Writing about my mother has proved difficult.
I should say up front that her impact on me and on our whole family was enormous and lasting, and that we loved her greatly.
For her part, no one would ever love us more.
But the former Mary Louise Schuyler, daughter of John and Margaret, was a complicated person in life and no less challenging in death.
We will be parsing out her many gifts and puzzles for the rest of our lives.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and lately of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Weezie was not, in fact, the Southern Belle that many imagined her—and she sometimes pretended—to be; but was instead a woman of considerable global experience, having lived in Germany, Alaska, Panama and many places in between.
Weezie held broad and often contradictory opinions. She could be both stubborn and funny in the same breath. She was an indomitable and sometimes frustrating spirit, but always a blessing.
Mom was a striking lady to behold: elegant even in a t-shirt and sweatpants, and stunning when dressed for an evening out. She was a woman of porcelain complexion and patrician ancestry. Like her mother, she was a Daughter of the American Revolution and a Colonial Dame.
Her great, great uncle—no kidding—was Alexander Hamilton.
Like so many of history’s singular personalities, Mom was never meant to be comfortable in her own era.
Born in the first years of the Second World War, she would be too old, by the 1960s, to run off to San Francisco and lead a teenage riot.
Likewise, she was too late to be a righteous suffragist, embarrassing men of stature on the street.
But Weezie was a quiet radical all her life.
A self-described “tomboy,” and “tall for a girl,” she reveled in memories of besting the neighborhood kids at climbing trees, swimming creeks, and shooting hoops.
In fact, beating the boys at their own games was something she never quite stopped doing.
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