Greetings everyone. This is David, Ruth's son.
Ruth passed away last night. She lived a long and full life, and did it her way until the very end. She had a relentlessly positive outlook on life, an inspiration to me and many others. Her last words to Suzanne and me were "My bags are packed and I have checked off my list. Now I need you to organize my medicines."
All the Best,
David
Early this morning, Ruth took her last journey and passed away. Having tucked into bed yesterday, with stronger medicine for her pain and her Pennsylvania quilts keeping her warm, she went peacefully in her sleep. Our hearts break for the loss of an incredible woman - a mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother - but are comforted by the fact that she is no longer in pain.
Ruth was planning, down to her final moments. She informed us that she would celebrate her annual Christmas and birthday party on the 9th, and then she would be ready to go. And she followed that plan, to the letter. Though her body would not let her attend Saturday's gathering, her family and friends toasted in her honor and visited her bedside afterwards. Ruth a was a generous soul, and planned for her life to be celebrated in this time-honored holiday tradition.
Still, we mourn the great emptiness she has left in her wake. Ruth lit up any room with a personality that was larger than life. She left a lasting impression on everyone she met with her intellect, her tenacity, and her keen sense of humor. She often held court in her home and her work, and always had an eye and an ear open for the thoughts of those around her. We remember her "-isms", and always snapped to attention when she began a reflection with "I find it fascinating..."
In all her rambling, from her life in Canada, to Ken's residency and Andrew and David's births in Texas, to her picnic group in Maryland, to her career in D.C., to her globetrotting from Mississippi to Mexico to Texas to Canada and many other stops along this way, Ruth met and befriended countless people. She married Ken and grew a family of sons and daughters-in-law and granddaughters, all of whom she loved and encouraged to "press on to the next steps, whatever they may be." Ruth hardly sat still in body or mind, and when her body became weak and her stamina diminished, her mind worked valiantly to keep processing the world around her. She smiled to hear the words of love and comfort from her friends and family, near and far - of which there were many.
Ruth rambles from this world a loved and respected woman. As we reckon with the loss of her, we cherish her memory and the lessons with which she has left us. As we toasted her on Saturday, we raise a proverbial glass in her memory now: Cheers to Ruth, and her ramblings, and the great wake of loved ones she leaves behind.
Monday, December 11, 2023, Sleeping
Greetings all. It is Suzanne writing for Ruth today. She is in a place where she is unable to direct us as she would like so I am taking it upon my self to share what I think she wants me to. Ruth is asleep most of the time now and is taking stronger medicine to help her with the pain. When she is able to speak with us she is making plans and organizing things as was her way when getting ready for a trip. We have no idea when her last journey will take place but she is as comfortable as we can make her. As we all know, Ruth is a stoic and somewhat private person about her challenges and is ready for us to leave her be. We will return as soon as we are needed. Yesterday, she enjoyed speaking with her brother and having Christina, Molly, Mary Frances, David and I around as we continued the tradition of Sunday brunch. We read her the cards and texts that arrived and shared stories and laughter. There were three birds sitting in the tree outside her bedroom window yesterday evening as she went to sleep. It is a beautiful sunny, cold and crisp day here in Madison and Ruth is resting. She knows she is loved and I believe, she is ready for her final trip.
December 10, 2023 The Christmas Party
Greetings all. It's Suzanne and David. We are here in Mississippi for Ruth's annual Christmas Party. It was held last night at the Yacht Club as it has been for many years. It has always brought Ruth joy to throw a party especially for her friends and family and last night was no different. Ruth made a valiant effort to attend, donning a lovely navy dress, however her body would not allow her to get there even though her spirit was determined to make it so. We toasted Ruth in her absence and shared a wonderful meal with her Mississippi family. Those who were able came back to the house to share their love for our gracious hostess. Ruth enjoyed seeing everyone and most of all she was happy that the party was a success. Cheers to Ruth and her memorable celebrations over these many years!!
