[ WP ] Do n't tell me how he/she died , tell me instead , how he/she lived .

As a young woman, she looked very much like Grace Kelly in her pre-princess days, although she had a brittleness in her eyes sometimes that Princess Grace never knew. She was afraid of being alone. 
 
 Her mother had abandoned her and her sister in a train station when she was just six years old. Marianne was eight. `` You wait right here,'' they were told. `` I'll be right back.'' Fortunately, Maggie knew her name and address, and the nice man at the station wired their father. Papa sent money, and they put the girls on the train back to him, unescorted by an adult. They were at the start of a war and at the end of the depression. Time and resources could n't be spared for someone else's children. 
 
 Maggie blamed Papa. Her mother had left him, had n't she? There must be something he did to deserve it! She wanted her mama! He was n't terribly sympathetic to her plight, especially since the other girl was so easygoing and glad to be back where she belonged. Maggie was hurt, angry, and developing a bitterness she'd never overcome. 
 
 Maggie was sharp. She did well in school and loved to read. She could do math that the older kids could n't. She thought maybe she'd teach or be a secretary. Mostly, she wanted to be a mother. She wanted to prove that it could be done so much better than her mother had. 
 
 She married JB when she was 23. He was 28, and a wild thing. He was funny, brilliant, and drank too much. He'd been married twice already and would only be divorced from the second wife for two days when she donned a very stylish dark blue suit and hat to wed him. Oh, he was a challenge. She could handle this big man, though. She did n't care what happened. She was going to do The Right Things. 
 
 What were The Right Things? They were all the things her mother had failed attempting. She would be a faithful wife all her life. She would have two little girls she adored. She would cook and clean and sew Halloween costumes and explain the facts of life, not wait until those poor girls got their periods and were told by a gruff man as an afterthought! She would tolerate JB's drinking. She would be the ideal 60's wife with a big, sparkling smile. She would do everything for everyone in her life by making everything easy for them. She volunteered to be a Brownie leader, she smiled at bridge club, she attended dances at the country club, and she was the asset a businessman's wife was supposed to be. When her husband died in an accident after 25 years, she was stunned, but oddly grateful. She did n't want to keep taking care of him and had thought often of ways to leave, but she would never have done that without her children. Never. 
 
 She helped her youngest daughter raise her own two children after an ugly divorce, and she did it all again. She never took a day off, never rested. She kept house, she cooked, she volunteered and taxied. She did it all again without a single complaint. And without a single emotion. 
 
 Maggie was frozen from the inside. She did what was expected, and she did a better job of it than her mother ever had. She did n't complain because she knew it would n't get her anywhere. She took everything in stride. She took care of everything for everyone, but never showed that she felt fear or pain or affection. She was still that hurt little girl inside. She could n't hug or kiss or cuddle her daughters or grandchildren. There was no point in it, and coddling people only served to make things more difficult when life got hard again, as it always would. 
 
 The night she died, thrashing in agony from heart failure, cancer, and not enough morphine in April of 2013, her daughters promised they would play nicely together even though they were long grown. She had been the perfect mother and grandmother, although she would have scoffed at their hyperbole to hear them say so.
