Richard
Ohhh.......I am so sad, so sorry......
I remember when I was young and going to an older person's funeral, I had the unsettling feeling that they must not have been very popular ----- before it occurred to me that, no, just that very few of their friends were alive or mobile. My Mom and Dad would certainly have come.....and after that wonderful stay with all of you back in 2007, I would have made the trip, as well. What a magnificently generous, funny, attractive, and sprightly presence Mary Anne was..... I will always remember her gardens and the special, somewhat flirtatious friendship she and my father shared. I don't know if you remember that I had asked him, as he approached 85, where he would like to travel -- and I gave him the world to choose from.
You no doubt remember my father's enthusiasm -- and I was therefore taken aback when he kind of stewed on the possibilities.....I had asked if Ireland or Nova Scotia or.....but for 48 hours, it seemed to have fallen flat. Then suddenly, everywhere I went, people were telling me that my Dad had called, that my Dad wanted me to call him right back.
He had decided.
Michigan.
I was at first, and even for a while, dismayed and amused that, with the entire world to choose from, he settled on something that began just four miles away.
But your Mom's place was the first stop.....and we stayed two happy nights, connecting with all of you, going out to an amazing dinner in the bluest lakeview evening, dismaying and delighting my father as we boxed with your Wii set, faking a ride in the peppy brand-new Fit, and settling in for an evening of bocce on the lush back lawn.....
Thank you to each of you for your generous welcome on what became an extraordinary last trip -- we circled up through the gigantic sand dunes where we had vacationed, we stayed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, which he had always wanted to do but didn't feel he could afford, we traveled down along Grand Lake and he showed me where my mother and he had fallen in love.....and then down to Ann Arbor, where he had been President of his fraternity and where there was in an old scrapbook the cut-out newspaper notice of my parents' engagement......
Mary Anne will be warmly and thoughtfully missed.
My daughter Katherine (just married in August) is completing her Masters in Public Policy in Ann Arbor -- and I am flying out to see her as perhaps the last of the Eysters, for a while anyhow, bids goodbye to the Midwest..... and I thought of you all and the amazing, almost miraculously happy time my Dad and I had with you.....and I had to check......and I'm sorry, but deeply grateful for the time that all of us had together....and for the depth of the friendship my Mom and my Dad had the two of them.....
My love to you all......
Richard ("Richie," I suppose) H. Eyster
