When Marcy Rhea was born on April 5, 1947 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, she immediately told the doctor the 16 ways on how he handled the delivery wrong.
The nurses did a fine job, though, she quickly added.
Those words are from one of those rarities – a hilarious obituary. A friend emailed it to me a couple weeks ago, and what a hoot it was to read!
Martha Ann (Rhea) Schewe (aka Marcy, Murphy, Tractor Mimi, Big Gramma, Pizza Grandma and MA!) died in Danube, Minnesota, March 4, 2022.
From the obit, we learn the following:
When Marcy arrived at the Pearly Gates, her parents welcomed her with a flyswatter and a hot plate of pierogi.
When she was a girl, she walked two miles uphill, both ways, past a heavily wooded area, on a bear-infested road to her bus stop. During her walk, she delivered milk to neighbors from her parents’ dairy farm.
After high school, she traveled to Washington, D.C. where she worked as a secretary for the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Always a modern woman, Marcy started attending dances where she knew handsome soldiers would be packed wall to wall. There she met baby-faced Jim Schewe, whom she fancied enough to card. That didn’t faze her someday-husband one bit. He knew he was of age and he knew he liked her spunk.”
Jim and Marcy were destined to be together, even though they survived a near break-up over the original “Batman” TV series (he loved watching it; she didn’t love him watching it).
When they were dating long-distance (Jim was in the military in Germany), he sent her an engagement ring that arrived on Friday the 13th, and she couldn’t bring herself to open the package. Next day she did and slipped the ring on her finger.
“Her soldier boy finally returned and Marcy married the man of her dreams – well, most of her dreams. She thought she had finally escaped farm life but began to suspect otherwise when Jim insisted on visiting a bull-breeding place during their honeymoon.
“After a brief stint in Pennsylvania (Jim wondered how a guy was supposed to see where he was going with all those Pennsylvanian hills in the way), the newly married couple moved back to Minnesota so they could (you guessed it) farm.
“Marcy and Jim produced a brood of farm hands: Jim, Deb, Renae, Toni and Jeff . . . She filled decades of life with conversation, farm work, raising generations of children (whom she loved exponentially more the younger they got), auctions, coffee, church, flirting with her husband, grumbling about the squirrels, making bars (“Cherry Bars on a Cloud!”), genealogy, flowers, heading to Max’s with her beloved church family, helping those in need, road-tripping with her husband, defending the underdog (while wondering why her children are so outspoken), refinishing floors & cabinets, figuring out selfies/Facebook, SnapChat so she could keep up with the children, and – if the occasion arose – playing a mean game of Sequence.
“Marcy’s fierce and vibrant spirit is carried on by her soulmate Jim, five children, nine grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, seven siblings, a handful of hated squirrels, a menagerie of farm animals and a whole world of longtime friends, some of whom she hadn’t gotten around to meeting yet.”
The obit states Marcy “entered eternal life so her husband would be blessed with the memory of their 54 joyful and loving years together every year on his birthday.”
After reading that sardonic tribute and laughing all the way, I felt as if I’d almost known that whirlwind hoot of a woman. The obituary made Marcy pop right back to life, bouncing and leaping right off the page. At the Pearly Gates, they must be laughing loudly now, right along with Marcy.
Gotta love it!
