Very Sad News, Mary Blades PassesInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Carlos and Mary Working — I Couldn’t Get Them to Look at the Camera.

We received very sad news from John Luka this evening.

Mary
Blades, devoted wife of Carlos Blades, and wonderful hostess of the
Garden City Magic Shop in Garden City, Michigan passed away in her
sleep last night.

I?ve written often about my admiration for Carlos and Mary. Their shop is the prototypical magic shop. The kind we all dream of owning one day. There was a stage in the back where they would feature the great lectures brought to Southeastern Michigan by John Luka.

Mary
was so warm and welcoming to everyone who came to the shop. She had a
smile that lit up the room and clearly cared about the people she met
at the shop and she was fond of telling me of how she and Carlos would
travel to help with Christian Missions out west.

She was an engaging woman and when she spoke with you, you felt you were the only one in the room.

She
was telling me just the other day how she was going to get one of
?those Dummy Books? to learn about the Internet and the computer so
that she could do genealogy research. She was so proud of Carlos and clearly loved him.

…

Carlos and Mary Working — I Couldn’t Get Them to Look at the Camera.

We received very sad news from John Luka this evening.

Mary
Blades, devoted wife of Carlos Blades, and wonderful hostess of the
Garden City Magic Shop in Garden City, Michigan passed away in her
sleep last night.

She was an engaging woman and when she spoke with you, you felt you were the only one in the room.

She
spoke of him in glowing terms and described how he had retired from
Ford after many years and that they were happy to travel, see family
and friends.

I wish you could have met Mary. She was a wonderful woman. She was a firm believer in her and our Savior, Jesus Christ. She adds attraction to heaven and personified a faithful follower of our Lord.

I cannot imagine and would never change places with Carlos. Apparently Mary ?did not wake up this morning.? I have been married 20 years and am so emotionally dependent on my wife that it would devastate me to lose her.

There are no easy words to explain or console the loss of someone like Mary Blades; especially to Carlos Blades. The
truth that Mary is currently with our Lord in the place where we hope
to all soon be, still doesn?t fill the vacuum that must exist in the
heart of Carlos.

Perhaps
there is some solace in the firm truth that our Lord is loving and
compassionate and is with Carlos even now as he deals with all of the
details of preparing for his beloved Mary?s funeral and life after that
day.

The
sadness that Carlos must feel reminds me of the description of
Abraham?s sorrow in Genesis 23 and his desire to honor his wife, Sarah,
by a burial in a land of strangers.

He clearly loved Sarah and in that land of strangers, Canaan, he stopped and found a place to weep for her loss. He
was assured, as Paul would later note, that his righteousness was
accounted to him by God, but even with the assurance, he wept. Gal 4:3.

Jesus knew that he would be able to bring back to life his friend, Lazarus in the 11^th Chapter of John and yet he wept.

As
our Lord said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever
believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and
believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

To this, Mary would say ?Amen.?

May
our Lord be with Carlos tonight and every night and every day. May our
Loving God comfort Carlos and all those who knew and loved Mary Blades
until we see both her and He who sent us at the end of our time here on
earth.