This is the last post I will be doing for Ruth's blog. I leave tomorrow to head back to Ontario for all the Buckley birthdays (including Irene's 90th birthday) and Christmas festivities that Ruth was planning to attend.
Ruth started this blog when she turned 70, intending to do it for 10 years. It has now been going for 16 years as she continued to travel and update everyone on where she was and what she was doing. But her traveling days are over, and Rambling with Ruth is winding down. As Ruth's annual Christmas/Birthday party is being held at the Yacht Club this weekend, family and friends will be gathering, and hopefully someone will step up as the guest blogger. I'll be checking every morning with my coffee in hand!
As Ruth says, much love!
Ruth is 86 years old today! What an achievement especially given how active she has been until very recently. She heard from many friends and family who phoned or sent greetings by text, email, and social media. And others came by to see her and bring flowers which are sitting on the counter between the kitchen and living room. Her caregiver even brought a small strawberry cream cake, and we are trying to encourage her to eat some of it tonight. I spared her the trauma of listening to me sing Happy Birthday.
Ruth feels very blessed and grateful for all her friends and family and sends much love.
Wendy
Wendy again. Ruth was up early this morning sitting in the armchair in her little TV room off the bedroom, with the sun streaming in from over the reservoir. It is an absolutely delightful place to be.
Ruth ate some oatmeal, and made it quite clear I should not have put peanut butter in it, but she ate it and I felt better for sneaking in a bit of protein! In the afternoon she thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful homemade chicken broth brought by a good friend. Hopefully tonight we can get her to eat some more soup, and maybe even some ice cream.
Ruth really appreciates all the cards and best wishes. I've been reading Christmas cards and birthday cards to her as they arrive, as well as emails and texts. She also received a lovely Christmas flower arrangement today from a nephew and his wife in Canada which is brightening up her home. And best of all she had visits today from friends stopping by to say hello and check on how she's doing. It really helps her spirits.
Wendy again. Ruth always gives me a list of tasks when I visit and one of them on this trip was to help her complete all the envelopes for her Christmas Cards. The card is beautiful, with lovely pictures front and back of Ruth smiling, surrounded by her family.
The first night I was here we managed part of the names from one letter of the alphabet, with my asking questions about each one in my attempts to decipher either her handwriting or her cryptic short forms. She knew what everything meant, but it wasn't always clear to me, so it took a while. The list had 20+ years of changes and corrections, which were not always easy to follow. The intent was we would work away at the list a bit at a time, but it was obviously far too tiring for Ruth to continue. So I have done the best I can over the last few days to address the cards and today I drove to the post office, got stamps for them all and sent them off.
My sincerest apologies if there are errors or omissions, and I certainly hope that I sorted out the right names with the right addresses. I also apologize for the non-festive nature of the stamps, but apparently the US Postal Service does not have any Christmas stamps available, at least at the Madison PO. I mean it's only December!
This is Ruth's niece Wendy again, updating on activities here at Ruth's beautiful place in Mississippi. I started the day by cooking bacon and eggs, as I recall Ruth mentioning that Ken always made bacon on Sunday mornings. She had a bit of the egg, which I was pleased about, and some smoothie. Every day I make a slightly different flavour, and today's had some strawberries and banana in addition to the yoghurt and apple juice.
Apparently it is a tradition to watch Aerial America on Sunday mornings, and Ruth was up early (for her) to direct me to find the right channel so she could watch it while she ate breakfast.
The traditions continued as Christina, Mary Frances and Molly arrived at noon with wonderful brunch from Aladdin's Mediterranean Restaurant. Ruth was pleased to have them here, and listened to all the conversation around her, although she would have preferred to be more alert and able to take part in the discussions. Both the nausea and pain medications make her sleepy which frustrates her. She certainly did enjoy her taste of tiramisu, an early birthday treat, surrounded by loving family.
