Rest In Peace Marty...Cause You Sure Stirred Things Up While You Were Here

Longtime resident of the Grove Street community was Marty Cross.  Actually it was Martha but she never went by that name.  Descriptions of her are difficult, but suffice to say she was a character in every sense of the word.  She had her detractors, and her supporters.  I was in the latter camp.  One just sat in silence after the initial salutations, she would take off in so many directions you could get whiplash just listening.  She moved into the area and immediately became something of the neighborhood matriarch, often being invited to various shindigs.  One of them was our Hawaiian Party.  She was our guest for Thanksgiving one year.

Like I said, you walked up gave her a hug, and then sat and watched or listened to the show.  She would give all of her block friends gifts at Christmas and even cooked for all us a couple of times in her house.  Those dinners ended when it was no longer possible to fit us all in her two-story house.  You see she was a spender and a hoarder, with an affection for dolls.  The UPS truck always stopped to deliver something new and invariably it was either dishes or a new doll.

We heard all about her family she married into and all of the dynamics that entails, as well as all the men who loved her in town, many (according to her) were very important people in town.  We heard all about everyone out at Lake Bracken where she lived before Grove Street and how everyone loved her and her husband, Jerry Cross.  It was never Jerry, or my husband, or Mr. Cross, always Jerry Cross.  Not always diplomatic or prone to soft sell her thoughts, she could be an acquired taste.  I, for one, acquired it.

Whenever I was back I'd stop and say hi.  She wanted to know how I was doing then off she would go in that rambling stream-of-consciousness thing that was like riding a Brahma bull through a field of roman candles.   I saw her in April for the last time.

Marty Cross passed away last month.  There was no obituary notice or funeral.  For all the noise she made in life, her end was quiet and secretive.  Frankly, I liked the old girl.  For someone as bland and vanilla as I am, spice always tastes good.



This is rather mild for her, as her discussions usually went far astray.  She could be talking about one of the neighbors one minute and then just as fast, switch gears to relate a story that happened 40 years ago and start crying.  Sometimes her switches would occur so fast that you'd think perhaps you had blacked out and awakened 20 minutes later.  She'd sit like a princess happy to have an audience and would talk endlessly until you would say, "Well, I gotta go, see ya Marty."  And unless you physically rose and started walking away, she'd keep you there with a question or launch into another story.   We never knew if half what she said was real or fantasy, and I'll bet she didn't either.

I painted a picture of her house that was still hanging on the wall, but becoming more obscured by the boxes, and stuff hanging or laid against whatever was convenient.  We always thought she would die from an avalanche, crushed by the ever growing menagerie of spooky dolls. We never suspected that her end would come with a respiratory problem on the front porch, where she spent a lot of time surveying her block.

I'll miss her.  The world doesn't have enough spice.