When she laughed she would throw her head back, her deep vibrato voice would carry out the door and down the hallway.

She had a bronze tone to her skin. Her arms had muscles long and firm that showed she worked out, protected her otherwise small frame.

She had no hips and she would laugh about how nothing fit, having to wear a belt with every skirt and pants to keep them in place. Her legs had a shine and a tone from her knee to her ankle. She wore clicky shoes as I call them. Shoes that make noise.

As she became thinner her pristine white lab coat engulfed her. “Mary Jo McCracken NP embroidered with red cursive thread.” Pens hooked on her pocket, red, blue, black, and green.

Mary Jo was my hero. She truly was, although I didn’t know it then.

We had gotten into your scuffs. She threatened to admit at fourteen if I didn’t gain weight. She gave me a month to gain the weight.

I agreed to do what she asked but amended the terms.

Gosh – this story

When I got on my own and started going to appointments by myself – happy to go by myself. I checked and had an appointment with Dr. Warwick.

“He’s sick today, but Mary Jo is here. Would you like to see her?”

“I can see Mary Jo?”

“Yeah . . . “Confused.

My name is called and I walked back. Mary Jo gives me this HUGE hug. “Where have you been? How are you?”

“Good. Good.”

When we got into the room I said, “I thought I couldn’t see you.”

She shook her head, “Of course you can see me. Who told you that?”

“My mom said at one point it was an insurance issue.”

When I was sixteen, my mom asked me if I liked Mary Jo. Of course, I said I did. Then she had said something about how much she liked seeing Dr. Warwick and soon enough we didn’t see Mary Jo anymore. I didn’t see her in the hallways either. She disappeared.

My adult mind knows and puts it together more clearly after – Mary Jo was an NP. It made no difference. In fact. The insurance would probably prefer it. My mother lied.

“You can always see me,” Mary Jo said.

It has been over two years since I had seen her, maybe longer.

In that visit – I let it all come out. Everything I had been holding back for years. I told her about up north and how when I came to the clinic I was given firm instruction not to mention anything about our home life. My mom sat across from me in the clinic when asked: “How’s everything at home?” “Good.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It didn’t matter. I was seventeen. I was close to eighteen.” I shrugged my shoulders. “My mom sat right there. There wasn’t anything that could be done.”

I was too afraid. I had to wait and get through it and eventually I turned eighteen. Freedom.

“We could have helped you.”

My mom’s anger – there was nothing that can stop it.

“I still had to go home with them or they would drive me back up north. Then what?”

Mary Jo was a straight shooter. She spoke from her heart and from her mind at the exact same time. She was empathetic but did not pity anyone.

She was classy. She had this unwavering strength, a surge of strength that went from her hands to her toes. Maybe she didn’t know that – or feel as if she had it at times. Her strength reverberated from her.

When it came to her profession, it was precision. She had high expectations; she was brilliant; she didn’t miss a beat.

The thing is – she got me, she understood, and she understood where I needed to go. I have a feeling she connected with many if not most of her patients.

She would say, “I know it’s hard. It’s a lot.”

Mary Jo looked at me and said that I could do anything. No matter what.

I was told by the other nurses that Mary Jo had almost passed four, five times before she actually passed. When I moved out here to the Boston area, and she had passed about five years after.

When I left MN, she was rail-thin. She ate next to nothing; it ran through her. I went to a CF event with her, she didn’t eat a thing. She said, “I can’t.” She had a feeding tube a night. I squeezed her gently, she was all bones.

She had severe Crohn’s disease and she lived with it for over twenty years. She had multiple surgeries the nurses said. She was out taking care of herself at different times, out on leave. She had kidney failure more than once. I sometimes wonder if she an adrenal issue as well, giving her that bronze glow.

JFK had Addison’s, adrenal gland deficiency. The medicine he took gave him his famous tan glow as if he was always on the Cape in his boat. That’s what people thought, not so.

Mary Jo was my hero, the first adult that I looked up to. She would almost be down and out and then she would come around the corner, “click, click, click,” thinner at times, and sometimes she gained a few pounds back. “How are you? So good to see you” with her barreling laugh.

When I asked, “How are you?” Sometimes she held her lips together, holding back. She never complained. She marched on, grace meets confidence.

I think at times, maybe a lot, she was in excoriating pain.

I can hear her laugh in my head today after all these years; jolly, barreling, thin Santa Clause in a white lab coat.

“You should have told us.” It wasn’t what she said – it was her tone. If I would have told her, she would have gotten social services involved, she would have uprooted up all nonsense and thrown it out the door. She had zero tolerance for nonsense.

Yet – did everything with kindness and compassion. I am telling you. Even within her threats, she was kind. She was doing it because it was the best for you.

She had this determination; this focus, this strength. She was a force.

She was a scrapper and a fighter. She had power.

Why am I thinking of Mary Jo?

She was light.

There are light beings everywhere with booming, surging strength.

You know who they are, naturally, we gravitate to them.

Spirits are collecting and holding the light above and around us all the time, giving us strength. They are guiding us with each step.

Please be well. Much love.

Another straight shooter: