Dedicated to Clare
Tomorrow, family and friends will gather to mark the passing of my mother-in-law at the age of 86 after a long period of declining health. It’s not a surprise that although she had been ready – had prepared herself and tried to prepare others, making arrangements in advance, etc. – in the end, no one else was.
Always one to deflect attention from herself, it seemed she wanted to slip away quietly, without ado or drama, asking for the bare minimum of funeral services. I think she would be happy that we will remember her with a Mass at her local church followed by a gathering in her home of family and family friends to share the well-worn stories and memories from the full life of a mother, sister, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
However busy her life, and it usually was very busy and involved a lot of caring for others, Clare was a reader and a library user. In later years, she read mostly on her Kindle, and I wasn’t keeping up as well with what she was reading. She read mysteries – police procedurals like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books and PI series like the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike by Robert Crais and the Jack Reacher series (which she eventually had tired of) by Lee Child – and suspense/thrillers by Vince Flynn, Dan Brown, Harlan Coben — the biggies. She liked Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, etc.), at least up into the 20s, but mainly because of the wacky characters, especially Plum’s Grandma Mazur. She liked authors who wrote mysteries set in New England, especially Massachusetts, where she lived her whole life, and used to read Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane, William Tapply, and Philip R. Craig. Other old favorites were Linda Barnes (Carlotta Carlyle series) and Sue Grafton (Kinsey Milhone series). I kept pushing Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane Ryland, trying to find her some new Boston-area mystery authors, but she didn’t take to her.
With fishing in the family, Clare did read and enjoy the mysteries by Linda Greenlaw, set in Maine, I believe, and spending some of her retirement years in Florida, I think she liked reading mysteries set in Florida, too, like the ones Randy Wayne White, Donald E. Westlake, and Carl Hiaasen wrote. She liked books with strong storylines; colorful characters with a sense of humor who spoke their minds and let the chips fall where they may; and that didn’t get too “wordy”. (Get over yourself and tell the story, I can imagine her thinking with a book that lingered over detailed descriptions or delved too deep into a character’s psychological makeup). She loved children, but didn’t particularly care to hear about any adult’s “inner child”.
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