Farewell to a grand lady

My wife's mother passed away Sunday. She was that rarest of souls - a person who didn't publicly judge people - and managed to keep a great perspective on just about everything.

Colleen was a person of great surprises. For example, she was an avid, hardnosed Scrabble player. My track record against her was roughly the same as the Detroit Lions against the Minnesota Vikings.

After her husband George died, she quietly went out and took classes to get her driver's license. Her kids had no idea until one day she announced she needed a ride to go take her road test. She didn't drive a lot but liked the fact she could.

We took her to a baseball game at the Metrodome one night and she startled my wife (and, I admit, myself) by keeping a perfect, neat scorecard. We knew she was a good fan but never saw this coming.

She had some strong political opinions but generally settled for everybody else battling it out publicly. But she felt strongly about voting and took pride in knowing all the issues before making a decision.

In the end, she was ready to go. The quality of life she once knew had diminished and she was sick of hospitals. As her body wore down, however, her strong heart kept firing to the end. I used to kid her that I knew where kids got their stubbornness gene from.

As Robert Sherwood once noted, dying is easy. All of us will achieve that. Living, however, is the trick. Colleen Larkin had a great run in life and had earned the right to leave on her own terms. Not many of us can say that.

We (myself, friends and family) will miss her greatly but feel fortunate to have known her as long as we did. In the end, that's all one really needs to say about somebody.