A Great Soul Serves Everyone All The Time

 

A few months back, many of us gathered to celebrate the life of my uncle, John Wesley Stephens.
I was fortunate enough to get up and make a few remarks at that gathering.
Mainly I shared stories that a lot of you provided to me.
I believe we laughed and cried together a little bit that night.

Immediately after that ceremony John’s sister, my Aunt Mary Ellen hugged me, kissed my cheek, and whispered in my ear,
“I want one JUST LIKE THAT.”

We laughed, and I told her I’d be honored to do so, but I mentioned that I hoped it’d be MANY YEARS down the road until I’d need to do it.

This is my attempt, sadly sooner than I’d hoped, to fulfill that wish for her.

My Aunt Mary Ellen was born on September 25th, 1940.
She passed away on May 1st, 2023.
Those dates are just figures to be etched on the tombstone that she’ll now share with her long departed husband Eddy Dumas.

Between those dates on the headstone the monumental mason will invariably carve a dash, to signify the period between the dates listed.

Many of you have probably heard the dash perspective before.
Maybe it’s a bit cliched, overused, or lacking originality, but the thing is that each of our dashes is different from anyone else’s.
You may recall that anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Always remember that you are absolutely unique.

Just like everyone else.”

So today with friends and family alike, with laughs and tears, with hugs and shared affection, with anecdotes and fondly recalled stories, we'll celebrate the remarkable dash of Mary Ellen Dumas.

 I recently saw a quote attributed to Marc Middleton, a journalist and activist who specializes in aging issues. It resonated with me and may be applicable here either with or without my suggested edit.

Middleton said,
“The key to AGING is to not mourn what’s lost but to celebrate what remains.”
The edit I suggest is to insert the word “grieving” in place of “aging”.
“The key to GRIEVING is to not mourn what’s lost but to celebrate what remains.”
What remains are the fond memories, the shared stories, and a lot of laughs.
So, thanks to a handful of Mary Ellen’s family, here are a few of the memories that they wanted to share this morning.

My mom, Bonnie, recalls walking to school through the first frost of 1940.
Typically such an event would not register on her radar, but that year it did because upon arriving home to the farm in Greenwood Wisconsin, after school that day, seven year old Bonnie first met her new sister, Mary Ellen.

The newborn was swaddled and placed in a basket that was tipped up against the cream separator. Evidently Mary Ellen arrived into this world with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.
Perhaps an incubator would have been used with a hospital birth, but since she was the only one of Eric and Helen’s children born at home, keeping her upright as much as possible early on was the only therapy employed.

 Most of the family members who I spoke with mentioned how deeply Mary Ellen loved children.

A young Mary Ellen developed a great fondness for children younger than herself.
She would make regular rounds through the neighborhood visiting and spending time with each and every young kid that lived nearby.

How about a quick show of hands?
Did any of you ever have an imaginary friend?
Or know of someone who did?

I had one.
A young Mary Ellen had TWO.

As the story goes, at one point while making her rounds, visiting neighborhood children, she began telling people  that her mom was pregnant.
With TWINS.
Exciting?
Right?

The excitement wore off real fast however after neighbors stopped by to offer Helen well wishes and warm regards on a pregnancy she knew absolutely nothing about.
Mary Ellen, like Lucy Ricardo, had some ‘splainin’ to do.

Many family members mentioned that Mary Ellen was like a sister to them, even though she actually wasn’t their sister.

Mary Ellen’s actual brother Dale mentioned to me when he was 4, 5, or 6 years old that their mom and dad signed him up for swimming lessons. Mary Ellen was tasked with getting him to and from those lessons. So, several times a week, one summer, she would sit him on the family bike (since they could only afford one, for all of the kids to share) and pedal Dale to Loring Park, a good five miles from home, and back home again afterwards. Dale is quite certain that Mary Ellen didn’t want to do that, but she never let him know that it was an inconvenience, nor too much to do for her “favorite” brother. 

Her love of kids eventually did lead Mary Ellen into social work with an emphasis on child protective services.

All I know is that being born into any generation younger than Mary Ellen’s was a pretty sweet deal, because you were viewed, in her eyes, as a kid, forevermore. 

Many shared with me that Mary Ellen ALWAYS made you feel important. 

Our daughter Laura remembers riding with her cousin Kamie, and Grandma Bonnie, with Mary Ellen behind the wheel, heading to Ely for the Blueberry Festival in search of good deals and
So.
Much.
Shopping.
But a lot of laughs and fun along the way.

Typically while in Ely there will be a jigsaw puzzle being worked at, on a table somewhere in the lake home mom and dad built on Shagawa. A visitor may think that a woodpecker or two has found their way inside, but that tap-tap-tap you hear means that the tapper has just placed a piece in the puzzle. Mary Ellen started that. It continues to this day. And probably will forever.

