RIP Eve

My mother-in-law died yesterday afternoon. She had suffered a massive stroke a week ago and fought hard but it just wasn't meant to be.
Her name really was Evelyn but she preferred Eve. She was adventurous, fiercely independent, fun and interesting. We never lived close enough to see much of each other but she was a very good mother-in-law and grandmother to my children.
She was born and grew up on the East Coast but much preferred living on the other side of the country. She liked the casualness so much more. White gloves in church wasn't her thing.
She loved to travel and did lots of it, several trips to Australia, cruises down one side of S America and back up the other - and that was just in the last 15 years or so.
She must have been tremendously organized because the family moved a lot - from CA to the D.C. area to CO (more than once), to the Netherlands with 4 children. There were more moves after my father-in-law retired but with fewer children all the time.
Ever since I knew her, she had been taking classes, art classes, computer classes, exercise classes. She worked part-time, more for the fun of it than anything else, doing transcriptions for doctors, typing for college students (this was before computers), even working for the sheriff's department in Reno.
My father-in-law preceded her in death about 15 years ago and she then moved her ailing brother out to NV to look after him. When he, too, passed away she reconnected with an old family friend and eventually married him and moved to Florida where she had lived ever since. She took up sailing in her late 70s and even bought her own little boat.
Losing most of her sight and some of her mobility in the last couple of years made things difficult but - until the stroke last week - she hadn't changed much.
This one's for you, Eve :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUQduCNgK4