Becky Denton Bumgarner May 19, 1949 – February 3, 2023

Having lemon sherbet in Ballard on the day her grandaughter Lulu was born. June 14, 2018

 Becky and I were friends from the time my son Drew met her daughter Maggie, in their second grade class at Burton Elementary. They bonded as best buds. So did we.

She knew how to be a friend, and once you were her friend, you were friends for life. She had many friends, especially school friends and the Girl Scouts with whom she grew up. Every year in August she went to Woman’s Own, a camp for adult women who had been Girl Scouts. It was held over at Camp Robbinswold on the Hood Canal on Labor Day weekend. It was the highlight of her year. Those were her people.

She was always buying things – guitars, books, clothes, routers and router bit sets, books, garden tools and other tools and yard equipment, sewing machines, books, furniture, books, and wheelbarrows and raised bed surrounds, and more – and then not really using them. Stuff was piled in the yard, and inside the house. The books went on the shelves she bought, and everything else went on the floor. Every surface was packed, and God help you if she saw you touch anything or try to do some tidying up. She would shriek, “NOOOOO! Don’t touch that!” We saw piles. She saw projects, and plans, and stuff that would definitely come in handy. Everything she brought home was a fabulous find.

She did use the garden tools, in her “jungle renovation” business, which she really enjoyed, both the work and the friends she made of the people who hired her. Her “Tool Talks” at the Vashon Garden Club meetings were legendary.

She was a fabulous storyteller, and wrote the “Blackberry Bear Tales,” which are full of wonder and wizardry. She meant to publish them, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.

At the end of Woman’s Own last September, Becky rode with Maggie to Maggie’s home up in Lake Forest Park. That night Becky was sleeping on the big couch in the TV/computer room, and in the middle of the night realized that she needed to go to the bathroom. She tried to get off the couch but couldn’t stand up. Like most hard-headed women, she was going to make the best of it and tried to crawl to the bathroom without asking for help, which did not work out. A couple of days later she was in the hospital diagnosed with cellulitis. After that and a stint in a nursing/rehab home, her husband Roy brought her back to the island, and she continued recovering at home.

One afternoon we were going to have a girls’ afternoon out. I went down to her house to pick her up, and found a tree had fallen across their driveway in a little windstorm the night before. She managed to come as far as the tree with her walker, and we talked to each other over the tree, but neither one of us was able to climb over or through it, and we certainly could not move it. We decided we could not have an outing that day, and promised each other we’d do it sometime soon, after the tree was cleared. That was the last time I saw her.

Down at Lisabeula, summer 2022. She is explaining how an airplane flies.

We talked on the phone once or twice a week. I knew she was spending a lot of her time on the couch, but she would tell me, “I walked out to the mailbox!” or some other milestone. We spoke on Groundhog Day, just a regular check in, chatting and oohing and aahing at pictures that Mags had sent to both of us on our phones of Maggie and Ben’s new baby boy, Isaac.

Becky told me that she had eighteen medical appointments coming up – I don’t know if that was the precise number or if it felt that way to her – the wound clinic, the endocrinologist, etc.

She had a serious heart attack a few years ago. She was hauled into Swedish by ambulance, received two stents to open her two totally blocked arteries, and was feeling better by that afternoon. She made a story of it and loved to tell it:  She was in the aid car, thinking that she’d had a good life, wonderful daughter, wonderful friends, she was okay with this, and then – she met God, who said, “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here yet.” She told him if that was the case, he needed to send her right back, otherwise she was going to go have tea with Mrs. God, and he would be in trouble. He sent her back right away, and she was in the aid car again.

She said after that experience that she was not afraid to die.

She passed on the morning of February 3, in her sleep. She’s gone now and she ain’t coming back. No one is going to call me after 10 o’clock at night anymore or call to tell me, “The Kingston Trio is on!” every time the PBS pledge weeks run folk music specials.

She spent a lot of her time on the couch towards the end, entertaining herself with various screens. That’s how Roy last saw her. He said she was looking at Youtube videos at 3:30 in the morning. When he got up later that morning she was still in the same spot, and she did not answer when he asked her if she wanted breakfast, so he went over to see how she was doing and realized that she was gone.

I hope she’s having tea with Mrs. God.