Remembering Shirley Miller

Remarks given at memorial service, 12/17/11.

Frank Sinatra had nothing on Shirley Miller. More than a mantra, “My Way,” was likely Shirley’s theme song. It practically played on loud speakers in any room she walked into.


Shirley was my grandmother. She decided when I was born that she didn’t want to be called “grandma” or “granny,” or anything of the sort. She decided to let me try to say her name and go with whatever that effort produced. “Shuey” was what came out and it is how she has been known by our family ever since.

Shuey was fiercely independent, yet never drove. In fact, never even got a driver’s license. But it never slowed her down. She could always get where she wanted to go. If her late husband Bob Miller’s autobiography had a sub-title, it might be “Driving Miss Shirley.” But he never minded. He always seemed to be having a good time and you could find him reading a newspaper with a cup of coffee at about any antique or gem show.

If you ever rode in a car with Shuey around Easton, or Towson, or Baltimore, you know that she could, and did, turn every building, or home, or store into a personal landmark. “Where Dr. Detrich’s office is, that’s the house we grew up in.” “That’s the house where Cousin Nellie lived.” That’s where mother moved.” “That’s where we got Berger’s cakes…” She was a walking oral history of a place, which was put to good use when she worked with curators, archivists and volunteers with historic photographs at the Historical Society of Talbot County.

Shuey was resourceful. She collected, as she liked to say, “anything there is more than two of.” Dolls, jewelry, Christmas tree pins, Cameos, books—we’d be here a while if I tried to list everything. When she found something at an antique show, she would figure out how to get it. She might trade for it. She might go down to the basement of their Towson house and make slipcovers or curtains to make extra money.

Shuey was not one for sitting around, there were too many things she wanted to do. At Londonderry, she planned trips and social events, helped with movie nights. She was big on movies. I love the story she would tell about her mother, who went to just about every movie they showed at the Avalon Theatre. She figured out which seat was the very center seat in the theater. And that’s where she sat. If someone was in her seat, she asked them to move. You can see where Shuey got parts of her personality.

Because of her tenacious collecting and shopping personality, around Christmas time, she was the secret weapon. She was given a list of whatever the must-have hot gift was for my sister or me. And she was there when Toys ‘R Us opened, throwing elbows and acquiring the gift, by all means necessary. I think she got them all.

Christmas time has always made me think of Bob and Shirley. They were really the best part of the holiday. On Christmas Eve, they drove to Oxford from Towson. We waited to see them turn the corner onto our street. We helped them unload the car of presents and suitcases. We had dinner and they were there the next morning when we woke up—Shuey with her tea and Pop with his coffee. This time of year will always make me think of them.

This past Sunday, I went over to her house. She wasn't doing well. Wanted company. We watched the Ravens game and they happened to be playing the Colts. Shirley and Bob were big Baltimore Colts fans and they attended almost every Colts home game together. She could tell you all about the old Colts and this past Sunday was talking about Art Donovan.

I asked her if she ever, after all those years of cheering for the Colts, ever thought she'd be pulling for Baltimore to beat the Colts. She said, "Yep. As soon as they left town."

That's a statement that encapsulates Shuey well. She didn’t dwell on things. She moved on to what was next. She let you know what she thought and didn’t add any words or soften a sentiment that she meant to be hard. I will always love, and learn from, her directness. She’d probably tell me I’ve already said too much.


On Monday night I watched a documentary about the writer/philosopher Walker Percy. He is the kind of writer she and I would have talked about—she would bring me book reviews cut out of the Baltimore Sun. Percy’s first novel was called “The Moviegoer,” which instantly made me think of Shuey and her mom. She stayed in my head and thoughts for the rest of the film, very clearly. It was later that night that she died.

I’ve since picked up the book and been reading it, thinking of her. There is this idea in “The Moviegoer,” which says we all have a search, that is the thing that “anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”

My sense of Shuey is that she was never sunk in the everydayness of life. She lived, daily, on her own terms. She did and said the things that she wanted to do and say. She spent time with the people she loved and enjoyed. And she truly lived the life that she set out to live.

Tomorrow is her husband’s birthday. While I am sad that we don’t get to spend Christmas with Shuey, I am happy to think that she gets to spend it with Pop. I will always picture them together. Probably reading the Sun, drinking coffee and tea, wearing festive sweaters. I like to picture them in their house in Towson, where they spent 62 years. It was the first house I knew with a green house. I’m pretty sure she’s got one now, too.

Unencumbered (like a cucumber)

Growing up, we spent more time in the marsh across the street than we did in our houses. Maybe our thoughts took on the shape of cattails or were muddy like brackish water. Maybe they wound through brush like the trails that were bushhogged for us to explore.

Our girls just went for 30 days without watching television, allowed just one movie a day. They were/are not vidiots (video idiots) to begin with--they prefer their bikes, the park, the pool, the beach--but it has been cool to see their minds work differently when they think about what to do next.

And maybe that's the thing: allowing your thoughts to take the shape they would take if they were unencumbered. Unencumbered like a cucumber, free from the pickle jar.

My grandfather was a recovered alcoholic, who didn't drink for the last 50+ years of his life. He worked to help others with their recovery and frequently spoke to groups and on the radio. I remember a statement he made about alcoholism and if you could ever be "better," no longer an alcoholic.

"A cucumber is a cucumber, but once you turn it into a pickle, you can't turn it back into a cucumber."

Granted this thread is held together by the fact that unencumbered and cucumber happen to rhyme, one leading me to think of the other and my grandfather's quote, but what else are you going to string your thoughts together with?

The point is influence, is the encumbered nature of our waking thoughts. Unencumbered (the cucumber state) is almost impossible and maybe not even desirable, but maybe we can be mindful of the influences that shape our thoughts.

Only very slowly does my thought swim across the river,
Weighed down as it is by the suit men forced it to wear.

That is a line I read this morning by Fernando Pessoa, which seemed to connect a bunch of disparate threads.

Fucking suits, the encumbered nature of our waking thoughts, which will be more concerned with straightening their ties and shining their shoes if we don't let them ramble, to see where they'll drift.

Back in the marsh across the street, the river got shallow, came together and was easier to cross through clumps of tall grasses. We took boards we found and made foot bridges so we could get across to the shore on the other side.

Saturday Morning

Present

I can see out two windows from my favorite seat in the house,
the corner of a room we put laminate flooring in,
on the corner of a couch with a reading light.

It is generally dark, between 4:30 and 6am, winter, and
there is steam rising off a cup of coffee in one hand
with a book in the other. I'm the only one up and there is
a short stack of books on a makeshift bench of a coffee table.

The books determine the view out the windows. They propel
the mind, the couch, the house, often times so much that
I have to put them down, and the coffee,
and pick up a notebook and pen and scribble
thoughts that I didn't have yesterday or this morning
when I woke up and that I won't have tomorrow
or any other time but right now.

Past

This morning it is light out. Anna is up with me, bouncing back
and forth between writing or working in her reading practice books
and creating a tyrannical funhouse world for the cats.

"When did Pop die?" she asks, remembering my grandfather
who died a couple years ago.

Her memory of him is as an old man with a great heart and laugh
who couldn't see or hear or walk well.

My memories of him span thirty-some years--as chauffeur,
as recovered alcoholic, as lover of the Baltimore Colts and
the Evening Sun paper and Robert Service poetry.

I remember him with me on the ice of Town Creek in Oxford,
with most of the town after a winter storm from the late 1970s.
It's a view of Town Creek I'll hold as long as my memory allows,
one of my favorites, though I've only seen it that way once
and not again since. He helped make that memory for me.

Thirty-some years of memories I have of Pop. And yet
he lived to be ninety. My time with him was a fraction of his life lived.
A part of my life that I haven't even come to yet.

Anna has turned the TV on and asked for a drink.
She has moved on with her morning.
Mine is still with Pop.

Photo by David Stevens, taken at our wedding, June, 1999, Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, Md.