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About Mary Lynn

Mary Lynn WaiteMary Lynn. She was funny, intelligent, compassionate, courageous. She was adaptable, open minded, and adventurous. Characteristics that describe thousands of other women. But her personality made her Mary Lynn.

I remember a person who fully shared her life with me. Our lives took many turns, any of which could have weakened our relationship. But our trials, hard times, and small victories strengthened the glue that held us together rather than chip us apart.

I'll remember our travels, times with friends, gardening, moving, raising children, long discussions, being poor, houses, trailers, mud stick houses, and shacks we lived in.

We didn't do it all but we did a lot.

We squeaked through college in substandard housing, joined the Peace Corps, and lived in Liberia in a mud stick house that was better than what we rented in college. We then traded the tropics for children. We had three children, of which one child was born in a car and another born with no one present but Mary Lynn.
My low salary got us an old drafty farmhouse that we sold as we moved south to a single wide trailer in Canyonville. Another farm house before moving to a remote district in Southern Oregon, where we cross country skied, burning lots of firewood, relaxed in our wood heated hot tub, and lost all our equity in houses we had owned. We were

Mary Lynn Skiing

devastated by the death of her brother Craig. We moved from our remote Shangra La to a less remote district where groceries were only 30 miles away. Our remote living ended when we moved to the suburbs of Vancouver. A life of school functions, quilting, potlucks, attending the UU Church, and cooking for West African Pigouts. We both were downsized into completely different jobs. Suburbia ended, we moved across the country and purchased a tree farm and began growing greens, raising too many chickens, and exploring the deep South. That all ended with Mary Lynn's last breath on a high school track in Meadville, Mississippi.

I've excluded, forgotten, and overlooked thousands of experiences in the nearly 30 years we had together. What I remember and what matters is the woman I shared them with. She was always there for me, and believed we would be together until death did us part. She believed in me when I didn't. She forgave my mistakes and bad judgement. She loved me, she loved her children. She had her priorities straight.

It was painful to lose her but she's embedded in my heart and I think about her every day. Even at this anniversary of the worst day of my life there are far more memories of happiness than grief.

The world is a better place because of Mary Lynn. I'm a better person because of the time she spent time on earth. Now that the mourning is over, the grief has subsided, I know that I was with someone special. Thank you Mary Lynn for being in my life.

Photo Galleries:

Mississippi Days

The 80's

The 90's

Before Children

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