Claire Grace Schutt passed away the morning of New Year's Day.
She was 95 years old.
She had not been well for a long time, suffering from leukemia and Alzheimer's disease. We were just sitting down New Year's Eve morning, that Sunday, getting ready to do the New York Times crossword, when we received the call. So we packed the funeral clothes that had not been unpacked from the previous alert a year earlier, and drove 240 miles through the rain to Toronto.
In 1911, Claire Grace was born into a large family in the Ottawa Valley, in Vinton, in the Pontiac, in Quebec, Canada-and island of Irish culture in the middle of a river of English and French, telling their own Irish stories and viewing the world with their own unique wit.
Claire was one such charming Irish story. She married Henry Schutt and raised a family with him in Manhasset, New York. For us, her story is infinite. It exists forever in our hearts.
We see her face, we hear her voice, we remember her cooking Sunday dinner, we smile at her cheerfulness, her singing, and how she made everything fun. And when we here have gone, the immediacy of these memories is gone, but the underlying patterns of her story still reverberate: piety and hard work, sweetness and love, family and friends, charity and a light spirit. These things echo on to Eternity; continuing in Heaven, continuing on Earth.
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