So sorry to hear our dear friend Marilyn Fancey is gone!

At the farmhouse
watercolour
14" x 16"

Barbara Muir © 2006

I opened Facebook tonight to see a goodbye note from our
dear friend Marilyn Fancey.  She said that if we were reading
this she had died. I couldn't believe it.  I just saw her in August.
Marilyn and her husband Ian were the first people in Nova Scotia
to befriend us and welcome us into their home.  We loved visiting
them, and because they were so kind they sold us furniture at crazy
low prices from an antique shop they ran in an outbuilding on the
property of their lovely farm house.

Our kids loved visiting them.  Christopher and Sam would watch
TV (we didn't and still don't have a TV at the school house),
and we'd play cribbage with Marilyn and Ian every single
visit.  They were amazing at it and we were not, but we had
so much fun.

Both Ian and Marilyn were folk artists, and showed every year
until recently in the Lunenburg Folk Art Festival.  One of the
first gifts Ian gave us is a folk art wooden shovel painted with
a picture of our family mowing the lawn and playing
ball on the grass outside the school house.  It's a piece we've
cherished ever since.  

I did this watercolour back when my kids were young.  They appear
in the farmhouse window behind Ian and Marilyn and their dog
Tess.

We are so sad, and heartbroken for Marilyn's children Lori and Steve
and Marilyn's husband Ian.  Thank you Marilyn for all the love you
gave to us every summer for more than 20 years.  We will miss your
wonderful laugh, your great sense of humour, and your kindness.

Have a loving the friends you love day.