Mary

A friend I’ve never met died on the 5th. She lived with her husband, daughter and numerous cats out in California. She loved to crochet, as do I. We never had the chance to meet IRL and compare notes about yarns and patterns. I feel I’ve lost something. Just that chance to meet another kindred spirit.

Kindred spirits are hard to find. Mary worked hard all her life to make a good life in a small town in a small house that she loved. When the leukemia that would eventually kill her made her too sick to work, her employer of several years simply fired her. They didn’t want to have her on the books to raise their health insurance rates.

Kent, her husband, is a tenacious old guy and gave them hell over that. They sued her employer and won monies for lost wages and the right to COBRA her health insurance.

Her insurance company cancelled her policy twice, for no reason. The premiums were paid on time. Kent did without food to make sure they were. He immediately got on the phone and yelled at enough people, including getting Stanford University Hospital in his corner, to get the policy reinstated. I don’t know if they ever paid him back for the meds he had to buy whilst the reinstatement was in process. Kent figures that they do this to people who are costing them a lot just to see if they will give up and go away. They picked the wrong man to try this on. He destroyed them. And then they tried it again…

Same result, he being an old hand at dealing with insurance company bureaucracy by then.

Mary fought a good fight against The Fury. The leukemia. It took her life but it could not take her spirit.