On Friday, February 19, around 10 am, Alice died peacefully in her apartment.
At 7:30 am she’d gotten up and fed Babette, the cat she (and Bert) had for more than 15 years. At 9:30 am the nurse’s aid brought her her pills, but when a nurse came back ten minutes later, she found Alice on the floor, not breathing. Although the nurse and then the EMTs tried to resuscitate her, they weren’t able to. They said she had a cardiac arrest.
Two weeks ago she’d visited Mark, Marjorie, and Carmel for two days and two nights—the first time in eleven months! They talked, ate, slept–one of Alice’s favorite pandemic activities!—and even played Diary of a Wimpy Kid 10-second challenge, which (with a bit of assistance) she handily won! Mark and Marjorie, seeing the effect that Alice’s contented isolation was having on her, were trying to get her to move in with them. But while Alice delighted in her family, she also loved her apartment, where she had lived since 2016 with its windows looking out on a grove of pine trees, and the sky, and the independence of having her own place.
While we all miss her fiercely, in a strange way, she had excellent timing. She lived her life happily and independently to the last, and her final wishes–that her body be donated to the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift program–were able to be fulfilled, something of a minor miracle as the program had literally just opened up again a week prior to her death, after being closed since last spring.
Thank you and blessings,
Mark, Ken, Scott (sons)
Annika, Carmel, Micah (grandchildren)
Steve AG, Rachel, Steve B (cousins)
Marjorie, Kari, Rachael (daughters (in-law))