In Remembrance - Margie Boulware, 2006

My friend Margie died in the spring. I find myself thinking of her this time of year.

Mother called me when Margie died. As chance would have it, I had left the cell phone in the car, vital piece of technology that it is. I listened to the message the next morning. When she said she had something to tell me, but didn’t want to say over the phone, I knew someone had died.

Dad answered when I called, so he was the one who told me. “Laura, Mrs. Margie died.”

I was surprised. Things like that are supposed to happen of course, but sometime in the future, when you’re expecting it. She had been in my thoughts recently. As I was looking through some old Christmas cards, I realized that both my mother and Mrs. Margie had sent me a card with a polar bear on the front in the same year. I laughed when I realized that they’d both been on such a similar wavelength. And with that came the thought that on my next vacation to Savannah I needed to devise a way to sneak over to Okatie for a visit.

I remember the last time I dropped by on my way home from the Savannah Irish festival in February. Ann was there, and I didn’t have long to stay, but a visit to the area wasn’t right without a hello to Mrs. Margie. And as usual she’d been full of plans. She was a little thinner and a little slower in her steps maybe, but she was the same vital, interesting person I’d always loved. It is difficult to grasp that she is gone. That will take some getting used to.

When mother told me the circumstances of her death, I said, “Well mother, if you could choose how you would die, I think that’s what you’d pick.” Mrs. Margie wasn’t a person for nonsense, so it struck me as particularly appropriate that in one breath she was here, and then a few breaths later she was not.

The Margie I knew had an open door policy with me. And she really seemed to love listening to any nonsense that came out of my mouth on any given day and at any time I wished to share it. Since I was a kid, I tried not to let on how important that was to me. Growing up, you can be really dumb sometimes.

But I loved being in that house in front of the fire or sitting at the kitchen table and talking for hours about nothing special. I spent more time talking to Mrs. Margie than I spent with my own grandmother, who thought I was too quiet and bookish “just like” my mother. I don’t know that I had more in common with her, but with her I came fresh and without that genetic baggage that comes with being “just like” someone you raised. And her gift was to listen to me chatter on like I was just the smartest, most fascinating person she ever knew, when I was really just a loner and a kid. I in turn thought she hung the moon. Really.

I always kept an eye out for her truck on Camp St. Mary’s road because I knew she’d wave if she saw me. Being on the river was always better if we managed to spot her in the boat or fishing on the dock with her mother. And there always seemed to be at least one excuse to turn down the dirt road leading to the Boulware Place, so that I could pick up our conversation where we left off.

And I can remember vividly that when I got my college acceptance letter, and no one else was home, my first thought was to walk straight from the mailbox in front of my house over to tell Margie, because I knew she wouldn’t mind one bit. That’s the best kind of adult there is.

I regret that these are the kinds of things you always save up to say about someone after they’re gone. I think about all the good it would do just to have it all said while everyone is alive and healthy and can still appreciate the heart that went into saying it. What I hope is that through all the chattering I did back then, by the fireplace or out in the barn or at the kitchen table or in that hulk of a truck or out in the boat on the water, that she knew already that she was the best kind of adult a kid could have as a friend. I will miss her.

--Laura