Maxie Rains was never fake. Brutal honesty–that was her policy. More than once, she upset a holiday gathering by saying what she was thinking regardless of how it would make others feel.

Walking around her garden in the backyard, Maxie and I would find grub worms among her prized plants and “put their lights out.” Brutal. When she received socks for Christmas, she didn’t feel the need to thank you or pretend they were the best socks she had ever owned; she simply set them aside and nodded to you as if you would get yours later. Brutal. If a visitor she disliked came over to her house, you were going to hear about it as soon as that person left the room or turned their back. Brutal. She kept binoculars on the coffee table right in front of her couch groove to grab when any suspicious or new characters entered the neighborhood. There was no hiding from Maxie. Brutal.

At the same time, Maxie had a softer side. She was like Sears–once you got past the hardware section, you stumbled upon the silk pajamas. She exchanged jokes with her closest friends, collected elephant figurines, and loved anything and everything about nature and animals–except grub worms and slugs. She watched out for her neighbors and bragged about her adopted grandkids–me included. She complimented others when she felt the need and always followed it with her signature, swift wink.

When lung cancer struck her, it was also brutal. Years of smoking caused her to deteriorate quickly, and, by February, doctors could do nothing more for her. In these moments before her death, Maxie became a fragment of her former self–flashes of silk and drill bits.

Despite her reputation for sometimes being bitter and cranky, Maxie inspired close to if not more than fifty people to sparsely fill the chapel at her funeral–sparsely, but she filled it. Even lacking some eloquence, she touched the lives of many. Brutal. She would have liked to be missed by few, but that is not the case.

The day of her funeral, the temperature dropped to below freezing with a miserable drizzle. Brutal. As the pallbearers removed her casket from the funeral home van at the cemetery, the baby carrier in my grandmother’s car, holding my nephew, fell back onto the steering wheel and blared the horn for more than a few seconds.

“Some people get a 21-gun salute,” the preacher said. Brutal. Maxie did always like to be the center of attention.

Nature is brutal and so was Maxie.

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