Globe Drive writer Peter Cheney drove to Nova Scotia to visit his mother-in-law Marjorie Beare every summer for 23 years. When she died in the fall of 2007, Peter wrote her eulogy. This was his farewell to Marjorie:
There aren't many 80 year olds who will go out for karaoke at midnight. But when my wife wanted to go, Marjorie was up for it. At 2 am, she was onstage in a Toronto bar with our contractor, singing Me and Mrs. Jones and Do Ya Think I'm Sexy. As to her voice - she was no Maria Callas. She was no Johnny Cash, for that matter. But she was up there. At 76, she got married for the second time. This wasn't a quick and dirty city hall job. Marjorie became the world's oldest, most enthusiastic blushing bride. There were dresses, bridesmaid, caterers, makeup artists, engraved invitations, and a reception that would have done justice to Lady Diana. That was Marjorie. She loved nothing better than a party.
So here we are, at Marjorie's final social event - at least the last one she will physically attend. So it's incumbent upon us to live up to her standards, As many of you know, Marjorie liked nothing better than a good roasting - but as noted in her will, she stopped short at cremation. If you attended her last wedding, you will realize that she could take a roasting like no one else. In fact, she loved it. But she could still sass back on occasion. Well, now, we've got her in the perfect position - she's in the box, and we've got the microphone. It's time to eulogize a woman we can't imagine living without.
We will also make some fun of her, too, because she would have it no other way.
Some people live quietly. And when they go, they are a tree falling in the forest. silent because there is no one to hear. That was not Marjorie. She made a commotion. We heard her. She affected us. She will be a presence at every gathering for the rest of our lives. And she may haunt future generations - I already see my kids worrying about the cat, just like she taught them to. This worries me. It seems like we're living through a real-life version of the Boys from Brazil, where the Nazi loyalists produced a series of Hitler clones so the Fuhrer would live on. I see little Marjories all around me. One of my sister-in-law's friends told me that Marjorie used to eavesdrop on their conversations and use the laundry as a pretext to rifle through their clothing for evidence. My wife does the same. So does her sister. They've both been Marjorized. And my daughter is showing clear signs.
From the moment I showed up at the Beare house, I could see that Marjorie was very special. She was not shy and retiring. (She left that to her first husband, Ron, a sweet and gentle man I think of almost every day.) Marjorie was the one who caused the ruckus. I met her in the summer of 1983. There was trouble right away. Marjorie had been given a sofa. She wanted it in the basement. Getting it there would not be her problem. She was a master of delegation, and she quickly sized me up as the kind of guy who could probably handle the mission. So I measured the sofa, then the stairwell. The sofa was several inches wider than the basement stairwell. I told her it wouldn't fit.
"Why not?" she asked.
I told her I'd measured it.
"Just try," she said.
I told her the measurements.
"Just try," she replied.
I was not yet a member of the family. I was wooing Marian, one of just two Beare girls - as women went, this was a highly desirable, extremely limited edition set. I could see that winning Marjorie's approval was key. And so I tried to put the sofa in the basement. Marjorie's son-in-law David and I hefted the upholstered leviathan and began the hellish task of maneuvering it into the side door. Now it was on the landing, ready for its final journey. The tape measure hadn't lied. The sofa was soon wedged in the stairwell, like a giant baby wedged in a birth canal. We sweated. We pushed. We disassembled the basement stairwell, a section of the adjoining wall, and tore out a chunk of the ceiling. It went on for two days as I recall. Marjorie, meanwhile, alternated between the living room and back patio, sipping drinks and entertaining guests. Once or twice, she looked down from the top of the stairs, like the Queen Mother checking out the construction of a new palace.
Finally, the sofa was in the basement. Marjorie had saved herself the price of new sofa that would fit the stairway. I had learned some new swear words from David. And I had my first insight into Marjorie. To her, things like measurements and hard facts were for other people. She focused on the important stuff.
The sofa mission was just my first task. Over the next 24 years, there were many things to be done for Marjorie. I was just one soldier in her army of slaves. Marjorie had drivers, handymen, house cleaners, car repairmen and real estate agents. There were grass cutters and tailors. There were ministers and florists, She had a relationship with all of them, because with Marjorie, nothing was simple, and nothing was disconnected from humanity. She didn't pay her bills at a bank machine. Instead, she went to the branch (she dealt with at least three) and had lengthy, face-to-face conversations with the people who take care of her money.
If those people had a new child, an illness in the family, or a kitchen renovation, that would be discussed. And then the rest of us would hear about it, too. Marjorie went to a salon every week, because she refused to wash her own hair. And this created yet another relationship, Marjorie had friends everywhere. They were listed in an address book that only she could understand - to me, it looked like the Dead Sea Scrolls, but harder to read. But to Marjorie it all made perfect sense. Her mind contained untold connections. There were lunch dates, calls to the cousin of a friend's brother who she met at a mall in Florida where her father's plumber's uncle bought a chair in 1958 that had the fabric she wanted for the living room. Her calendar was full. She saw her friends constantly and talked to them on the phone until the battery died. Then she called back on the other phone to talk some more. Thanks to her technical issues, she never got a cell phone. Thank God. It would have been like handing a nuclear weapon to a terrorist. Her communication technology was one step removed from the days of the carrier pigeon and pony express. She would write a letter and send it to us in Toronto, with instructions to deliver it to Hamilton, because that was in Ontario too. Marjorie would buy Christmas presents in April, in Florida, then bring them to Nova Scotia, awaiting the final leg of the journey to Toronto or Vancouver, perhaps in July, where they would be squirreled away. Some were never seen again. Maybe an archeologist will discover them some day and wonder.
She gave us a lot of things to laugh about. She once tripped over a green bean in a grocery store. She never got her hair wet. She fell down the stairs with her friend Edie. (They were both okay, but they took a serious ribbing for years to come: Cirque de Soleil proudly presents, performing high on the staircase, Marj and Edie! When Marjorie married Jack, she hyphenated her name, creating the amazing Beare-Bone. It was even better when she had e-mail - a lot of people thought - Beare-Bone@sympatico.ca must be a porn site.
Marjorie was old school. She remembered an age when brown beans were not available in Florida. So to the end of her days she carried canned beans in her luggage from Halifax to Tampa. And she was no Martha Stewart. She kept the dry cat food next to the cereal in identical boxes. Yes, her first husband ate it for breakfast once. There were many more things like this. Marjorie was not organized in the conventional sense. But she had something beyond price. She valued people. Especially us. Thank you Marjorie Beare.