Mary, our Santa Monica Grandma

I have so many memories of being a child and then later a teenager and talking on the phone. The actual house phone. What we refer to nowadays as the landline. The one that had a curly cord attached to it that stretched the length of the kitchen. Or the one that had a rotary dial. Or eventually the cordless behemoth that had a pull-up antenna and sometimes patched itself into the neighbors' line (true story, we were hackers before we'd ever heard the word!). 

But I don't have a lot of memories of talking on the phone to my friends. When I was younger my friends and I talked at school, on the way home from school (walking, the bus, in the back of the Astro minivan every parent seemed to have at one point or another), or when we were actually hanging out at sleepovers or on movie dates. The memories I have of talking on the phone are of spending time with my grandmothers. Both my Grandma Boutell and my Grandma MacDonald, but mostly Grandma Boutell. 

She lived just up the road, sometimes down the road, or a few blocks over depending on what year it was and whether they were at the farm, on Preston Road, in the ground-floor apartment of the tiny high-rise in Howell or in the the cute little house by the hospital. (Grandma and Grandpa Boutell moved A LOT). Yes, we spent a lot of time with both grandmothers, yes they'd pick us up or we'd get dropped off and spend hours, nights or sometimes long weekends with them, but also, we talked on the phone all the time. 

I'd call Grandma Boutell after school and fill her in on the day. She'd tell me stories of work or friends or her soap opera. And it never seemed special or important or particularly note-worthy. But looking back, it was all of those things, because it was a connection. An important one. 

Mary Bremier

I was thinking about these connections the other day as I was thinking about Mary. Our Santa Monica grandma. When we first moved to Los Angeles, Mary lived in a duplex she owned directly across Abbey Place from us. Close enough to us that we could see her in her front window and hear her light blue car when it chugged into the driveway. She was so proud of that duplex. That she'd bought it by herself when it was cheap (by LA standards) and fixed it up over the years. Mary became one of my lifelines in Los Angeles, one of my very first connections. And since she was best friends with Betty next door, our other Los Angeles grandma, Angela and I had two wonderful women looking out for us. 

Mary & I

And look out they did. Bagels on our door after early morning runs to the farmers market, fresh flowers from their gardens when we returned home from trips, check-ins and favors and lunches and shared leftovers and community. Mary was the first person to take me to the LA Symphony downtown. She made us join her passion project, the MidCity Neighborhood Watch, and groomed us to take over because she'd been doing it since the 90s. And we were heartbroken when she decided it was time to cash in on the real estate market's success and sell her duplex and move to an apartment on the west side. 

But we never lost touch. In fact, our visits and communication became more intentional, on both sides. We arranged doctor's appointments and trips to Santa Monica around stopping at her apartment for tea and snacks. We discovered new restaurants on that side of town that she was excited to introduce us to. And she would stop in when she'd get back our way, I was always excited to see that light blue car pull into our driveway. 

So last year, exactly one year ago today, when Mary called us in the evening, the day before Thanksgiving, we gladly turned off the television and talked with her for over an hour. She was in an assisted living facility at this point, still by the water, just a few blocks from her Santa Monica apartment. She'd had some health scares and we'd had many phone calls over the past few years from her hospital bed or her rehab facility. That tends to happen when you're 95 years old. 

Betty, me, Bill, Mary, Jim & Angela - The Abbey Place crew!

Mary & her first published book

But she was a fighter and she always did her rehab and listened to any health guru she could and got herself feeling better and back on her feet. That's just who she was. She was born in 1928, into a large family that didn't make it through the Great Depression unscathed. She lived an amazing life and she was a writer so she wrote all about it. I remember when she first handed me the binder with her memoir manuscript pages in it back on Abbey Place, I couldn't put the book down. What she lived through, what she experienced, and what she did to change her life, to live her life, I can't tell you how much I want everyone to read her story. (You can purchase her book here on Amazon!) She had so many adventures, especially as an older adult, that it was easy to see her as this free spirit. But Mary's spirit was actually broken in two. She'd lost her husband and toddler daughter to a horrific car accident back a million lifetimes ago and that heartache made her the kind of woman who saw people and cared for them. Especially two girls from Michigan who were missing their grandmothers. 

Betty, Angela & Mary (in her Bernie shirt!)

As that call with Mary wrapped up that night in November of last year, she told both Angela and I how much she appreciated our friendship and how much she loved us, how good we'd been to her and how thankful she was for us. We echoed her sentiments right back. It was always in the back of my mind that Mary was only a phone call away, and she'd want to hear all about a new writing project or how school was going (she loved that I was a writer, she'd been writing her whole life after struggling with dyslexia, and had been in the same community college writing class since the early 2000s and she loved that Angela was a teacher as she'd taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for decades). She'd get heated up over politics and I remember being so tickled when she appeared one day in a Bernie tee shirt! And she was always up for a walk. She spent decades walking with Bill and Betty, sharing their lives every single morning. And she was thrilled to be in Santa Monica now where she could walk the bright and busy streets and ocean paths. 

The last picture of Angela, Mary & I

But once we'd hung up the phone Angela turned to me and said it felt like Mary was saying goodbye. 

And she was. One last phone call was her last gift to us. One last chance to hear her beautiful voice (she wanted to learn how to sing and so began taking opera singing classes in her 90s!) and hear her smile across the phone lines. One last chance to hear her say she loved us and we could tell her we loved her back. 

Mary passed away the very next day. But because it was who she was, and even though she was not well, she took the time that night before to reach out to us, to care for us, to tell us she was worried about her sister who lived in a facility nearby, to ask about our families, to remind us she'd gotten to act in a horror film just the year before and it was coming out, in fact she'd gone to the premiere just a short time before. 

Mary is gone but she's not. And that's why it's taken me a year to process her passing and still not fully come to terms with it. She was a lifeline here for me, a person who needed us (mostly to work on her computer and make sure she was locked in tight at night, that that light blue car was parked at home) and a person who I needed. I spent hours sitting in her living room talking about writing with, a person whose voicemails saved on my phone still make me tear up when I scroll past them. 

Mary receiving an award from the city for her Neighborhood Watch work

Mary will never be gone. Just as my grandmothers will never be gone. I have their memories in my heart. And even though the loss of Mary is so fresh that there are moments where I think, "I should call Mary" forgetting she's not on the other end of the phone, I know that she's with me. She encouraged me to take chances, to write out of my comfort zone (her second published book, in 2022, is a book of poetry and you can buy it here) and to keep going. Sometimes I think about how it's time to stow the writing dream far far away. But then I remember Mary. Who didn't publish her first book until after her 90th birthday. And how proud she was to tell her story. And how important that was to her. And I think about how I have so many more stories left to live and to write.

Mary will never be gone. Because she's with me. She's with everyone who ever met her. And now, she's with her daughter and her husband again. She missed them so, it would break her heart anew every single day. And then mine to hear her talk and write about them. (She could not bring herself to put a photo of either of them in her house until she moved to Santa Monica. When I saw she's hung her daughter's picture on the wall by her new bedroom I cried. To know that much pain and to still be such a light and such a force in this world, is something special.) 

Mary will never be gone. She introduced me to new people and new ideas and she loved Angela and I so much. And I am so thankful for that. Without her, and Betty and Bill, our community here in Los Angeles would have been much less loving. I am so thankful for all the time we had with her. And wish we could have one more cup of tea by the ocean or one more phone call. Instead I will hold close every one of those we did have and remember the connection that meant so much, more so than the time. I will hold Mary close, just as she held all of us close. 

Thank you, Mary. For choosing to care for us. For choosing to love us. We will always love you. 

Dad, Mom, Angela, me & Mary