Camille Mikel McGreevy Peck

March 8, 1940-November 27, 2022

“Green grow the lilacs all sparkling with dew

Green grow the lilacs when winter is through”

My mom was born on a cold, windy, Chicago Friday. It was the edge of the Great Depression, the threshold of World War II.

Her parents, Camille Adelaide McGreevy, née Pizza, and Michael James McGreevy, Sr., have long since left us, but left us a long history, often recounted in countless stories that mean rooms echoing in laughter through generations. Her little brother, Michael James McGreevy, Jr., made his entrance a few years later. He survives those three, and calls North Freedom, Wisconsin, home.

Mom hated the coming of fall and loathed the frigid weather of winter. Her father, “Papa,” was a travelling salesman, a self-proclaimed “peddler.” Whenever he was home, or far~flung on the road, he always let Mom know he spotted the first robin of the year, on her birthday. The true harbinger of Spring.

Mom grew up in the City of Chicago, Rogers Park, to tap the map. That was a specific point she was always quick to make. “I was born IN the City of Chicago, not some silly suburb!”

My mother was honored with a devoted, diverse, and wildly interesting group of friends. They travelled with her, no matter where they met, and she carried them close, for the rest of her life, in her heart.

She worked and lived in and around Chicago, a number of places in Wisconsin, and Maryland, before returning to her beloved Broad Shoulders.

A bit about that.

She met my father, James Edward Peck, Sr. of Fox Point, Wisconsin, at Marquette University in Milwaukee. It was there they married, marched for civil rights, against Vietnam, and had me on another cold March day.

Later, they divorced, we all moved east; Mom to Maryland, Dad to Washington, D.C..

The night she and I drove away from Chicago, saying “goodbye” to my grandparents, her dad said, “Remember, if you get lost, it’s Maryland, My Maryland, in G!”

She’d later often sing the last line of that battered Civil War tune:

"Arise, arise in majesty again

Maryland, Maryland, my Maryland”

Music was a gigantic character in the life of my mom. Her mother, “Nonie,” graduated from Northwestern University in the 1920s, a music major. Papa could play anything by ear (although he never seemed quite able to play in his wife’s key) and those old songs surrounded the two McGreevy kids from the womb, through life.

In my family, music is something to sing, play, perform, argue over, and treasure. One of my favorite memories is of a night a few years ago, in Amsterdam. Mom and Dad, sitting together on a couch in the lobby of a hotel, fighting over the validity of Maria Callas.

No one ever won.

“As sure as the bluebirds that fly up above

Springtime is sad without someone to love”

This song, "Green Grow The Lilacs", lives in my mind. It is woven into my earliest memory, Mom holding me, singing quietly, sleep slowly taking over.

I never sang it to my kids.

It always makes me cry.

Mom’s life was devoted to kids. She was completely committed to those who were not “plain,” as she always referred to me, but born to endure hardships of fate, both physical and mental, or both. Not once was she on time picking me up after school, there were kids who needed her, and if it meant me sitting alone in the dark of an empty schoolyard, sobeit.

And it always meant me sitting alone in the dark of an empty schoolyard.

I won’t run through the long list of esteemed and unknown, obscure and famous, humble and celebrated centers of higher, lower, and Special Education to which she invested all of herself. She never did.

Those of you who knew her will well-recognize the silence with which she spoke of her own achievements. In my life, I never heard her introduce herself as “Dr. Peck.” I never heard her run through her long list of degrees, honors, and accomplishments.

Ever.

She only talked about the kids.

When I “finally” got married to the next strong, whipsmart, woman in my life, Kim (35!!!), the chapter that began with an announcement in the Loop went on the be written, first in Idaho, with the births of the three next most important people in her life; our kids.

Lauren Katherine Peck (20), Liam Caulfield Peck (17), and Amelie Michelle Peck (14), now, all in Michigan.

For the first time in my life, I saw Mom let some of those “plain” kids grab her attention.

When Mom retired (kicking and screaming), she spent more and more time with those three…and here I start to tear up, again…she spent time forging bonds that will forever remain unbroken.

We don’t have the right words for the relationship, the love, devotion, the fierce protection, that comes to life between grandchildren and grandparents.

Words or not, those of you who live this understand.

Nothing has been as hard for me as watching my children say “goodbye” to my mom.

Their Nonie.

Nothing.

As I held her hand, I saw the adventure that began in Chicago.

Mom was brought into the world by her mother, wrapped tightly in her arms.

My mom left this world, hand in mine, and the adventure ended.

We lost Mom on a chilly Michigan, November Sunday.

The illness from which she was finally delivered took her bit by bit, she slipped away from us in pieces. Her memories vanished, forever. It’s up to us to remember them, to tell the stories, to laugh the laughs, and treasure the tears.

She escaped the hard edge of one final winter.

“Yes springtime is sad and it troubles my mind

Green grow the lilacs all sparkling with dew

Green grow the lilacs when winter is thru”

Her birthday is nearly upon us.

I miss her so much it breaks me.

I ask two things of you:

Keep her in your heart, always.

And, each March 8th, keep your eyes peeled for that first robin.

Spring is coming.

“Each time I see lilacs my heart breaks in two

'Cause springtime is here and it's here without you”

Farewell.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.nationalcremation.com/location/bloomfield for the Peck family.