Mom had a really good friend named Mary.

Two friends named Mary, come to think of it. Mary Donahue and Mary Fleming.

Turns out they were the same person. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this is a recent discovery on my part.

When they met in college, Mom was Joan Cassidy and Mary’s last name was Donahue. They were thick as thieves, those two, along with Gloria Dowaliby.

Here’s Mary’s yearbook page from 1952, graduation year:

Their final year at Saint Joseph College in Hartford, Mom was voted Senior Class President. Mary was her VP.

As you’ll learn in Mom’s writings, below, she and Mary stayed in touch over the years. Eventually, they reunited back in Connecticut.

Today is the 25th anniversary of Mary’s passing. Mom will take it from here, first with her worries about the health of her dear friend Mary Fleming:

Mary

My friend may be dying.

She is home from the hospital; I am bringing her vegetables from our garden, blest by a priest who is ill himself. We sit outside, watching the birds, drinking a little beer which is good for her health. We talk of alternate ways of healing. She is befriending her machine at the hospital, giving it a name. We speak of being cheerful, of Anne Frank, of my aunt who cares for her sister. I stay for lunch.

I keep writing her: every week a card, a note, a poem, a prayer.

She sends me a beautiful book I know she loves. She wants to return to work but cannot. The friend who cares for her has left her own job to do this.

Christmas is coming. I go this morning with early gifts: perfume, an Advent calendar, a party favor, a music box, and what will please her most – water from the Shrine at Lourdes. There is a story to go with each, and because it is earier for her, I open the gifts. She wants to save the unicorn wrapping. We see the purple finches coming to the feeder her friend has hung outside her bedroom window. I think of my grandmother watching the birds from her bed before she died.

~ Joan Vayo, early December 1981

Thankfully, Mary’s health improved and she lived another 17 years.

When Mary passed, Mom wrote the following eulogy and poem for their college alumni publication:

In Full Cry

Mary was no angel though she might have been a saint: her courage, kindness, unobstructed humor contained us all. She was a Democratic hothead and a rainy-day fanatic. “Enough already!” we would clamor when the sun was out of sight too long. She loved this recognition; she laughed at it.

Mary Donahue Fleming, English major par excellence in the Saint Joseph College Class of 1952, was of extraordinary spirit. Her childhood polio and adult cancer only forged her resolve to be independent, to live life to the brim. As a young woman she went north where, in Alaska and later Seattle, she married, bore a son, taught the English classes she loved so well.

Coming home to Connecticut years after to teach and raise her son, Philip, in time she owned her home, became a regular at Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, and Long Wharf. She studied Russian, revived old friendships, and seeded new ones.

I remember my dear friend teaching my poetry in her high school classes, offering my name for a Distinguished Alumna Reward, helping me publish a book: when Mary believed in you there were no boundaries.

Her tongue was articulate and pungent; she tried to like even those she didn’t.

Some of us visited over the night phone with Mary; some of us met her at the local Fernwood or the Rustic Oak in North Haven. Evenings I went to programs at the College I would stay over at Mary’s, the hour too late and the company too sweet to leave.

We spoke of books and music, drama, her maternal pride in Philip’s love of literature, of poetry and writing and friendship, of tame cats and wild geese – well into the morning. Once, in our student days, we talked so long she cautioned, “We’d better stop now: I can’t sleep if the sun is in my eyes.”

Last April First you left us, Mary, and strode straight into that sun, fully awake to every dream you held fast to in your wide imagination. May these words and the poem with them only begin to celebrate your scope.

~ Joan Cassidy Vayo June 1, 1998

The Dancer

God rest you merry
Mary
dancing after death in afterlife
that gives you grace and legs again
for dancing to the songs you love
in music poetry
opening your arms so wide in joy
the rest of us can rest there

God rest you merry
Mary
for you at last are Marya of the Bolshoi
and no one here or there or anywhere
remembers when you couldn’t dance at all

~ joan vayo April 8, 1998

God rest them both, no doubt writing, talking, and laughing furiously in heaven.

Here’s another bit of embarrassment: I can’t find a photo of grown-up Mom and Mary together. Surely some exist, but you never know.

So I’ll cross my fingers and hope Mary Fleming attended their 40th College Reunion. (There’s Mom, third from the right in the front row.)

One thing we know for sure, though: If she wasn’t there in person, Mary was there in spirit, looking forward to hearing about the celebration over a cup of tea, with birds singing along right outside her bedroom window.

“Mary” © 1981, “In Full Cry” and “The Dancer” © 1998 Joan Cassidy Vayo. All rights reserved.

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