MaryAnn Opalenik Machak

Aunt MaryAnn was truly one of a kind. She was loving, caring, fun , & smart. Reading was a passion of hers. She was always there for my mom & a great help when she visited.
She will be greatly missed 💔.

Aunt MaryAnn was such a special lady. Her visits to Mom brought a lot of fun times and laughs to both of them. They especially loved going shopping.
When I think of Aunt MaryAnn I will always remember her smile her stories and her wisdom.
She holds a special place in my heart. 🧡💕

These are some of my favorite photos of MaryAnn.
Miss you, Mom! ❤️

Maryann was a wonderful human being. I met her years ago when she would stay with Tom and Janet in Burke. I really got to know her much better when she moved in with them in Florida. Whenever I visited, we would spend hours talking about gardening, her family, and where they were from. She was a very special lady.

My Grandma was, quite simply, the.best.grandma.ever. Some of my earliest memories are of her and PopPop visiting us and of us going to their house. While I never lived in Ohio, when we went to their house and got to see both sides of our family, it was always “going home.” I have so many memories of her in her garden, showing me how to make snapdragons talk and paying me a penny a weed to pull them out of their gravel driveway. My cousins would come over to play Lion King on the Sega Genesis and rollerskate to Paula Abdul in the basement. Despite yelling at the TV or singing at the top of our lungs, we were never shushed. Every Christmas she made chex mix, nutroll and, my favorite, apricot kolachi cookies. Her hot rice and chicken, breaded with crumbled saltines, will always be one of my favorite meals.

Grandma outlived PopPop by almost thirty years and I’m sure she gave him hell for it as soon as she saw him again. I admired their playfulness with each other. After eloping and later having a church ceremony in another state, they were married to each other, legally, twice. They would each joke that they'd never get divorced because doing it twice would be too much work. They had their own interests but I loved when they worked on projects together, like PopPop making wooden decorations and toys and Grandma painting them, and working on their dollhouse and all the ones they gifted to family. After PopPop died, Grandma lived in their house for roughly another 15 years before moving to Florida with my parents. During that time, she handled her finances impeccably, which was something that she hadn’t been in charge of for a long time, if ever. Years later, after buying herself a much needed new roof, in a very out of character way, she patted herself on the back about it to me, sharing that she still had the same amount of savings in the bank as she had when PopPop had passed. I assured her she absolutely should be proud of how well she was managing everything.

Towards the end of high school, I had a rough patch communicating with my parents and my mom must have talked to Grandma about it. Grandma wrote me a letter telling me that after raising four boys, there was nothing I could ever do or say that would surprise or disappoint her. It was right then that she turned into one of my best friends. Several times a week, I’m still wishing I could pick up the phone and catch up with her.

Grandma always showed up. Coming to visit our house wherever we lived, for celebrations but also just to spend time together. She attended my high school and college graduations, danced with me at my wedding, came to my baby showers, and visited often after my boys were born.

Some of my clearest memories, where I can still see her face and hear her voice, were either out of character, or her casually mentioning things that were actually big surprises to me. When I called to tell her that Tim and I were engaged, after her excited congratulations she said, matter-of-factly, “Of course you’ll get married in a Catholic church.” I had never known my Grandma to try to impose her will on anything, so I was a bit surprised, but had no qualms relaying that we would not be. She did not miss a beat with further happy conversation and never mentioned it again. Grandma didn’t drink, but while in Louisville for my cousin's wedding, she tried my mint julep at Derby Downs - a few times. I spearheaded her surprise 80th birthday party and afterwards she told me it was the first birthday party she’d ever had; I was floored. She accepted an invitation to come to the beach with us and once there she shared that she hadn’t seen the ocean in decades; it hadn’t occurred to me that any travel for her was to visit family. She lived simply and contentedly, it’s not that she felt like she was missing out on anything, these were just casual statements.

Grandma always answered the phone. She loved getting updates or just saying hello. She would share who she’d heard from recently and any happy news, but it was never gossip. When Tim suggested getting her the Portal device for video calls, keeping in touch went to a whole new level. I gave her tours of home improvements and of my Christmas decorations every year, video calls from the boys baseball games so she could watch a bit, and even live streamed my cousin's wedding for her when she wasn’t able to travel to it.

She was ready. Grandma outlived almost all of her contemporaries. Even though she was still surrounded by people she loved, she was tired. She would wonder aloud why she was still here. And she was right to, she really had done everything one could hope to in a lifetime. Grandma was blessed with four sons who worked together to ensure she was always taken care of, and she got to see all four of them find their person. She also got to see all her grandchildren find their person and have children of their own. She was visited with and called by not only her kids and grandkids, but also by her nieces, nephews, and some of their children, regularly. She was also loved and cared for by her daughter-in-law's families! She was generous in spirit, humble, content, kind, and loving to all. May we all strive to be more like her.

My sister-in-law once told me that if you looked up the definition of Grandma in the dictionary, it should show a picture of MY Grandma. I couldn’t agree more. I will miss her always.