Shirley Barrett, May 12, 1923 – January 23, 2015

To the end, my mother was true to her uncomplaining, optimistic self to the end.

She was a bookish child devoted to her father, who died too young. When her brothers signed up to fight in World War II, she enlisted in the Coast Guard.

She was pursuing a Master’s Degree in sociology when she met our father, Richard Barrett. They married and had three children in quick succession. After she was diagnosed with M.S. in 1956 her options narrowed, but not her compassion. After her own children became teenagers, young neighborhood girls would hang out at our home on Riverview Place in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, to bake cookies, sew and play with whichever pug was currently underfoot.

She always rooted for the underdog. We never ate grapes in solidarity with the United Farm Workers. She rode in her wheelchair in anti-war demonstrations under the Veterans for Peace sign. She was active with her local chapter of Amnesty International, working to free prisoners of conscience. She was a lifelong supporter of the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Democratic Party and too many other causes to name. When everyone else was rooting for the Yankees, she would cheer on the hapless Mets.

She loved art, music, dance, and theater, but literature was her best friend. In her last year she took great comfort in listening to “Our Mutual Friend” over and over again.

As they would say in her new home state of Massachusetts, she was wicked smart. She could easily complete the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in pen; not that she’d ever boast about it since she was as modest as she was intelligent. When she moved to The Cambridge Homes in 2008 after her husband died, she joined a writing group even though she couldn’t see or move well enough to type. She dictated wonderful essays about her childhood and life experiences to me or her aides.

She was renowned for her stoicism. She had M.S. for 58 of her 91 years, but she refused to let the disease define her. Up until she could no longer talk, whenever you’d ask her how she was feeling she would invariably answer in whisper, “I’m feeling much better, thank you.”

She very badly wanted to see a picture of Marabel Shirley Barrett, her first great grandchild born on December 9. When I warned her it was unlikely that she’d be able to see my phone let alone a picture on it given her macular degeneration, she assured me, “Oh, but my eyesight is getting much better.” With Shirley, hope sprang eternal.

My mother was not religious, but she had a lot of soul. May she rest in peace.