Sunday afternoon football continued today's traditions, as Ruth watched part of the game between San Francisco 49ers and the Philadelphia Eagles. Ruth does love her sports. Normally she would have talked to my dad, Dave Buckley, about the various sports games they'd watched but phone conversations are difficult for her now.
Today was the first day of having a caregiver on Sunday. Her regular daytime caregiver only works Monday to Saturday, but given Ruth's condition she now needs someone here every day. Now there will be someone here all day and night, 7 days a week, to help ensure Ruth is well cared for.
Sorry I have been remiss in posting Ruth's blog. This is her niece Wendy (Buckley). I arrived in Mississippi on Thursday and have been hoping to get Ruth's input on the blog, but she is really struggling so I will just go ahead and post for her.
Ruth is certainly not doing as well as she would like. For someone who has always been active and taking charge of everything, it's tough to see that right now even communicating her needs is a struggle. We've been trying to find a solution to her constant feeling of nausea and her difficulty eating. We're trying smoothies which hopefully will help get some nourishment into her.
Ruth is getting a lot of love and support from family, friends and neighbours and has a team of caregivers coming in to help her out day and night. Christina will be here tomorrow for the traditional Sunday brunch, and David and Suzanne arrive late next week. I'm here until December 8th so will try to do a better job of keeping everyone up to date.
When living in Ontario or Maryland, the leaves fall quickly. The people rake the leaves regularly into big piles. Once a week the county picks up the piles, then it's done. Thats the end of it. In a short period of time the leaves are gone and everyone is happy. Not so in Mississippi. The leaves fall forever! Every morning, homeowners are out raking their leaves. Everyday more bags - it is never-ending.
Same is true for the landscape company. The young man with the landscape company maintains the outside of our neighborhood and it never really looks wonderful because the leaves fall every day. Every day the leaves fall and every morning homeowners blow, rake and bag and that's the story of owning property in Mississippi.
Love,
Ruth
Before moving to Mississippi, I had never heard of The Egg Bowl. I couldn't figure out what it was all about. I discovered it was a fierce competition in football each year between Mississippi State and Ole Miss and was called The Egg Bowl. The teams first played each other in 1901. The game has been played every year since 1944, making it the tenth longest uninterrupted series in the US. In 1928, both universities wanted a neutral site to play and chose the JSU stadium in Jackson as the site. The term Egg Bowl came from several years of no score for either team. The two universities began alternating sites for the game at their respective campuses and it is extremely competitive. Now other states have picked up the routine and there are many in-state rivalry games, as in Mississippi, for the last scheduled game of the season. There is no such rivalry as Mississippi and The Egg Bowl! I overheard a conversation between 2 older men in my neighborhood about "The Big O". I had no idea what they were talking about, so I had to find out. I discovered as early as the beginning of the season that people start predicting what the score will be for that year at The Egg Bowl and that was what everyone was talking about. It's a very big deal in Mississippi! For several years the game has been played on Thanksgiving day and Mississippians plan their Thanksgiving meals around game time. If you want the real factual information, look on Wikipedia.
Love,
Ruth
Sports rivalries are interesting. They strike up for no reason at all and for no apparent reason. Many rivalries are college players who go on to become coaches and are just rivals- friendly rivals with no animosity, just fun in the competition.
Many rivalries strike up because of geography. The University of Texas and Dallas have never been friendly teams. They love to beat each other and for several years Houston was beaten. Sometimes teams hate each other for some reason that I don't understand. I really don't understand why Texas Tech and the University of Texas hate their football game, but they do. The same is true for Nebraska and Nebraska State. Today, the New Orleans Saints were playing against the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta. Once while in New Orleans, there was a radio station, NOLA playing. Usually NOLA stands for New Orleans, La, but during the week that the Saints play the Falcons, the crawl on the station NOLA means, " No One Likes Atlanta". The Atlanta people were very upset. The game for the Saints today didn't go well, they lost. The same can be found for all sports basketball, hockey, baseball and right now football. What a weird world. People are hard wired to love their team. In fact, moving to Mississippi, I have tried to fair it out as to where their allegiances are. Some times it's where they grow up and it's certainly true for where people go to high school or college. They cheer their team forever. I really think it unites the country. It's very interesting to observe as I have no allegiance to any team in the US. I do however, cheer for the Cowboys and the Astros.
