopping in the nearby town of Libertyville? Take in a movie?

Not in their DNA, I guess. They were used to working. So that’s how they spent their vacation. While, of course, catching up with each other.

Like my mother, Mary was a secretary. Like my mother, when she went back to work, Mary worked at a university. Like my mother, Mary (widowed at 60) volunteered in her retirement. They liked books, and puzzles, and corny music like Lawrence Welk.

Both sisters were baseball fans. While my mother’s prime allegiance switched to the Red Sox when she married and moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, Mary remained a lifelong Cubs fan.

One of the high points of her life was winning the Cubs Way of Life fan contest in 2010. Part of her prize was getting to throw out the first pitch at a game.

The last time I saw Mary was at her 90th birthday celebration, four years ago this spring. If someone had said at that point that she was in her late seventies, you wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. Sturdy, vital, with it…

Wish she hadn’t had to suffer so in her last couple of months of her life.

Back in 1960, when we were heading home to Worcester, Aunt Mary saw us off on the train. She lived on the far South Side of Chicago, so it was a schlepp in, but I’m sure she wanted to see my mother one more time, and to help our family (which at that point included a 1 year old) get settled on the train. Did she schlepp all the way to my grandmother’s house on the North Side to drive us to the Union Station? I don’t recall. But I clearly remember her seeing us right into the train car.

When I gave her a hug in the little vestibule where two cars connect, I teared up.

“Don’t cry, honey, we’ll see you again.”

She was right, of course, but as us kids got older, we no longer made those biennial trips to Chicago. Seeing my Aunt Mary was no longer the regular event it had been.

I’ve been crying off and on since I got the word on Tuesday.

I don’t believe in the afterlife, but there are times when I wish I did.