My sister Lisa reminded me to mention the Christmas stockings Mary Ellen filled for each of us every year. Mom tells me that the tradition was started by Grandma Helen but I think we’d all agree that it was mastered by Mary Ellen. At this writing, I’m told that there is still about 40 years’ worth of stocking stuffer items stored at an undisclosed location on Colfax Avenue South in Minneapolis.

The beauty of the Christmas stockings at our house is that once the gifts have all been opened and the anticipation and excitement has started to subside someone will say,
“HOW ABOUT THE STOCKINGS?”
And suddenly things get exciting again.

And who can forget about the Christmas chocolates Mary Ellen gave us all each year? 

All made by hand.
Peanut clusters, coconut balls, chocolate haystacks, and everyone’s favorites, milk chocolate covered rippled potato chips.
Oh my goodness, THOSE were a little bit of heaven on earth.

Mary Ellen LOVED holidays. Lisa has been gifted, by Mary Ellen, an impossibly large collection of turkey themed items. Thanks to Mary Ellen, Thanksgiving at Lisa’s place seems more like the event is being held in the Butterball Turkey gift shop rather than in a private residence.
God only knows how many more ceramic turkey gear Lisa will inherit now.

So many mentioned that Mary Ellen was ALWAYS so generous with her time, her talents, and her resources.
 

Uncle Dale told me that evidently my grandparents had signed Uncle John and Aunt Mary Ellen up for confirmation classes at a church in St. Paul even though they lived in Minneapolis.
This meant that Mary Ellen and John needed to ride a city bus to and from their weekly class.
The story goes that after class, Mary Ellen would fall asleep on the bus back across the river EVERY week.
MORE amazingly, she would somehow mysteriously wake up at the Lyndale Avenue stop just prior to the Colfax Avenue stop where they got off of the bus.
John always wondered how she did that EVERY week.

Until the week she didn’t.

That week John left her sleeping as he scurried off the bus at Colfax Avenue and then stood and watched until Mary Ellen disembarked, THREE BLOCKS LATER!

As Uncle Dale tells the story, more times than not, up until recently, whenever John and Mary Ellen were together, the debate would rage, whether Mary Ellen got off the bus at Colfax that day or not. Mary Ellen says she did, Uncle John always begged to differ.
Dale imagines that they’re together somewhere renewing that argument as we sit here this morning.

My sister Lisa mentioned that by being a young single professional woman out on her own, Aunt Mary Ellen was an actual Mary Richards WELL BEFORE Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air on Nicollet Mall and became the TV version of that character.

Many people mentioned different road trips that Mary Ellen made. She liked to get out and see the world. And loved to WHOOP every time a Dairy Queen was spotted.

Selected family, “WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!”

See? It still happens now. 

My sister Libby and Mary Ellen had a shtick that they’d perform on occasion.
When introducing themselves to someone that knew only one of them, Libby would say,“I’ve been a disappointment to Mary Ellen from the very first day.”
Mary Ellen would nod and smile, so Libby would continue,“I was born the day after her 13th birthday and she had been so excited about the possibility of sharing a birthday with a niece or nephew.”
Then Libby would add,
“But I redeemed myself by giving birth to my son on her husband’s birthday.”

I’ll always recall a particular recent time, watching Aunt Mary Ellen enter the restaurant, lock her eyes on me then cross past the bar, make a beeline to our table, still looking directly at me, and upon arriving within two feet of me, licking her thumb and fixing my typically rogue left eyebrow. Ever helpful, she just wanted her nephew to look as good as possible. But look at what she had to work with,
Soooo, it is what it is I guess.

My mom, Bonnie, has told me that everyone is born with a hole in their heart. I used the Google machine to find out that during pregnancy, this hole allows blood to bypass the fetal lungs - which aren’t yet working - and deliver oxygen to the unborn baby’s heart and brain. The small opening, located between the left and right chambers, usually closes on its own within a few months after birth. But in about 1 in 4 babies, it never does. Most of those babies will be fine and will live their lives not even knowing it. But for some, the defect can prove dangerous.

Mary Ellen found out late in life that she still had a hole in her heart.

Every time I’ve heard this fact mentioned about her, prior to Googling about it, my mind has jumped to;
well, yeah, her husband, Uncle Eddy, passed away on December 4th of 1982 so OF COURSE SHE HAS HAD A HOLE IN HER HEART since then.

In asking family members for stories and memories of Mary Ellen, to prepare for today, multiple people mentioned a hole that Mary Ellen’s passing has now left in THEIR hearts.

I’ll always recall Mary Ellen’s excitement when I was able to gift her with the Limited Edition Elvis Presley Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Candy. I wasn’t sure if she was more excited because they were Elvis related, or because they were a candy she had never tried before. I suppose it really didn’t matter as long as she was happy.
She may or may not have said, (in my best Elvis impersonation) “Thank you, thank you very much.”  

