Mary smiled when I walked into her room at the Stoney River Assisted Living Facility. She exclaimed, “My sweet little baby sister!” I laughed and kissed her cheek. She had often called me that when we were growing up in our childhood home.

Holding out a small vase filled with lovely red and yellow tea rose blossoms for her to see, I marveled, “Despite the cold nights this past week, the rose bushes in my garden are blossoming. All the plastic walls of the greenhouse do is block the wind, but that must be enough to allow some healthy plants to thrive this late into fall.”

My sister lightly touched a blossom and observed, “They’re pretty.”

Placing my flowers on the dresser across from her bed, I commented, “It’s hard to believe that Christmas is just a little over two months from now! As a little girl, I loved when you told me your memories of moving into the new farmhouse two days after Christmas the year before I was born.”

Mary nodded and explained, “Daddy said the varnish on the woodwork wasn’t dry until then. A bed sheet was wrapped around the Christmas tree, and it was carried across the snowy yard to our new house. Only one ornament fell and broke.”

Smiling, I pointed out, “You were only five and a half years old at the time. Then, exactly one year later, I was born.”

With a dreamy smile, my sister confessed, “Having a brand new, sweet, little baby sister made me a very happy six-and-a-half-year-old. I was so excited about you, I often sneaked into Mom and Daddy’s room when you were supposed to be napping, just to reach into the bassinet and pat you on the back.”

Delighted to hear a memory that Mary had never told me before, I pictured my sister as a small child, creeping away from the Christmas tree and entering the bedroom next to the living room to admire her new sister and touch her. Although I was born two days after Christmas, I know for certain that year the Christmas tree stayed up a week or two beyond January 6^th, the feast of Epiphany. Mom never put up our tree a moment before the afternoon of December 24^th and having just given birth, she wouldn’t have been in a hurry to take it down.

As I grew up, Mary read to me for hours. She read comic books, children’s fairy tales and stories found in the women’s magazines that Mom loved to buy. This caused me to love reading long before I knew how to do so. When I learned how to read, Mary stopped reading out loud as often. But some stories are so good, they are best shared. I remember the last Christmas story she read to me. We cuddled together on the bed in our chilly bedroom. The room stopped feeling cold and the early winter darkness didn’t seem as dark.

My sister’s bedroom was a cultural oasis during her high school years and as she prepared to attend college. Whenever I spent time with her, I’d learn about things like Shakespeare, the popular stage play “Camelot”, and do art projects. We made abstract designs with threads stretched between strategically placed pins on a canvas. I made a small seed collage while she designed a large rooster on a wooden board, using millions of seeds. Reading Robert Frost poetry and then hearing him recite his work on television made us both want to become writers.

After graduating from college, Mary taught second grade in the school we had attended as children. A few years later, she married a farmer who lived a little over a mile from the farm we grew up on. Mary and I both gave birth to baby girls in February of 1971.

Since my sister lived four miles from my home, I visited my sister often through the years because she lived along my way to visiting our mother. Whenever I stepped into Mary’s house, I’d announce, “This is going to be just a fifteen-minute visit!” We never timed the visits, but we talked and laughed for as long as we could.

Mary was my first editor after I started to write my weekly column for Buyer’s Guide in 1990. She was a good writer herself, and would sometimes sigh, “I should be the one writing.” During those years she was producing fabulous cross stitch masterpieces, something I had neither talent nor patience for.

My sister Mary died on November 8^th, 2023. I had visited her four days before, but hadn’t suspected it would be our last visit.

I am sad about losing Mary, but all our wonderful, shared memories remain. Her soul, the real essence of Mary, has slipped into her Father’s room next to our living room. She is no longer bedridden, suffering pain or living a limited existence. I can’t help thinking about how much better Mary’s Christmas will be this year.

Mary Doris Leick     >May 19, 1944 – November 8, 2023<