Her Chair Is Empty

How odd it will be to walk into the Book Corner and find Margaret Taylor’s chair empty.

It will be. She died yesterday.

We knew it was coming but that didn’t make it any easier. We, who sold books and tchotchkes at the Book Corner for all these years, could spend long minutes grousing and carping, moaning and shaking our heads over the owner of the place, but we knew when this day would come we’d cry like babies.

And we did.

Margaret was as strong as an ox and stubborn as a mule. When men possess those qualities, we laud them to the skies. Women, not so much. I’m going to flip that inequity on its head: I called her “Boss” and, when feeling chipper, “Boss-arino.” She loved that. She was the boss.

And a friend.

She wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea and for many of us who worked for her she was a hefty shot of Malört. Like that trendy Chicago spirit, Margaret could be hard to swallow. She could make your eyes water and leave you groping for a chaser. The Chicago reference is apt because she never really left the place. She and her late husband Mike, a sergeant in the Joliet police force, lived in the southwest suburbs for years until he died, suddenly and in her presence, some 30 years ago. Margaret never missed a chance to tell anyone who’d listen how good-looking her husband was.

Her daughters, Kathy and Laura, still live in the Chicago suburbs and, in fact, Margaret’s doctors were all in Chicago as well. Often, after visiting her daughters and keeping doctors’ appointments, Margaret would bring back huge trays of Italian beef and loaves of crisp Italian bread for those of us who appreciated that Windy City signature sandwich.

When she and her daughters would take summer trips up to Door County in northern Wisconsin, she’d bring back jars of Al Johnson’s lingonberry preserves and boxes of Swedish pancake mix for us. She loved being generous.

Although she’d howl to high heaven if one of her employees appeared to be malingering. “Not on my dime!” she’d blurt.

Margaret was complicated, sure, but she engendered a lifelong loyalty among some of us. We’d fetch ice for her big tumblers of Coke. We’d sop and mop up her inevitable spills, too. We could vent all day and into the night about her, but when push came to shove, we’d always be there for her.

The reason was simple: for a certain few of us she was, indeed, the boss, but also a friend.

That Chicago connection played into a story, toward the end of her life, that perfectly illustrates who Margaret A. Taylor was.

It was a miserable, rainy, dark Thursday afternoon about five weeks ago. Margaret had an appointment to speak with one of her Chicago doctors on the phone at 2:00pm. For some reason, she put the call on speaker. I sat at my station just outside her office so I could hear every word.

Margaret the last few weeks had experienced some slurring of her words, shortness of breath, and one or two pass-outs. She complained, too, of feeling light-headed and of having trouble remembering some things. None of these symptoms boded well for her, and, I realize now, she knew it.

The doctor, I could hear, told Margaret about three or four possible reasons for all these things that were happening to her, ranging from fairly fixable to awfully dire. The doctor told her she needed to get to the hospital immediately in case the worst case scenario held.

“Oh sure,” Margaret said, “I can drive up there this afternoon.”

Up there, of course, being 330 miles away, a good five hour drive in the best of weather and surely longer given the conditions this day.

Margaret’s doctor had a fit. Oh no, she hollered, you can’t drive up here! You could pass out! You could hurt yourself or somebody else!

“No, I’ll be fine,” Margaret said, confident, as always. Stubborn, as always.

She parried with the doctor for a few more moments until, uncharacteristically, she began to relent. “Alright,” Margaret said, “I can drive up to Methodist hospital in Indianapolis.”

The doctor gasped. No, no, no, no! That would be dangerous!

Again, the two went back and forth.

“Margaret,” the doctor argued, “you’ve got a perfectly fine hospital right there in Bloomington.”

“Oh no,” Margaret replied. “I won’t go there. People die there.”

And, again, the two wrangled.

Meanwhile, I was writing a note. It read: “Margaret: I’ll drive you to the hospital up in Indianapolis.” I think I might have appended the words Goddamn it! for emphasis.

As I say, Margaret must have been coming to understand that what was happening to her was way out of the ordinary, that her usual bravado, her definitive doggedness, wasn’t going to get her out of it. She read my note and told the doctor, “Okay, somebody wants to drive me to Methodist hospital.”

I could hear the doctor sigh in relief.

I could sense, too, Margaret chafing at the notion that she couldn’t do what was needed for herself.

We took that drive up to Indianapolis, in the rain, as twilight approached. Margaret was chatty, pointing out things along the way as if she wanted to imprint them one final time in her memory, recalling her husband, speaking of old times. It occurred to me Margaret was beginning to create her own elegy.

Over the next few weeks I visited her a couple of times at Methodist hospital. She ran down all the things — many of which could be fatal — the doctors there had discovered from the many tests they were running on her. “I’ve had a good life,” she said. “I’m ready.”

That wasn’t the Margaret I knew for so many years. The Margaret I’d known went toe to toe with her doctor over driving 330 miles to Chicago just to go to the hospital of her choosing. Now, this different Margaret had given up control. She was at ease.

Nobody was going to tell Margaret what to do until the day she couldn’t fight anymore.

Except for one last display of the real Margaret. A few days ago, she was finding the physical pain too much to bear. She told the doctors and her daughters she wanted to stop taking all the medications that had been keeping her alive. They all agreed it’d be for the best. If she was going to die, Margaret would say when.

A few days later, she was gone.

Strong as an ox; stubborn as a mule. Margaret, my boss, my friend.