A few years ago, I received an early morning phone call. It was the daughter of a dear friend who passed away this morning. Mary Jane Waynick was closer to my mother’s age than mine, but we had a good and long relationship. The daughter who called was my own daughter’s best friend in high school and her maid of honor at her first wedding.

Mary was a character, and over the years we came to love her husband, Eugene, just as dearly.

When I say Mary was a character, I can tell you that we laughed for years over the time we went to a Chinese restaurant and she tried to order a Happy Meal … it actually was called a Happy Family on the menu but just didn’t come out that way. We shared many laughs like the time we got ice cream cones in the Chunky Monkey flavor and she insisted on riding the horse (for young children) at the Meijer store. I can still see and hear her. She nearly fell off and dropped her Chunky Monkey ice cream as she yelled, “Ride ’em Cowboy! Yeee Haaaa.” We had lots of fun together, but lots of serious moments too.

Dressed as Minnie Pearl, she stood up and told true stories that happened near Dickson, Tenn., where she grew up. She told about her and husband when they were courtin’ and sparkin’, such as when his car got stuck going up a hill. She hilariously retold the story of her trying to steer it and him trying to push it. The audience sure enjoyed her tales. She could be silly and equally as serious. She knew heartbreak, but she was always grateful for the smallest blessings. She was humble and loved to do for others. She worked hard, too, and was always generous with what little she had.

When my dad died back in 1988, she brought the best banana pudding I’ve ever eaten to my mother’s home. … I can still hear Aunt Betty asking everyone, “Who made that banana pudding?” Now Mary’s laughter has been silenced, and so has Aunt Betty’s. They were both victims of that dreaded scourge we call cancer. Mary lost her only son when he was about 18 months old to polio. She had six daughters and lost one of them to cancer, another to a serious brain injury from a car wreck and another is very ill. Yet another daughter came “out of the closet.”

Since then, she and her husband had endured much in the way of health problems these last years … and all the while, Mary smiled and kept her sense of humor. She was a hard working, hard living, good, Christian woman who will be missed by many.

There are people placed in our lives who we were meant to meet and learn from. If it’s a person you always build fond memories of, that’s an added blessing. To make a friend you can be yourself and laugh with is precious. Hang on tight to those people. Mary Jane was one of them for sure.

Goodbye, Mary Jane, my friend.