Mary Catherine (Cook) Savage

Mary Catherine Cook Savage, alias "Cookie" or Mamie. Mother, Grandmother, Wife. She existed as a defining force, the hub of the "Savage" wheel and consistent foundation. In a time when novelty and change are the norm, as an aspirational state, Mary Savage existed as a counter point to this norm. She was a rock. She was always there, consistent. Her's was a life committed to loyalty, duty and dedication. On her 75th wedding Anniversary in January of 2021, she wrote on that date in her calendar, in what had become the scratchy and almost illegible handwriting which mortified her, she wrote the words "truth and trust." I asked her about that and she said that it was the bedrock of their marriage, the foundation on which they built their lives. For my mother too, personally, those were consistent qualities. You could trust her to be there. Whether you liked it or not, and often you didn't, she told you her truth as she saw it.

Later in life she would admit to being wrong, or rigid but strangely it was just those qualities that allowed for her to build the strong foundation for a family, in which she asked not for the help of her children but stood on her own two feet. The end of her life was very hard for her mainly for this reason, that she had to depend on others and need their help. She was brought up in family where love was earned, not freely given and it was hard for her to love herself without the due diligence. Nevertheless, during these last years a new Mary unfolded, one which I will cherish most of all. As a turtle without a shell, she became very tender and raw and incredibly sweet. I feel very fortunate to have the experience of spending time with her in that state of sweetness, almost as though she was in a state of grace. Did she learn to rest in the uncertainty or the chaos in her body as it became steadily more deregulated? No, she still suffered moments of incredible anxiety and panic but increasingly acquired more and more the true gift of humility, or as St Teresa of Avila has so beautifully put it " It constantly happens, the lord permits a soul to fall, so that it may grow humbler. There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world." I shared this quote with my Mom in the final year of her life and the look on her face was of intrinsic knowing, as well as of the grace born from the realization that her final years of suffering were not in vain, but the ticket she needed to her kingdom of God, and to be reunited with her beautiful Johnny - and dance with him once again.