You never even knew when she was around".
"When she was around, everything ran smoothly," said Marc Jarret, her brother.
There was quite a negative connotation to them, and we never listened to them when she was around".
The writer Shirley Hazzard, a friend, remembered her as "Muriel with the X-ray eyes" and "believed that somehow things happened, odd things, when she was around".
And she didn't put on any airs but was definitely a woman who you just sat up a little straighter when she was around".
Ms. Mathis was an only child whose parents separated when she was around 2. She grew up mostly in a working-class section of the Germantown neighborhood in Philadelphia.
One evening when she was around 96, Mrs. Astor said, "Bill, how do you like my new diamond necklace?" She leaned closer and confided: "I traded in my emeralds.
She said that when she was around 34 years old, she realized that "the biological clock is real" and that "egg production is limited", which made her decide to seek in-vitro fertilisation.
When she was around, empty bottles of alcohol and marijuana littered the floor.
When she was around, the industry was still developing, there were only a couple shades of lipsticks, and shampoos.
As I look back at my awareness of my mom's dive into self-annihilation, it seemed to begin when she was around 50.
