To Nancy

"I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, except I'll die in the end, she said. So, really, what could go wrong?"
I don't think I ever saw Nancy away from Boston. So the majority of my memories with her are from Humarock.

I remember when I was about 4 or 5, we went into Quincy to meet up with Nancy and she took me through Faneuil Hall to "window shop." We stopped at just about every jewelery boutique and clothing display and she would critique the style, most of them being too subtle or too boring for her taste. She would ask me my favorite colour and then set out to find something "Gorgeous" to wear that was generally too excessive (even for my 5 year old self). I do remember that by the end of that shopping trip, she had found this little plastic purple box that had a purple notebook, purple pen, purple dice (I don't know why that was in there), purple bubble necklace, and purple pin with a panda on it that said "Purple makes life bearable."

At least once every time we were down at the beach, she would come visit. And that meant one thing, and one thing only when we were younger... Lion hunts. I don't remember exactly when we out grew those. But we would all sit in a circle (even Dan and Mike loved it... Well, Mike grew to like it after he stopped being scared of the Lion. And the Gradys normally would come over for them too), and pack our bags, and walk down the road, and through the big dark trees, and across the bubbling brook, and through the tall tall grass... She normally would convince me to get "Dressed up" for dinner. And she would help me do my make-up. And everything was glitter and shiney and colourful. As I got older, we would sit out on the porch with a drink (mine normally juice and I highly suspected that hers was not). She would take a long drag on a cigarette and say "Elizabeth. Tell me about boys."

I think the last time I had a good chat with Nancy was at Dan's graduation. And we spent a brief amount of time at John funeral together. She was such a character. She was dramatic, and wild, and larger than life. I love Nancy.