Cori Connors: Marsha Bradbury

There’s an image fixed in my mind where I am sitting in our old green mission style recliner back in the room that used to be our TV room. My arms and legs are swarming with freezing hot electric teeny tiny worms… at least it feels this way… and I am exhausted and scared. My friend Marsha Bradbury (affectionately known as Mush) sits on the couch across the room. I doze in and out, wrapped in a warm blanket, until the jerking of my electric legs wakes me. Sometimes there’s conversation. Sometimes not. Mush grabs a blanket and flops over on the couch. Time does its thing, and we endure it. That was years ago now. My arms and most of my legs have recovered full function.

There’s something magical about a friend who can sit with you for long stretches of time and say nothing. Her presence is a balm.

Mush helped me through my bout with Guillain Barre Syndrome, and I helped her through her deep dive into Pancreatic Cancer, which she miraculously survived, and the residual ripples that floated around her for nearly two full decades after her diagnosis. Something transformative happens when people walk hand in hand through scary things.

While we both saw the door to the Hereafter creaking open before us, that’s not necessarily where we dwelt. I mean, really, who wants to stay there? We both had lots to do with what remained of our human capabilities. What started as an almost co-dependent need to be together evolved into fairly sweet autonomous lives. We both started having grandchildren. Our kids moved to faraway places and we found other demands pulling at us. She found energy when her hands were in the dirt. Her gardens became her haven. Her husband Rob built her a fabulous henhouse, and she became Mother Hen to a whole roost of chickens. A couple weeks ago when I stopped by for a visit she lamented that she had 9 dozen chicken eggs out in the kitchen with nowhere to go. Beautiful, multicolored eggs from happy hens.

Marsha knew that the product of her labors was less important that the labor itself. Not that she did not celebrate the bounty. The evidence of this eternal philosophy sat on the counter, and on the table in her front yard at harvest time with a sign: FREE FOOD. Gorgeous, organic, fresh produce for the taking from a master gardener. In the most divine way Mush was no respecter of persons. If you were hungry, she fed you.

Marsha Bradbury, before I knew her, was an athlete, a high school coach, and a renowned Special Ed teacher. She literally saved people. I’m talking “for real”! Kids who had frustrated the compassion out of pretty much every other adult in their lives found safety in Mrs. Bradbury. Her room was a haven, especially for misfits. Everyone fit in her space. Everyone fit in her massive heart. She had been blessed with an ability to see beyond what is socially appropriate and into the ancient spirits of kids who were troubled. She lived with outstanding success the commandment “Judge not.” She understood that when someone’s brain, or body, does not function in an average way, they needed us to help them, full faced and unapologetically, navigate society.

Yesterday a friend texted my sister Libby with a frantic sentence: “Did Marsha die????!!!” Marsha had literally taken her hand and walked her through to graduation from high school. This scenario was repeated so many times no-one, but God, would know. Her gift as an educator was a rare and beautiful thing. She used that gift for nearly four decades. That’s almost two full generations.

Libby’s thumbs quivered when she texted back: “Yes. She was a miracle to us, but she finally got to go Home.”

One of the ripples of that Pancreatic Cancer was diabetes, which is a natural effect of removing the pancreas. Her body stopped processing food, which I find ironic since she grew and raised the most healthy food possible. In the end there was not much left of her in the flesh. But the spirit, that’s the thing. The sprit remained true. Luckily, she was never not “her”. She remained hopeful until her body said, “Hey, let’s be done now.” And even then, it took sheer physical exhaustion to make her say uncle and let go. Our super-strong athletic girl held out until the body could no longer survive. Then she finally exhaled, surrounded by the people to whom she gave life and who shared her life with her. Rob, her husband of 42 years, redefined himself in the last few years. Because of Covid he retired from his job so he would not risk bringing illness to Marsha. His gentle ways were easy on her and comforting for her and for us who cared about her daily existence. He is currently trying to exhaust himself with work, trying to process what just happened.

Marsha was like a cat with nine lives. Over and over again she triumphed when it was completely expected no-one could survive. Pancreatic cancer, diabetes, liver cancer, endocrine issues…so many enemies that any other human I know would have pulled out the white flag and surrendered. It’s not that she did not trust God. She understood his will prevails. But she also knew that if she had any say in it, she was going to fight. We were so accustomed to her overcoming, and bouncing back, that it wasn’t until the very end that we ourselves surrendered her to the Lord she loved.

It's a great comfort to me that she loved the Lord. Like the rest of us, she didn’t fully understand Him, but in her soul of souls she trusted him.

So do I.

A few years ago, before Covid hit, there was a little red-headed girl who stood directly in front of me in the Heavenly Choir of children who sang at my Christmas concert. She sort of stole the show, throwing her whole heart into singing in a charmingly animated yet reverent way. I stood from my vantage point on the stage and looked out into the audience as the children sang. The light from one of the spots reflected off my guitar and onto the face of that little girl’s grandmother, my friend Marsha. It felt like that same warm light bounced back off Mush’s face onto her little Millie, the child of her child. I recognized in that flash of time, before I started singing along with the kids, that we were in the heart of a miracle.

Millie, the mini-Mush.

There was a time, when Mush and I sat quite still, hours on end, in the space where we shared our worries and pain, back when we were both sick, when the greatest wish of her heart was to be able to live long enough to see her first grandchild born. That child, Jack, is now 17. She was here when Charlie came. Then Lillie, and Millie and darling caboose Ryker. They have all been held in her arms. They have all gathered eggs with her. They have felt the wind and waves of Flaming Gorge in their hair, then returned to their cabin for a warm meal and some games, all with their grandmother. When Mush and Millie walked through a store, people smiled at the image of a “before and after” manifest in the two of them. She has been able to see all her children become skilled in their educated professions, All three of her children have become professional therapists in various forms. Becky is a gifted Occupational Therapist. Robby does psych evaluations in the ER in Portland and leads troubled youth and their families on wilderness adventures. Her youngest, Laura, is currently earning her doctorate after having directed programs on grief therapy for years. We are going to need her help this next little while. It is perfectly fitting that all three of Marsha and Rob’s kids chose professions that aim at helping individuals understand themselves in relation to the world and the people who inhabit it. They learned at the knees of the best.

We are trying to process the thought of her not being here. Its almost unfathomable. But there is evidence that part of her remains with us. She is in the people and places she loved. She is in the songs and stories that will be repeated through generations. And she is in the earth; the soft brown earth, starting now, at her passing, to burst with life. Seeds she planted are just about to awaken. At least there’s that.

It's hard to imagine this world without her in it. Heaven, on the other hand, is getting lovelier every day.