Ann Adams Is Gone

Last Updated on: 23rd May 2016, 12:09 pm

It’s been such a good long weekend for me, it’s sad that it’s been less so for others.

Last March, I talked about Ann Adams, and hoped she would recover from her massive stroke. Although she seemed to get a little better, she was never able to write on her Facebook or blogs again.

After a long struggle and a couple bouts of pneumonia, the word is she has passed away on Saturday. There isn’t an obituary that I can readily find, but it is very much on her Facebook page. When there’s something available, I will add it.

Like I said on her page, who knew that someone whose blog I stumbled across through another blog would become so important to me? There was just something about her that made everyone who met her care about her.

I started reading her one blog about 10 or so years ago. It didn’t take long to get attached to her story and be amazed by her. Here was this 69-year-old woman taking care of 3 near teenagers and being very active in whatever cause struck her. Whatever she decided to involve herself in, she was all in. She had a very open mind. They always say as we get older, our opinions get harder and harder to change. That wasn’t the case with her.

I still laugh about an exchange we had one day. I emailed her and asked her how far Merced was from San Francisco because I would be in the bay area to get my guide dog and I was trying to figure out if I could see her. Yes, I admit right here that I’m as much of a geography idiot as we joke about when folks from the states think they’re going to get from Vancouver to Halifax in one day. At least we were in the same state, but that state is a beast! After learning that there was over 300 miles between us, Ann still said she might come visit her son in San Francisco and drop by the school. It didn’t work out, but we tried.

The coolest part of that exchange though was at the beginning. I said I was going to guide dog school, and without freaking out or missing a beat, she said “I must have missed something. Guide dog?” Once I told her Steve and I are both blind, she was totally cool with it. She would even ask me questions from time to time, real questions, not the kind where you figure out the person already has an idea and just wants you to validate their theory.

We exchanged a lot of emails over the years, and she left lots of awesome comments here, it’s too bad they were all lost when Echo failed us miserably. Sometimes she sent me blog post ideas, sometimes she would just talk. We never talked on the phone, but we sent a lot of emails. She would talk about anything from baseball to politics to addiction issues to books to raising kids.

I know she touched a lot of people, her Facebook page is full of condolences. When I decide to get involved in something, I can only hope I can be half as passionate and committed as Ann was to everything she did.