Love,
Ruth
Since Thanksgiving, we have been eating left over dinners. We've still been eating all of the goodies left over. We still have cheesy potatoes and the day after Thanksgiving, Donna brought over wonderful ham and sweet potatoes which we all enjoyed may times. We finally finished today, so we have enjoyed our dinners.
Tonight our across the street neighbor, Greg will be going to a fancy birthday dinner with Donna and Anne Avery. It is always difficult to celebrate a 60th birthday for a man. On one hand, he has everything possible to own, on the other hand you want to treat him for celebrating his 60th year. They have found some interesting gifts and the dinner at Caet will be be pleasant.
We have discovered Abe, Anna's husband has eaten sweet potatoes for the first time. I could not imagine any person being 62 and had never eaten sweet potatoes, but he had not and enjoyed them. We'll see if Anna cooks them in the future.
Tomorrow we will have another brunch with Christina and the girls. It has been a wonderful run of dinners and lunches with wonderful company and friends.
Love,
Ruth
This is an unusual situation where Donna and Anne Avery get absolutely no credit for writing this blog. We discuss the topic of the day but then I dictate to them what we are going to say. I speak the words and either Anne Avery or Donna write the words and then it gets published under my name on my blog. They are okay with that situation and I appreciate it. I have very often read books and that I knew that had been written by other people and I know for sure that other people wrote that book. Not the names that are supposed to be the writer of the book. Sometimes they are written as a ghost writer and sometimes not credited at all and I have never felt that that is fair. There are good authors whose work sell very well who always credited 30% of the profit for the ghost writer and I have always approved of that. So I will always credit 30% of my profit to Donna and Anne Avery and 50% of 0 is 0, that is very little. But the whole concept of ghost writing in the world of literature is very interesting. There is actually a long history of ghost writing now that they track people's words on the computer and determine whose writing is actually this author or the other author. They determine there is a large percentage of the writing that we ever knew before. So this week, Anne Avery is now home from college and we are enjoying it. But soon she will be gone again and Donna and I will be back again working. That is the story of todays blog. A little bit of nothing. Love, Ruth.
Fortunately the weather in Mississippi has been beautiful. Every day has been sunny with spots of rain, but the next two days will be heavy rain. The TV lady tells me that it will be raining, but who knows?
My life is not so easy because I am bound by pain medication and nausea medication. If I miss pain medication, I'm uncomfortable. If I am miserable from the pain, my nausea gets worse. It seems at 10:00 and 9:00 in the morning, I can regulate my medication, but the rest of the times, I don't do so well. I am still walking and talking, but mostly I can only do one thing at a time. Seems pitiful, but that's the way life is. I will speak to the hospice nurse tomorrow to see if we can do a better job. It seems that I should be able to do a better job. Our festive Thanksgiving feast was delightful, cooked by Christina at my house. Our traditional steak was delightful! But unfortunately, I couldn't eat much. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.
Love,
Ruth
Anna and Abe were here a year ago, but he was recuperating from hernia surgery so they really didn't pay much attention to the foliage. This year they have paid more attention to Mississippi. Yesterday, they spent the whole day in the wonderful, downtown Mississippi museums. They left before 9:00am and arrived at home after 5:30. They had a wonderful time. They spent so much time with the carnage between the Spanish and the local people and the same type of carnage of the civil rights era of Mississippi that they were confused. It was interesting to see that people haven't changed a lot over the century, which is true. They lived in northern Alberta at that time and had no idea what was happening in Mississippi during that era. The whole thing was new to them.
