You seldom encounter anyone with the moral strength of the woman you are about to meet.
Ostensibly, she messaged me to tout her new book, “Love Life and the Library” (Laguna Woods Publishing Club), memoirs, often witty, of her 30 years as a librarian.
The lines that leaped off my screen, however, carried depressing, sadly familiar news:
“Remember me? I have written a book. I hate to say this but I also have the beginning of pulmonary fibrosis. Like father, like daughter. I'm not dying yet.”
Those 29 words summarize the stubbornly fought downs and the cheerfully greeted ups of Charlaine Marlow’s brave 62-year journey across real minefields.
At an age when her talents should be straddling peaks, she is smacked with a disease that snuffed out her father’s life seven years ago. His last years also were darkened by a round of macular degeneration. Walt Marlow, former Los Angeles Herald-Examiner hockey writer and author, likely knew more about the sport than anyone in Southern California. We worked on the same Orange County daily for five years, and a month after he joined the Examiner, he convinced the sports editor to hire me. Charlaine’s late mother Blanche, who died 2½ years ago, spent decades in wheelchairs, hobbled by rheumatoid arthritis.
Pain and darkness – but never discouragement — have been her constant companions.
Lest you think everyone named Marlow was marked, her younger brothers Chris and Jason, accomplished in their fields, have enjoyed fairly unfettered sailing.
Different Paths
With Chris and Jason away for years, tending to their careers and families, Charlaine was beautifully devoted to her parents through their middle and final years.
She was saying that she has faced health imperfections since birth, starting with the scourge of asthma.
Today she says: “Every asthmatic experience you look fear in the face. You develop strength, self-confidence, courage and a stronger faith in God.”
Charlaine is a wonderfully upbeat woman, a model for all who feel cheated, buoyed by a unshakeable religious beliefs. Devoutly Catholic, she takes wide swaths of her daily strength from her pastor and friends at her south Orange County parish.
When I called the other day, she bubbled about attending book signings, and her daily life around church. No one could have suspected she requires oxygen to get through the night.
She is an inspiration for any who are challenged because this is her mantra: “You can’t keep misery from coming, but you don’t have to give it a chair to sit on.”
Charlaine Marlow may be contacted at sparkyicechips@comline.com