Mary Thrower Obituary

Ryan I am so sorry to hear about your mother passing.

Marsha

My deepest Sympathy To The Family of MARY THROWER.

I am so sorry for your great loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you. May God continue to bless all of you. God is your rock. Love all of you. Linda

Of all the things I thought I would be writing as the Christmas holiday nears, I didn't in my wildest imaginings think it would be this. I'm the youngest of her three grandchildren, and I just naturally assumed that I would live a long life, and that she would outlive me, never once letting me forget that I'm the baby of the three.

Shock though it is, the very last thing she would want, is lots of grief and lamenting no, I'll use her words. The last thing she would want is lots of carrying on. Grief is for tragedies, and her life was the opposite of that. It was hard, and she accomplished more than she'd give herself credit for, but it was no tragedy.

I think I can hear her eyes rolling, so I'll just tell this little story, the exception that proved the rule with her. As an only child, I tried to act older than my age. I got invited to the grown-up parties because of my knowledge and wit about current events, but this act didn't work with her. I was the baby, and at Grandmama's and Granddaddy's, I was supposed to act my age, go and play. Those were the rules.

Until one day, when she actually broke the rules. That's right, I'm going to spill the scandalous details, and there's nothing she can do to stop me! She'd made one of her signature pound cakes, so I naturally wandered into the kitchen, and said offhand that the crust was the best part. I couldn't have been older than 7 or 8. She actually agreed, and together we sat at the table, just chatting, like I did with every other adult but never could with her. As we got to talking, we each took a bit of crust here and there, until the pound cake was completely bare.

We laughed together, and she exclaimed in surprise that she couldn't believe we did that, and maybe we could keep this as our own little secret. I probably told Mom and Dad, because I couldn't keep a secret to save my life, but I doubt they believed me. I don't think anyone would believe me, that she actually stepped out and enjoyed her own baking for a few minutes, broke the rules and ate a cake the wrong way, an entire cake, the wrong way. I promise you, this actually happened. You heard it here, her worst scandal, for the world to see!

I can't remember what we talked about. She never talked about the struggle, of a farmer's daughter in the Great Depression, going off to university and becoming a science teacher, at a time when even with the war, it was still dominated by men. No, instead she made me believe she was a grammar teacher, with how much she always corrected me. I could just imagine the red pen on some of these sentences! No, whatever it was we shared, it wasn't about struggles. I was trying to deny being a child, and she was determined that under their roof, I was going to have that childhood I was pretending I didn't need.

Whatever that talk was about, she'd see no sense carrying on about it now, so that's what we have to do, quit carrying on, her life was no tragedy. This is the time of year when we celebrate. The last thing she would want is to associate Christmas with grief. There's nothing in the world about this to grieve about, she had a good life, and isn't suffering, and that's good enough for her, and should be good enough for us.

She saw a lot of life and a lot of change in 97 years, and if we can manage a quarter of what she did, we can consider ourselves lucky. She'll just have to forgive us though, that we're still a little bit shocked. She was supposed to outlive the world.

I love and will always miss you, Grandmama.