We get a lot of rain in Mississippi as we do in Nova Scotia but not now in Ontario or Massachusetts. Life is dry in other places, but Mississippi is still green so they are enjoying the huge trees and the bushes. Like everything else, local people do not appreciate what they have, but Abe and Anna speak about it every time they come home.
What they came home with from both museums was, "Why were people so nasty?"
Love,
Ruth
Last year, it was a disaster. This year it will not happen again. My Christmas cards went out in April so it became an Easter card but this is not going to happen this year. On Saturday when all the cousins were here, we had a picture of me and all the cousins with me beaming in the center. Another picture included David, Suzanne and Christina. Clever Christina was quickly on the job and ordered the cards on Monday. They look great! Brittany is going to help. Though it does not seem appropriate to send a note, I''ll just sign the cards, address the envelopes and let them fly!
For Christmas 2023, my Christmas cards will be not be late this year!
Love, Ruth
I am delighted to be starting the next series of my blog. Today is a very special day because Anne Avery Boling, the younger daughter of my neighbor, Donna, is coming over to say a word from her to you all. Anne Avery has just returned from her first semester of college. I will be interested to hear all about it! So, enjoy my words and also Anne Avery's words. A splendid system we have going on here. Love, Ruth
Hello there! I am Anne Avery Boling. I am Ms. Ruth's neighbor and I am delighted to be a guest on Rambling with Ruth. As mentioned above, I am now in college at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA. It has been great! However, I am so happy to be back home for the holidays where I am able to spend time with my family and also Ms. Ruth. I have truly enjoyed being neighbors with Ms. Ruth. She is such a wonderful person inside and out and she always has the best stories to tell me. It has been a delight to speak on this blog today and I hope I will be able to make another with Ms. Ruth some day. Happy Thanksgiving! Love, Anne Avery Boling
Good afternoon, folks! This is Mary Frances Dickie (granddaughter #4), coming to you live from Grandma's living room. Over my lifetime, we have always had some sort of meal-centric tradition. When my family lived in Bethesda, MD, we would get together with Grandma and Grandpa on Wednesday nights for dinner. Sometimes they would bring dinner to us, and sometimes we would bring it to them. On very special nights, Grandpa would make a delicious stew. When we moved down to Mississippi, the tradition shifted to Sunday brunch and has stayed the same ever since. Whenever Grandma and Grandpa were in town, we would have a Sunday meal together and catch up. So today, my mother Christina, my little sister Molly, and I have brought our Sunday brunch to Grandma's house: waffles and hashbrowns and bacon and eggs from Waffle House, per Grandma's request.
There is nothing quite like breakfast food when you crave it. And there is nothing quite like sharing a special meal with family and friends. Anna and Abe have driven down from Pennsylvania to join us in Mississippi, and we have enjoyed catching up with them. We are blessed to have a place to sit and eat together, looking out over the Reservoir, where white pelicans are currently dive-bombing their own Sunday brunch. And Molly has just begun putting out Christmas decorations, including a bottle full of colorful lights, a table centerpiece of pinecones and berries, and an ornament that looks like a pig with wings. "Prettiness all around," Grandma says.
You might think we're jumping the gun putting out Christmas decorations, but why wait till after Thanksgiving? We Dickies tend to follow tradition only when it makes sense. For example, most people have turkey on Thanksgiving, but we've learned over the years that we prefer steak. So this Thursday, we will have steak as our main course. What a treat! And with school, work, and life getting so much busier after Thanksgiving break, sometimes it's hard to find the time to break out your garlands and ornaments and numerous Santa Claus figurines. Therefore, we make do with the time that we have, and put them out before Thanksgiving. Decorations are all on display at my mother's house, too!
As the holidays approach, we are so thankful for the time we get to spend with family and friends. My sisters and I are especially thankful to have always had traditional time carved out to spend with our grandparents. We look forward to it every week, and we look forward to more family time this coming Thursday.
