Marie Douglass rushed out to her driveway to greet me.
“You don’t mind dogs, do you?” she asked.
“Well,” I replied with hesitation, “I’m not a real dog person.”
“It’s OK,” she said, “I’ll keep ’em off you.”
Inside her home, I sat on a couch in the living room. One dog drooled on my leg, begging to play catch with his toy. Another dog sat on my lap. A third one sat at my feet. A fourth one appeared to laugh at me from another room.
“Get off Mr. Davich or he’ll never come back,” Marie said, shooing the dogs away.
This exchange took place in 2006 when Marie and her husband, Don Douglass, invited me into their Valparaiso home. They hoped I would write a column warning readers to not trust a doctor’s opinion, a lawyer’s advice or a landlord’s promise.
I never wrote that column.
But I never forgot Marie and her Teflon-coated outlook about life, even when bad luck seemed to be the only luck she had. The couple had trudged through job problems, money problems, housing problems, car problems and serious health problems.
Her cheery spirits had a way of beating back her bad luck.
Through the years, Marie kept in touch with me through voice mails, texts, Facebook messages and even in person. Our paths always seemed to cross. She made sure of it.
“I’m your biggest fan, Jerry,” she once told me at a grocery store.
When I changed the subject and asked how she and Don were doing, she replied, “We’re so blessed.”
They still had lingering problems, she said, but they were still together and still in love.
Marie always had a genuine smile for me. Not a fake one for public encounters or a forced one for social niceties. She always had a hug for me, too, even when it felt like I would crush her frail body.
Several years ago, Don’s 20-year-old son, Josh, was killed in a traffic crash near their home. All of his organs were donated, rescuing 27 other people, Don said proudly.
“Josh always wanted to travel,” Marie told me. “Now he’s traveling with 27 different people he helped.”
This was quintessential Marie Douglass, turning a tragedy into a triumph of some kind.
In 2008, Don, who already had several health issues, underwent heart surgery.
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I wrote in my column, “If anyone has it in their heart to wish him well or say a prayer for him, Marie would be sincerely grateful. They’ve gone without life’s extras. But I don’t think they can go without each other.”
He survived. They survived. Their love survived.
At Christmastime in 2010, Marie stood in front of a towering Santa Claus decoration in downtown Valparaiso when I gave her $500 from an anonymous donor as part of my annual Elf Fund.
“Oh, Jerry, I don’t know what to say,” she said in tears.
Late last year, we bumped into each other again at the Valparaiso Walmart.
“See you on Facebook!” Marie said after a brief chat.
“Sure will,” I replied.
Marie’s Facebook messages were typically forwarded memes or prayer chain requests. I didn’t always reply. I wish I had.
This past Monday, I received a text message from Marie. Or so I thought when it popped up. The text was written by Don.
“Jerry, Marie passed away Friday. She was your biggest fan,” he wrote.
I literally stopped in my tracks. I had to absorb the news.
Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris said Marie died from an apparent heart attack. She was 74.
Marie recently visited a doctor who told her she was “healthy as a horse” despite her previous health problems, Don said. Heck, I thought she would outlive me, and I’d keep getting her texts and messages forever. I should have known better.
In 2006, just after I met Marie, I met Harold “Doc” Okone, who afterward called me every Thursday with the same voice mail greeting.
“Hi Jer, this is O-kone, president and founding member of your fan club,” he would say, revealing his famous charm. “At YOUR convenience, can you please return my call at my office?”
Even though the 85-year-old Ogden Dunes man retired from full-time veterinarian work years earlier, he still worked at the Ark of the Dunes Animal Hospital in Chesterton – his “office.”
Hal, as I called him, contacted me for years, like clockwork. Until one Thursday went by without a call. And then another Thursday. Hal got gravely ill and found himself in a hospital. By the time I found out, it was too late. Hal died Sept. 14, 2009.
The following Thursday after his funeral, I checked my voice mail, forgetting for a moment there would be no message from him. No flattery. No jokes. No more plans.
“I’m writing about Hal without his consent but hopefully with his blessing,” I wrote in a column. “Hal, if it reads like a eulogy, I apologize. It’s meant to be about your life, not your death.”
I told myself then that I would do a better job of keeping in touch with people such as the Hal Okones of the world. Marie was one of those people.
“It would honor her memory if you wrote something,” Don told me when I asked his permission to write this column.
Don said Marie wasn’t feeling ill or complained of any serious health problems last week. On the night before her death, the couple of 30 years kissed each other good night and told each other, “I love you,” Don recalled.
“Like we always did,” Don said.
The next morning when Don woke up, Marie was dead.
“I lost my best friend,” he told me.
Her funeral service takes place 2 p.m. Wednesday at Moeller Funeral Home in Valparaiso, with burial to follow at Angelcrest Cemetery.
Marie, if this reads like a eulogy, I apologize. It’s meant to be about your life, not your death.
jdavich@post-tribcom
Twitter@jdavich
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