Aunt Vicki mentions the time, many years ago, that she, her husband (our Uncle John) and Mary Ellen went to the Criterion restaurant for their crab leg special. This was so long ago that the three of them were still drinking, and they’d had a few that night too.
As the night wore on, at some point, Vicki and Mary Ellen went to the lady’s restroom when suddenly Mary Ellen, standing in the sink area, started yelling,

“I’M GOING BLIND! I’M GOING BLIND!”

Was it some sort of rare shellfish allergy?
A stroke perhaps? Maybe a torn retina?
Vicki joined her in the freak out until somehow, a few minutes later they realized that the “blindness” was merely an accumulation of salty water that sprayed on Mary Ellen’s glasses with every crab leg she cracked open.

With that medical crisis now averted the uncontrollable laughing jags over Mary Ellen’s “blindness” became the biggest issue for the rest of the evening. 

Uncle Dale previously shared with us his vision, from later, on the day of his mother’s funeral, of his mom and dad reunited, in the afterlife, walking hand in hand, enjoying a sun-lit spring day on Colfax Avenue.
I’m seeing a similar scene now with Uncle Eddy and Aunt Mary Ellen, at long last, enjoying each other’s company again. I’m just not sure whether I see them in Fon Du Lac, or in Minneapolis. I believe they enjoyed many happy years together in both of those cities.

I’d never heard that Mary Ellen had any training nor a particular interest in compiling genealogies like Louis Gates Jr. does on the PBS show, Finding Your Roots.
She did, however, have a genealogical way of thinking. (is genealogical even a word?)

Aunt Vicki relates that you could ask Mary Ellen, for instance,
“How old is Brian?”

And then it would start,

“Let me think,
Mom and dad were married in 19 whatever, and were living in wherever.
Bonnie was this old, so that meant Jeanne and Curt were born this year and that year.
So then Libby, Mark, Stacy, Lisa and Todd were born in this year, that year, this year, that year, and this year.
It WAS raining that Tuesday…NO, wait…Wednesday because the tulips were up by then…”
It would take a 10+ minute history for her to come up with the answer, but, by God she did it!”

 I recall Mary Ellen challenging herself to be able to ride a bike around Bde Maka Ska (the lake formerly known as Calhoun) within a year of getting her knee replaced.
When the scheduled date arrived we surprised her with quite a few family members showing up in custom printed “TOUR DUMAS” t-shirts to run, skate, and/or bike the route with her.
She made it around the lake and we later celebrated her accomplishment at J.D. Hoyt’s.
Such a great memory of a very fun day with Mary Ellen.

A family member added that Mary Ellen was definitely the queen of her realm. She waved as royals do. Is it a coincidence that a grand coronation occurred so shortly after Mary Ellen passed?
Though we gather here today to bid her farewell, Mary Ellen will remain in our hearts and minds forever.
LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

Jack Stroessner “HIP HIP!”
Some family and friends “HOORAY!”
Jack Stroessner “HIP HIP!”
More family and friends “HOORAY!”
Jack Stroessner “HIP HIP!”
EVEN MORE family and friends “HOORAY!”

Aunt Vicki shared with me that when she first started seeing Uncle John that John, Uncle Earle, Aunt Mary Ellen, and their mother (my grandmother) Helen spent every Saturday morning picking a different place to go to for breakfast. The original four hardly ever missed a Saturday morning with each other.
First Helen passed away; Earle was next. John left us in late 2021. And now Mary Ellen is gone too. Multiple family members have suggested that the original four are back together now and deciding where to go for breakfast next Saturday.

I just found out today, and will shoehorn in here, that Mary Ellen is the type of relative that you’d ask to get a matching tattoo with, and she’d say ‘yes’, and then actually go through with it.
She’s also the type that you wouldn’t mind it when she’d pinch your cheek and tell you that you’re C-U-T-E.

 I’m not certain if it was providence, happenstance, or mere coincidence, but on the day that Mary Ellen passed away a friend of mine posted a quote on Facebook that I believe we’ll all agree applies to Mary Ellen.

The quote is from Maya Angelou, who said; 

“A great soul serves everyone all the time.
A great soul never dies.
It brings us together again and again.”

Mary Ellen was always there to listen, to care, and to serve in whatever way she could.
Mary Ellen will live on in the dash she authored with so many fond memories of the stories she created. 

You probably have your own favorite memories of Mary Ellen’s dash.

In my view she will bring us together any time we notice the first frost of the year, when we tap on a puzzle piece, when we whoop at a Dairy Queen, when Christmas stockings kick the excitement level back up a notch, when kitschy holiday gear is displayed, when the joy of time spent with children is felt, and when a good meal is shared with those you love.

Thanks for being a great soul, Mary Ellen Dumas.
We love and miss you every day.