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| at 90: a glimpse into her love of colors and celebrations |
we thought she would make it until 100, but there was merely a shadow left when we saw her in 2017, and a shadow of that when we saw her this year. 98. 100 christmases if you count the one in the womb, and that's how she would have liked it. born in denver. grew up in newton (outside of boston), moved to fredricksburg on a street with her name on it in a house built for her. i met her when i was 17. the summer we spent a few weeks in maryland with her, i transcribed her diary from her young adult life. trying out stenography, watching the movie classics (that i grew up with) in theaters when they came out, talking about her various admirers. she was quite a personality.
a wonderful love story (not in her diary) of her meeting her husband (of 57 years when he died in 2001) was that he was a wwii soldier who wrote to her as a kind of assigned pen pal through a church organized moral booster for soldiers. they fell in love over the letters (man would i love to read / transcribe those!) and basically as soon as he got the chance they got married. i'm missing a lot of details here.
i was very glad we got a chance to say goodbye at the end. i was very happy i double checked that all the kids had gone back in to give her one last hand hold on the way back across the ocean.
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