Dale Maxcy

This is a love story between Dale Maxcy and Shiela McNaughton. They met shortly after Shiela’s family had moved from Hallowell to Waldoboro. Shiela was the shy one, eventually working in a bank, caring for their daughter, tending her garden at home, keeping their house and caring for Dale. Dale, however, is this story’s narrator. He was one of the Orff’s Corners boys and outgoing. Shiela became his first love. But Dale also loved cars. In high school he greased and changed oil, then got into bodywork, and before long, he was in the showroom. Over the years, he sold Dodges, Buicks, Plymouths, Ramblers, International Scouts and GMC pick-ups at the local dealerships. He did well; but the hours were long and the benefits few. There were the occasional dry spells, too. For more security, he moved to Vast, then Vocaline, testing sonar buoys. Six years later he moved over to CMP. He stayed, for thirty years. Shiela was his anchor all along. She retired first, then he. Their pleasures were simple, from renting a cottage up north to lingering over hotdogs at Wasse’s. And when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he looked after her. Sheila died this past year, on Easter Sunday.

It wasn’t two or three weeks later after Shiela’s family moved to Waldoboro that my mother come in and says, “You gotta come out quick because there’s this cute little girl out here on a bicycle.”  Being thirteen, I really didn’t care about girls.  But I liked Shiela, right from the start.  She was kind of like a tomboy and only a year younger, and we got along good.  She liked to fish.  She liked to ride on her bicycle. 

She always told people “I liked the way he swore,” which I was good at, because I’d been doing it since I was four, listening to our neighbor Bill Prock go on drinking binges and swear up a storm.

Anyway, from that day on, Shiela and I saw each other just about every day.  I would go to her house, or she would come to mine, and every Saturday we went to the movies.  We’d go to the Waldo for the afternoon movie in the first years, and later, when I got my own car, to Rockland or Damariscotta. 

I think it was either the second or third movie together that Shiela reached down and held my hand.  I couldn’t understand it because I was just a skinny runt, shorter than her, too.  But Shiela, even being as shy as she was, knew what she wanted. 

It was a cold November night outside her house when we first kissed.  We were in my ’48 Chevy.  I think I was the first one to kiss her, and she kissed me back.  From that time on, that was that.   She had my heart. 

And so, we’d park outside her house until the car windows got steamed up or until her outside lights would blink on and off, meaning it was time for Shiela to come in.

Marriage was easy because we knew each other so well.  We knew what we each liked, and didn’t, like cottage cheese which I didn’t like, and she did.  

One of the best things was that, right after marrying, Shiela said, “One of us has to take care of the finances.”  And I said, “Okay, you do it,” because didn’t matter to me, and she was working at the bank.  And oh, boy, was she was meticulous!  She budgeted everything.  She set aside so much money for clothes, so much for groceries, so much for vacations, so much for heating oil, and so on.  Even when we didn’t have a car payment, she budgeted for that.  That’s how we saved.  By the time we were in our mid-forties, we had enough money to pay cash with no finance charges. 

And she always spoke her mind with me.  She got it from her mother.   If I was up to something wrong, she told me. 

She spoke up for me, too.  A couple of times, she saved my life, like when I needed an operation for cancer and then they postponed it.  Shiela called them up and said, “I want to talk to somebody right now.”  They could tell she meant it, too, and they re-scheduled my surgery even before the original date.  And that was lucky because it turned out I’d had a fast-growing cancer that had just formed in a lymph node.              

And then it was my turn.   When she got dementia, I was there for her.  One morning she came into the kitchen with the checkbook, slapped it on the counter, and said, “You’re going to take care of this from now on.  I’m not able to.” She knew she had dementia. 

Alzheimer’s can be slow, or it can be fast.  We hoped it would be slow.  She had it for almost eight years.  For a while we had sweet times.  She loved to collect rocks that looked like hearts.  Her favorite song was “Amazing Grace.”

But sometimes she’d get into bed with me and then get out because she was afraid.  She didn’t want to sleep with a strange man.  And I’d hear her downstairs walking and walking around.  For her, it was daytime.  Some nights, I got only an hour’s sleep. 

I kept her at home, even when she didn’t know it was home, for as long as I could.  Over seven years.  But she became so agitated.  I don’t know how many times she said, “Get me a gun.  I want to shoot myself.” 

I didn’t want to put her anywhere, but I couldn’t take care of her anymore.  I put her in Harbor View Cottage in Newcastle.  It was expensive but by God, I think it was worth it, and she deserved that.  And they were excellent at distracting Shiela when she started to focus on something and get agitated.  They would say, “Come and see this,” and she’d turn and go like a bee. 

But I read they’re closing it.  At least the Memory unit.  I hear they’re placing the people in Belfast, or Skowhegan or even down to Biddeford somewhere.  I don’t know why the government doesn’t step in.  They’re just letting these homes close, and we got the largest population of elderly people of any state in the Union, for God’s sake.  At least, thank God, they were there when I needed them.

The weekend that she died, they’d started her on morphine.  I was there the whole weekend, and we held hands.  At one point I kissed her.  But it was bitter, so I said, “I have to kiss you again.”  And would you believe?  She puckered up her lips for me.  I told her that she was the greatest gift I ever received from her mother and father.  We buried Shiela right here in Orff’s Corners. 

I never expected to live this long.  I know that a lot of people my age have gone through the things I’ve gone through.  And a lot of people haven’t even made it this far.  When it’s my turn, I don’t want to dwindle away.  But, like I’ve always said, “If it’s not your time to go, you’re not going anywhere.”

So, I pretty much live from day to day.  I don’t have more than a couple of errands and my day is done.  But I’ve been getting more done around the house. 

My daughter Kelly said, “Why don’t you get a new car?  That will make you feel better.”  So, I got exactly what I wanted, a Chevy Equinox and the RS because that’s the sporty one, quite fancy, and I always liked fancy cars.  I felt pretty good riding in the car, too – until I got down by Windsor Four Corners and suddenly it hit me.  Shiela would not be riding in this car.