Mary Anne

 In 2007 I met an angel. And now she has gone to Heaven.

I got a scholarship when I was a PhD candidate to study for one year abroad. And I was accepted at the
prestigious Ivey Business School, in London, Ontario. Looks fancy, and in some ways, it is, but there was a catch. I got a small scholarship, compared to the living costs in London. I then sent emails to several homeowners explaining my situation and two of them returned. One of them was Mary Anne. Back then, she and her husband, Zenon, had a small side business: renting housing for students.

We live in south Brazil. It is cold here, for the Brazilian standards. Eventually, on colder nights, in the mountains, it can get to -5ºC. Where I live, when it is +5ºC, everyone is shivering and complaining. Anyway, we got to Canada in March 2007, when it was not that cold. It was -12ºC during the day – we never saw that cold! We never had the experience of walking on sidewalks covered with inches of snow. Then we had it. The one person that got it was Mary Anne. She was working as the director of the Nursing School at the Western University back then, but she sent Zenon to rescue us. For the rest of Canadians, maybe, it was just a pickup. But for us, Zenon was rescuing us from the slippery and cold Canadian Spring. We met her the following day. She summoned Zenon to go with us to the used furniture stores. She was having fun at those shops!

To make a long story short, from landlords we became friends. From time to time, Nara had to call
Mary Anne to rescue me from my downs in my research. And everyone undergoing the painful research learning process knows what I mean. 

We never lost connection when I came back to Brazil. I got another grant for a sabbatical in 2017, and we went back to London, Ontario. They visited us in Brazil in 2020, just before the shutdown of international flights due to the covid-19 pandemics. We had so many good moments together.

From time to time, we chatted over the internet. Sometimes video, sometimes just text. She eventually sent me a funny photo of a VW Kombi. Then, we found out she had leukemia. It was under control, she said. Then I got the notice, yesterday, she was in the hospital. She was fine by early April, then she started having pains in the stomach. They diagnosed with colon cancer. She was then submitted to surgery. When they opened her up, they found out that the cancer was intertwined with her blood vessels and did not remove it. She has been under paliative treatment since then. Yesterday, she passed away having the company of her beloved husband Zenon.

In 2007 I met an angel. And now she left us.